Thursday, August 18, 2016

Japan Sci-Fi


BATTLE IN OUTER SPACE-1959-In 1965 Earth is invaded by aliens from the planet Natal with a base on the moon. They use an anti-gravity machine and some kind of mind control as their main weapons. Earth holds a world conference in Japan. The invaders make a guy in a turban do sabotage but when he's thwarted he's disintegrated by a UFO. It's decided Earth will send two manned rockets to the moon. One headed by Japanese Dr. Adachi (Koreya Senda; also in THE H-MAN) and the other by Dr. Richardson (Len Stanford in his only film role apparently), a white guy. After some hi-jinx in space like one guy who doesn't even know about weightlessness and crew member Iwamura (Yoshio Tsuchyia from many other Toho productions and Kurosawa films) almost sabotaging the mission after his mind is taken over, both ships land on the moon. The crews investigate and discover some short aliens who capture Etsuko (Kyoko Anzai), the female crew member. They also make Iwamura destroy one of the ships but he comes to his senses in time and sacrifices his own life so the second ship can go back to Earth and come up with a solution to the invasion. There are lots of toy effects. 

The Adachi character had also appeared earlier in THE MYSTERIANS. Many Godzilla "hands" were  in this, not the least being the great Ishiro Honda who directed this fun Toho production which was distributed on a double bill in the US by Columbia pictures. mind 

Thanks for reading!  

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