Yôsei Gorasu

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?

Quite hilarious to watch. So many miniatures were used in the production that it feels a bit like revisiting the toy shop where you used to go as a child. "Yosei Gorasu" tells a variation of a familiar storyline "planet on collision course with Earth" insofar as its logical conclusion is not "blow up the invader" but "try and move the Earth out of the way", and for that purpose, an assembly of huge rocket engines is built in the Antarctic region which normally should take 20 years, but they manage the calculation, transport and construction work in a week or so. While any scientist will cringe, the producers openly admit the end of the world is not so serious after all by adding a giant walrus = a guy in a suit who appears without any reason and attacks a power station. The most impressive scenes are those of the flood sweeping Tokyo: a lot of miniatures again with attention to detail, the best you could do in 1962. Mixed bag, but it has memorable moments.

"Gorath" is the last, and by some standards the best, of Ishiro Honda's "space trilogy" of the late 50s/early 60s.

Once again, Honda explores the theme of humankind forced to work together against an extraterrestrial adversary. Only this time we're not facing aliens, but something far more deadly, and utterly implacable: a runaway stellar remnant which for some unexplained reason the authorities name "Gorath". Composed of collapsed matter -- which gives it a mass and gravitational pull far out of proportion to its relatively small size -- even a near-miss (in cosmic terms) would render the Earth uninhabitable.

It can't be blown up, and there's no way to change its orbit. Obviously, there's nothing left to do but build a bunch of enormous hydrogen fusion rocket engines at the South Pole and move our planet out of its way. (If there's one thing you could never fault Honda for, it's a lack of imagination, even if the physics of the thing are completely impossible.)

This is definitely a more somber and slower-paced outing than those two earlier films. Instead of the almost non-stop skirmishing between the Earth forces and dastardly aliens which typified the previous films in the trilogy, the drama lies in humanity's desperate race against time, to save itself with the biggest, most complex feat of engineering ever attempted. So, despite its typically energetic Akira Ifukube score, this one naturally lacks some of the naive charm and relentless drive which distinguished the colorfully juvenile "The Mysterians" and "Battle in Outer Space".

What makes this film a standout in its own right, though, is that it contains what might just be the Tsuburaya team's most impressive miniature work ever. You must see this in letterbox, in the original Japanese version, to fully appreciate its scope and grandeur, specially the extended montage depicting the rocket motors' construction at the South Pole. (I believe Honda must have been heavily influenced here by the "remaking of Everytown" sequence in 1937's "Things to Come", even down to the musical theme Ifukube composed for it.)

Plus there are nicely executed spaceship and space station models and effects, not to mention some fairly imaginative visuals as Gorath careens through the solar system. (The original version comes with a bonus: the totally unnecessary -- to the plot, anyway -- giant prehistoric walrus.) The earthquake and tsunami sequence which takes place as Gorath makes its closest approach to Earth is, in fact, rather eerie to watch in the light of recent events.

Unfortunately, though, the tsunami -- along with a few seconds of recycled footage of a landslide from "The Mysterians" -- are about the only glimpses we're ever given of Gorath's devastating effects. So even with what must have been a substantially bigger budget than either of the two preceding films in the trilogy, the ending feels rushed, and a bit of a letdown.

Regardless of my nit-picking, "Gorath" is still well worth watching, a truly unique movie both for this director, and in its own apocalyptic genre.

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.