This happens to be one of those pictures where the good and the bad reviews both sound about the same, and everyone winds up considering it a blast. You can put me in the same category. Who wouldn't have a good time picking this thing apart for it's cheesy monster, cheesy model toy tanks and airplanes, and cheesy actors playing it straight and wondering how they'll make it through the whole thing?
Even so, I've come up with a couple of observations that might be worth mentioning. Anyone else notice how the original male astronauts of spaceship AAB-Gamma were introduced by their last names - Captain Sano, medical doctor Shioda and signal officer Miyamoto? But then, the space biologist on the mission was introduced as Lisa! I'm not into the whole feminism thing but that was a pretty significant slight to an important member of the team. Speaking of which, I couldn't help thinking while watching Peggy Neal in the role, that she could have been a stand-in for Angie Dickinson in a bigger budget flick.
The other thing I noticed was that business of the 'guilala' spore burning through the table and floor and eventually into the earth before wrecking the space station, while the science folks were partying it up at Dr. Berman's (Franz Gruber). I hate to think this is where the writers for the 'Aliens' franchise got the idea for their monster, but it makes you wonder.
But when it comes to the monster itself, oh baby!, stand by for what's probably the goofiest looking Godzilla knock-off in the annals of Japanese monster movies. Every time it set down it's rubbery feet on an unsuspecting mechanical victim, I had to laugh - there was no way to control their floppy motion. The bonus had to be those fiery spitball blasts at the attacking war planes, unless of course, one considers the monster ability to absorb itself into a red ball of energy and float around from city to city on it's path of destruction.
Well, with embarrassingly hokey special effects and laughably ridiculous science, this has to be one of the all time, campy sci-fi greats, even if I'd never heard of it before catching it on Turner Classics the other day. You know, as I sit here and think about it now, the scientists involved here never did get around to discovering the mystery of the UFO that popped up every now and then. Not that I would have expected them to, when they couldn't even come up with a decent title to describe the 'X' from outer space.
Even so, I've come up with a couple of observations that might be worth mentioning. Anyone else notice how the original male astronauts of spaceship AAB-Gamma were introduced by their last names - Captain Sano, medical doctor Shioda and signal officer Miyamoto? But then, the space biologist on the mission was introduced as Lisa! I'm not into the whole feminism thing but that was a pretty significant slight to an important member of the team. Speaking of which, I couldn't help thinking while watching Peggy Neal in the role, that she could have been a stand-in for Angie Dickinson in a bigger budget flick.
The other thing I noticed was that business of the 'guilala' spore burning through the table and floor and eventually into the earth before wrecking the space station, while the science folks were partying it up at Dr. Berman's (Franz Gruber). I hate to think this is where the writers for the 'Aliens' franchise got the idea for their monster, but it makes you wonder.
But when it comes to the monster itself, oh baby!, stand by for what's probably the goofiest looking Godzilla knock-off in the annals of Japanese monster movies. Every time it set down it's rubbery feet on an unsuspecting mechanical victim, I had to laugh - there was no way to control their floppy motion. The bonus had to be those fiery spitball blasts at the attacking war planes, unless of course, one considers the monster ability to absorb itself into a red ball of energy and float around from city to city on it's path of destruction.
Well, with embarrassingly hokey special effects and laughably ridiculous science, this has to be one of the all time, campy sci-fi greats, even if I'd never heard of it before catching it on Turner Classics the other day. You know, as I sit here and think about it now, the scientists involved here never did get around to discovering the mystery of the UFO that popped up every now and then. Not that I would have expected them to, when they couldn't even come up with a decent title to describe the 'X' from outer space.