Yôsei Gorasu

This film is one of my favorites from Toho's "Golden Age" and one of the three "space operas" directed by Ishiro Honda. A giant asteroid with a huge magnetic field is growing by absorbing everything in its path...a path which puts it on a course to Earth. How will man survive? Easy---through the conviction and determination of Japanese will-power and ingenuity, the Earth is pushed out of orbit after giant engines are built at the South Pole. But is it enough to get the Earth out of the path of Gorath?

One scene that most Americans have never seen is the appearance of MAGMA, a giant prehistoric walrus which was awakened by the heat generated at the South Pole by the massive engines. After some initial destruction, the monster is killed by beams fired from a VTOL vehicle (which would see a new life in the TV series, "Ultraman" as the "Jet Beetle.")

Kumi Mizuno shines as one of the female leads with a great bathtub scene when Akira Kubo comes knocking on her door.

This Japanese take on the kind of story first pioneered by "When Worlds Collide" and done less effectively in later years in "Meteor", "Armageddon" etc. has been called Toho's greatest sci-fi movie ever by some. It's certainly a fairly intelligent effort overall, done with top of the line (for its time) FX. I was glad to see it in its original Japanese format, widescreen with subtitles (and with the rather pointless scene involving giant walrus Magma) and found it quite entertaining overall, certainly the equal of "When Worlds Collide" and light years ahead of the American takes on the story that followed. My only quibble was why Gorath was referred to as a "star", when it is clearly too small to be so categorized, and should have been referred to as a runaway planet (was Toho afraid of getting sued for ripping off "When Worlds Collide" if they categorized it as a planet?).

Fans of the wonderful 1960 disaster movie "The Last Voyage" will recognize George Furness, who played Third Officer Osborne in that film, as the UN Secretary-General. Furness was a lawyer living in Japan who had enough acting talent to not only play westerners in Japanese movies, but to get good roles in American movies shot in Japan like "The Last Voyage" too.

Despite what you'd think being a Toho movie, Gorath isn't a giant beastie in fact dependent on which version you watch there may not be a beastie at all.

Gorath tells the standard story of a meteor heading towards Earth that will destroy the planet and the efforts of its people to prevent catastrophe. The aforementioned beastie only exists in the original Japanese version and was entirely edited out the American version for some reason. Probably best as it brought nothing to the movie and the giant seal monster did look a tad goofy.

The core theme of the movie is a world united, a message that we need more than ever at time of writing.

It follows a very commonly used plot and doesn't bring anything new to the table at all. With all the usual 60's sci-fi tropes it's well below par for a Toho film.

The Good:

That Toho charm

The Bad:

Doesn't look that great even for its time

Really quite boring stuff

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

It was global law that all sci-fi movies needed to have that same sound effect, you know the one!

I understand that Toho had a small talent pool and hired the same people, but why are the most talented ones usually the smaller roles?

This was the first Japanese film that I saw that didn't rely on a giant monster to make it an interesting story (there is a giant monster, but it is mainly used as filler). Essentially, the message of this film is about how the people of Earth should learn to cooperate, especially when faced with extinction. We do not need an extreme threat like an onrushing planetoid to learn to cooperate due to the fact that we have such threats as global warming, pollution, crime and hunger that are already eating away at us. Also, I hope one day that an uncut version of this film is released in this country. The message of this film has all but been hacked to pieces by the American distributors of this classic piece of Japanese science fiction.

GORATH (1962) begins with a Japanese Space Exploration ship fatally encountering a run-away planet smaller than Earth, but much greater in mass. It is now up to Earth scientists to build rocket boosters at the South Pole in order to move the Earth out of it's orbit. For logic, GORATH is a scientific mess (One scientist watches Gorath suck up the moon "The moon's gone. But it gives us the boost we need!") Huh? However, GORATH is a charming sci-fi film. Akira Kubo (A Japanese actor who resembles Speed Racer) is the astronaut who takes on a suicidal space mission to observe Gorath when his relationship with a young woman is at it's lowest ebb. His return to Earth, as a shell-shocked wreck is quite touching. Tsuburaya's minatures are also at a low here. The space scenes a re quite beautiful and haunting despite that. Basically, GORATH, for all it's screenwriting and cinematograhic faults, has an entertaining charm.