Theatrical Releases Part Two—Friends
As previously noted, nineteen other mixed Japanese fantasy films gained a British release 1957-78, and can now be dealt with sequentially. To keep the size of this essay manageable however, each one will only be briefly discussed, with a summary of its plot, original production-context, and critical (ie MFB-review) reception. See the Table below for a summary of the relevant distribution details:
**Note: Grand National also reissued Rodan and The Mysterians c.1963 Co-features suffixed “(???)” are currently unconfirmed best-guesses
(i) Half Human (1957) A scientific expedition in search of the Missing Link meets disaster when a circus manager similarly chasing the creature accidentally kills its offspring, driving the enraged parent to go on the rampage. This film has long been unavailable in Japan, as its crude portrayal of the Ainu is now considered unacceptably offensive. (The Ainu were the original, indigenous people of Hokkaido—Japan’s northernmost island—whose historical oppression has since been linked with that of Australia’s Aborigines etc). Half Human thus now resembles Disney’s once-popular Song of the South as a deliberately suppressed political embarrassment. The US release by DCA (Distributors Corp. of America) ruthlessly followed Godzilla King of the Monster’s example of replacing large chunks of Honda’s footage with new US-shot material (featuring John Carradine and Morris Ankrum), so that very little of the original survives anyway. The effect is extremely tedious. Released by Eros in Britain just four months after their smash-success with Godzilla, it was double-billed with indescribable UK-horror Man Without a Body. The MFB review was scathing: “Like Godzilla, this Japanese horror film has been adapted by severe cutting and the interpolation of scenes in which a group of American scientists discuss at great length aspects of the monster’s behaviour. Even before the continuity was so arbitrarily dealt with, however, the plot must have been too stereotyped and slow-moving to be really exciting. The monster, though unconvincing, is a most sympathetic creature; and even in his most murderous moments quite fails to inspire any horror.”
Art by John Kaye.
Grand National reissue c.1963
(ii) Rodan the Flying Monster (1958) Mysterious deaths in a coal mine are revealed to be the work of two giant prehistoric pterodactyls previously trapped in a subterranean cavern, who escape to wreak havoc across Japan before being consumed in a volcanic eruption caused by military bombardment. Toho’s first colour Kaiju, and the first to be scripted by Kimura (co-authoring with Gojira’s Takeo Murata). The US version (by Frank and Maurice King, whom we shall meet again later) was again distributed by DCA, but is a much more sympathetic, minimally-cut adaptation. In Britain it was one of the very last features to be released by RKO (prior to their distribution-wing being shut-down at the end of 1958), and was subsequently re-released by Grand National (as part of a larger batch of ex-RKO titles) c.1963. The MFB quite liked it: “This elaborate Japanese science-fiction film has reached us in a less garbled state than its predecessor, Godzilla, although the added American soundtrack, with its March of Time commentator and crudely dubbed voices, is hardly an improvement on the original. The story follows a now familiar pattern—the monsters attack and are then destroyed in a spectacular orgy of destruction reminiscent of Them! As before, this gruesome fictional framework is used to point a serious moral concerning the use of atom and hydrogen bombs. Special effects are generally very competent (except when the camera comes too close) and the climax, when the rodans die horribly, but nobly, on a pyre of flaming lava, is something of a tour-de-force.”
Japanese poster 1956
(iii) Mysterious Satellite (1958) A friendly alien delegation from the planet Paira arrives on Earth to warn mankind of both the dangers of atomic bombs, and the fact that a runaway asteroid—Planet R—is on a direct collision course with us, quickly forcing human and Pairan scientists to desperately collaborate on its last-minute destruction. Japan’s first colour sci-fi adventure (predating Rodan by a year), this was the only Daiei fantasy to get a UK release—none of their subsequent Gamera series ever appeared in Britain. The undisguised Pairans unforgettably resemble mono-eyed walking starfish. Mysterious Satellite was released by Kenneth Rive’s Gala, and premiered (like Godzilla) at Rive’s Berkeley cinema on Tottenham Court Road, prompting a rare notice in The Times (on 7th April) wryly summarising the unlikely plot. The MFB review took a similar tack: “After a tentative, unconvincing beginning, the film achieves some genuine tension in the sequences depicting the planet R’s threat to Earth; here, the colour is cleverly used to simulate a feeling of great heat. Once again, serious social overtones are incorporated into a fairly absurd science-fiction framework and, for once, these visitors from another world are shown as well-meaning and friendly. The most ludicrous, yet charming, sequence is one in which the friendly Pairans are seen at a committee-meeting, which necessitates both Japanese and English sub-titles.”
Art by Bill Wiggins
Grand National reissue c.1963
(iv) The Mysterians (1959) Male aliens from the planet Mysteroid set up a domed subterranean base beneath a Japanese forest, then launch Mogera (a giant mole-like robot) to terrorize the nation into supplying human females for breeding purposes—fortunately heroic scientists finally develop a counter-weapon to defeat the attack. The first instalment of Honda’s loose “space opera trilogy”, The Mysterians was followed by Battle in Outer Space (which also gained a UK release), and Gorath (which didn’t). Featuring another early screenplay by Kimura, the film was one of RKO’s last pick-ups before closure—as they shut before being able to use it, it was instead handled by MGM in the States and Rank in Britain (like Rodan also later reissued here c.1963 by Grand National). The MFB thought it middling: “The Mysterians would appear to base their hierarchy on the colour-scheme of their apparel; possibly the original version elucidates this point, but RKO’s banal American-dubbed version does not. The film’s main weaknesses are a slight and confused plot, under-developed characterisation and artless acting; its strength lies in its imaginative art-direction and spectacular staging, in which respect it is possibly the most dazzling display of pyrotechnics in the genre to date. The moral and philosophical undertones, familiar from previous Japanese science fiction films, are again present, but rather less persuasively than usual.”
(v) The H-Man (1960) A ship passing through a nuclear test-zone becomes radioactive, causing its crew to liquify—when others come into contact with the liquifying contamination it quickly spreads, eventually getting into Tokyo’s sewers and causing mayhem before being defeated by the police and military armed with flame-throwers. Again, the first of a loose trilogy and again scripted by Kimura, this was followed by The Human Vapor and Secret of the Telegian, neither of which got UK distribution. Whilst the storyline is fairly standard, Honda’s direction is effectively creepy and some of the visuals are genuinely unforgettable. Haruo Nakajima briefly appears as one of the doomed sailors in a rare out-of-costume role. Like the later Battle in Outer Space, Columbia released The H-Man in both the US and UK, with the MFB once again highlighting the internal contradictions: “Complete with built-in lecture on nuclear dangers, The H-Man has all the usual faults and virtues of Japanese SF-cum-Horror fiction. The story is imitative and undisciplined, spending far too much time on an erratic police v. racketeers subplot which is vague and gets nowhere; characterisation is virtually non-existent, though possibly the American dubbing has something to do with this. But for special effects, trick photography and spectacular staging, the Japanese again beat their Hollywood counterparts at their own game: the fantasy element of vanishing bodies and mobile liquid is brilliantly done.”
(vi) The Split (1961) A Japanese mad scientist experimenting with the mutating effects of solar rays injects an unsuspecting US journalist with a deadly serum which turns him into a depraved sex-killer, growing a second deformed head before finally splitting entirely in two to desperately wrestle his newborn evil-twin into a volcano. If The Split sounds a bit wild—even by the standards of its already wild genre—that’s because it is. Financed by United Artists to make use of money they had trapped in Japan, it was shot in Tokyo in Dec 1958 with a mostly Japanese cast and crew. British leads Peter Dyneley and Jane Hylton (who subsequently married in real life) ironically play an American couple. Writer / director / producer George Breakston had already had some success shooting offbeat thrillers in unusual international locations, while co-director Kenneth Crane had previously shot the additional US scenes in Half Human. UA released it in the States (retitled The Manster) and the UK (double-billed with Brit-horror The Snake Woman). Combining utterly outrageous exploitation with some fascinating (and pretty dark) psychological and political subtexts, The Split simply has to be seen to be believed. The MFB were, perhaps understandably, unimpressed: “This incredibly far-fetched rehash of all the ingredients of the conventional SF-Horror film is in every way a thorough waste of effort. The idea of a two-headed man may have seemed ambitious but it has turned out abysmally silly. The second head seems merely to bob up and down on the actor’s raincoated shoulder, only visible in night scenes and never in close-up. All in all a pathetic potboiler, occasionally risible and never frightening.”
The only British poster to actually include a billing-credit for Sekizawa
(vii) Battle in Outer Space (1962) After deducing that a series of catastrophes are the work of a hostile alien planet, two exploratory rockets are dispatched to the Moon to locate and destroy the enemy base, prompting a massive final showdown between deadly alien flying saucers and our defensive supersonic jetfighters. The second of Honda’s ‘space opera’ trilogy, with little actual plot—though Sekizawa’s script does throw in a treacherous (alien-brainwashed) scientist for a bit of suspense—but masses of jaw-dropping destructive action. Columbia’s US cut loses about fifteen minutes of exposition—making an already fast-paced film even faster—at the expense of most of the character-development and human drama. The MFB were increasingly impatient: “Aimless, witless war-of-the-worlds story, made in Japan and partially redeemed by one or two elaborate trick thrills (the demolition of the Golden Gate Bridge by a space torpedo) and special effects. The dubbed dialogue is as dated as a Flash Gordon serial, the ludicrous overacting of the Westernised Oriental cast says little for Ishiro Honda’s direction, and the attempt at futurism is ruined by scenery which has a distinct cardboard look about it.”
(viii) Varan the Unbelievable (1963) Chemical testing in a rural Japanese lake causes a huge flying dinosaur-monster to emerge, which devastates Tokyo before being blown up by the military. An uninspired by-the-numbers Kaiju, Varan was an unfortunate victim of circumstances. Remember AB-PT, the US company who in early 1957 were going to reshoot Godzilla’s Counterattack as The Volcano Monsters? That wasn’t the only novel idea they took to Toho at the time- they also proposed co-producing a tightly-budgeted Godzilla-style adventure for direct sale to US TV. Tanaka agreed, and set Honda and co to work, but nobody was particularly enthused by such a routine assignment (particularly filming in b&w for the small screen) and Tsuburaya in particular deliberately cut corners, assuming much of his effects work would be rendered near-invisible. Then AB-PT collapsed, and Toho were stuck with a half-finished film they couldn’t afford to write-off. A decision was taken to complete it for domestic release only, but the results were inevitably scrappy—the only real point of interest (as previously noted) is Sekizawa’s debut script, which (while undeniably formulaic) clearly showcases the quirky humour that will soon become his trademark. Four full years after its original release, the already indifferent film was picked up by US producer Jerry Baerwitz for a radical recut which essentially ruins it entirely. As with Half Human, only about twenty mins of Honda’s footage survives in the US version, the majority of which is now made up of incredibly dreary scenes of Myron Healey as a grumpy Military Scientist complaining about everything. This was released by Crown International in the US, and picked up the following year by Grand National in the UK for a lurid double-bill with Jess Franco’s delirious The Demon Doctor. Grand National (1939-81) were run by Maurice Wilson, a genuine pioneer who had built Highbury Studios in 1937. The firm’s early output—a mix of domestic quota material and imports—was relatively prestigious, but headed steadily downmarket over time, until by the late ’50s GN were offering such masterpieces as Beast From the Haunted Cave and Plan Nine From Outer Space. In addition to Varan, a previously-mentioned deal to handle a mixed batch of RKO reissues meant they also re-released Rodan and The Mysterians at around the same point. The MFB were once again unimpressed: “Hackneyed and repetitious carbon-copy of Godzilla, substantially made-over by an American company in such a way that its arrogantly patronising American hero and his simpering Japanese wife are almost entirely divorced from the film’s climactic action scenes. The monster itself, scaly, spiky-spined, towering over ships and cities, has the usual prodigious immunity to army bombardment. Photography (irritatingly dark) and cutting are ragged—hardly surprising under the circumstances.”
Art adapted from the US campaign by Reynold Brown
(ix) Frankenstein Conquers the World (1967) At the end of WW2, German scientists ship the living heart of the Frankenstein monster to Hiroshima, where (following the bomb) it is found and eaten by a starving orphan; two decades later, radiation has caused the child to grow into a giant-size mutant, who fights and defeats Baragon (a resurrected giant dinosaur) before being swallowed up in an earthquake. The first of Saperstein’s three UPA co-productions, this stars Nick Adams (who developed a major crush on co-star Kumi Mizuno despite the language barrier) as an intrepid US medical scientist. Kimura’s screenplay (based on a treatment by Reuben Bercovitch) is simultaneously pretty grim and very silly. Released (like Godzilla vs the Thing and Destroy All Monsters) by AIP in the States, this appeared in Britain soon afterwards courtesy of Warner-Pathe. The MFB were still very tetchy: “Another piece of science-fiction hokum from Ishiro Honda, identical in all respects to its predecessors. Once again the characters are cardboard cut-outs, the script is so preposterously silly as to be perversely entertaining, and the dubbed dialogue is rigidly comic-strip. Tedium is relieved only by the monsters, a giant wild boy called Frankenstein with a phobia for television cameras, and a fire-breathing prehistoric reptile. Their final, obligatory encounter in the middle of an all-consuming earthquake is spectacularly staged, with some excellent special effects and trick photography.”
Art adapted from the US campaign by Reynold Brown
(x) Atragon (1967) The world is threatened with invasion by the ancient subterranean Mu Empire, which unleashes both Manda (a monstrous sea-serpent) and the J-403 (a powerful futuristic submarine) to terrorize the surface—fortunately a former Naval Commander has built his own even more powerful top-secret super-sub—the Atragon—on a remote island, and is persuaded to lend this in Earth’s defence, piloting it into Mu to destroy the renegade kingdom and bring an end to the attack. One of Toho’s most colourful fantasies, and (thanks to Sekizawa’s script) one of the few to actually put characterisation ahead of the special effects (Manda was only included at Tanaka’s insistence, to strengthen the box-office appeal). Atragon was released in the US by AIP in March 1965, and at the very end of the year Anglo-Amalgamated submitted it to the BBFC for a child-friendly ‘U’ cert. However at some point over 1966 Anglo clearly dropped the idea of releasing it themselves, and instead sold it on to tiny indie distributor Ritz Films. Almost nothing is known about Ritz, other than that they were run by Ken Smith, based in Leamington Spa (in the Midlands), and released a small handful of oddball films over the mid-late 60s including a reissue of The Blob (1958), Destination Death (1965), and Master of Horror (1970). The MFB had seen it all before: “Yet another of Ishiro Honda’s science fiction spectaculars, in which all is sacrificed for the special effects. As in previous Toho giant monster shows, the trick photography is uneven and some of the models, among them the Tower of London, are unconvincing. The most attractive features include a gargantuan elongated sea monster, the Mu Queen’s pillarbox-red wig, and the architectural splendour of Mu itself—which looks like a synthesis of Lang’s Metropolis and some ancient civilisation from an Italian spectacle. Atragon itself is a creation straight out of the comic papers.”
(xi) King Kong Escapes (1969) An evil scientist in the pay of a hostile foreign power has built Mechani-Kong (a giant robot gorilla) to mine deadly Element X in the North Pole, but (following a temporary malfunction) decides to kidnap and hypnotise the real King Kong to do the work instead—however the latter escapes to confront and defeat his mechanical rival in Tokyo, finally putting an end to the diabolical scheme. As previously noted, Rankin-Bass’s 1966 cartoon series The King Kong Show was the first US TV project to be animated (by Toei) in Japan, and the licencing-deal with RKO included an option for a live-action film spin-off. Toho were the obvious partners in such a venture, but their initial proposal—Sekizawa’s Operation Robinson Crusoe script—had been rejected. Nevertheless, Arthur Rankin gave Tanaka another chance, and Kimura’s resulting screenplay for King Kong Escapes cautiously sticks much more closely to the original show, to the extent of re-using several of its characters including heroine Susan, villain Dr Who, and his creation Mechani-Kong (it’s a particular irony that the concept of evil robot-doubles, later so prevalent in Japanese sci-fi, actually originated in America). King Kong Escapes was by some way the silliest of Toho’s kaiju up to that point (which is frankly saying something) but thanks to Universal’s high-profile US campaign did extremely well. As with the earlier King Kong vs Godzilla, Universal’s tie-up with Rank in the UK ensured an equally wide British release, and 1969 ultimately turned out to be THE big year for Japanese fantasy in Britain, with no fewer than eight films screened here, six them over the three-month period Aug-Sept-Oct alone. Rank started the ball rolling in January by double-billing King Kong Escapes with Carry On Up the Khyber, surely one of THE all-time great programmes ever offered to the paying British public (though which film provoked the biggest laughs is open to debate). The MFB were reluctantly appreciative: “Nice to see King Kong again, especially when he hoists a girl to safety in the palm of his hand. The model and process work of this new Ishiro Honda saga is not up to the best Toho standards, and this American version is lumbered with more than usually fatuous dialogue. Nostalgia is much in evidence, but Kong now shares his island with just a single elderly Polynesian gentleman. Still, there’s much to enjoy along the way: Kong’s encounter with a dinosaur, which he despatches with a flurry of blows to the jaw; his race to the rescue when a submarine, with the girl on board, is menaced by a giant sea monster; and especially his monumental battle with the robot Mechani-Kong at the top of Tokyo Tower. As always, the monsters are decidely more appealing than the humans; and when Kong abandons the girl and wades into the sea for home, one knows exactly how he feels.”
(xii) Gappa the Triphibian Monster (1969) A magazine proprietor sends an expedition to a remote Pacific island to collect exotic plants and animals for a new Theme Park, but his team unexpectedly return with a weird, newly-hatched flying monster they’ve captured which the natives call Gappa—however the baby’s enraged parents shortly emerge from a volcanic eruption to fly to Tokyo and cause mayhem before being reunited with their offspring to return peacefully home. Gappa was Nikkatsu Studios’ only Kaiju, and was made solely for pragmatic financial reasons. At that point the company were heavily in debt, but knew that if they could announce a project with credible international sales-potential (and thereby bring in hard currency) they could get 100% financing from the Govt’s new protection program—producer Eisei Koi had been at school with several of the Diet’s leading politicians, and used his political clout to broker the unlikely deal. Gappa was thus ambitiously proposed as a Y500m (c.£500k) extravaganza (easily ten times the Studio’s usual budget) but—having obtained the money—Nikkatsu then immediately spent most of it clearing their most pressing debts, and Gappa’s production team found themselves having to make their film on a fraction of what had been promised. It was a forty-day schedule, with the effects-work subcontracted to Tsuburaya Productions (Toho’s effects genius had formed his own independent company in 1963, to the undisguised irritation of his former bosses). Scriptwriters Ryuzo Nakanishi and Gan Yamazaki deliberately focussed on the baby-parent monster relationship to add a new angle, though their story in fact closely resembles the earlier British adventure Gorgo (1961-qv). Director Harayasu Noguchi was famous for shooting fast—most of his previous films had taken about seventeen days—but was still forced to cut endless corners to bring Gappa in on budget. And after all that, the film failed to achieve a US theatrical release anyway, being sold direct to TV by AIP. But it did—quite incredibly—get a UK screening (with a ‘U’ cert) courtesy of Border Films (1957-77). Border (run by Olive Negus, wife of EJ Fancey—see below) initially handled children’s shorts, but by the early 70s were focussing on increasingly sleazy foreign exploitation including several of the classic Italian Giallos. Negus managed to book Gappa as support to Cinerama’s gothic-thriller Whatever Happened to Aunt Alice, though—as the latter sported a ‘AA’ cert—no children under the age of fourteen could go and see it. It’s possible a few adventurous (or desperate) exhibitors may have rented it solo for one-off children’s matinees etc, but Gappa nevertheless seems to have had almost no dedicated UK publicity produced at all. The MFB quite liked it: “The latest member of the Japanese prehistoric monster club is an amphibious bird-like creature with scaly back, long threshing tail, and wings which evidently conceal some kind of jet propulsion since they show no sign of flapping in flight. The baby Gappa is rather more endearing than its rampaging, fire-breathing parents, especially when it spreads its wings and squeaks with delight at the family reunion on the runway at Tokyo airport. Peripheral monstrous manifestations include an encore from the giant octopus which troubled Godzilla, and there’s also an earthquake, a volcano and a tidal wave. The special effects are generally more convincing than the trick photography, which gives the monsters a disconcerting variety of shapes and sizes. But they do show rather more animation than their human tormentors whose dialogue (“The Gappa made me realise there is more to life than ambition” says one of the chastened explorers as the birds fly off into the sunset) is as fatuous as ever.”
(xiii) Goke Bodysnatcher From Hell (1969) When an airliner carrying a handful of squabbling passengers (including a heroic pilot and stewardess) crash-lands in the desert following a mid-air brush with a UFO, the survivors terrifyingly realise they are being stalked by Goke, a hostile alien intelligence intent on progressively turning them into possessed vampires—our two heroes contrive to escape to civilisation at the climax, only to despairingly find that a full-scale invasion is already well underway. Goke was Shochiku’s only fantasy film to get a British release (though their madcap kaiju The X From Outer Space did later turn up on video), and—being totally unseen in the US until 1977—was for a long time easily the most obscure title in this essay. Ironically, practically half a century later, it now boasts a steadily-growing cult reputation as one of the best. Director Hajime Sato was a long-time admirer of Mario Bava, and Goke closely resembles his hero’s Planet of the Vampires plus (obviously) the earlier Invasion of the Bodysnatchers, while the downbeat closing twist thematically mirrors the contemporary Planet of the Apes. Apart from its frequently stunning visuals, Goke’s most striking feature is an impressively misanthropic script (from Kyuzo Kobayashi and Susumu Takaku) in which the venal passengers—being almost immediately at each other’s throats—prove at least as great a threat as the invading alien itself. In this respect, the film operates as brutally cynical and only thinly-disguised allegory. Goke was released in the UK in Oct 1969 by Nat Miller’s Orb Films, doubled-billed with Toho’s Matango Fungus of Terror in what must surely be one of the most provocative pairings of the decade The MFB, however, was having none of it: “Uninspired melange of flying saucers and vampirism, woodenly directed and bogged down by long stretches of melodramatic dissension among the characters which acts as an uneasy springboard for much preaching and moralising about why mankind deserves to be taken over by invaders from another world. The body snatching itself involves the victim’s forehead splitting in two to let Goke in as a jelly-like substance—though in its vampire-spreading exits it takes the form of something which looks like an innocuous globule of mercury. Collectors of the genre may find this variation entertaining, but there is little else to recommend.”
Japanese poster 1963
(xiv) Matango Fungus of Terror (1969) A group of holidaying friends are shipwrecked on an eerily deserted island where the only available food seems to be a weird yet strangely enticing fungus, but (on recovering a mouldy ship’s-log from an earlier decaying wreck) they learn that ‘Matango’ must under no circumstances be eaten as it has lethal addictive / psychotropic qualities—however, starving and unable to resist, one by one they succumb, only to find they are slowly mutating into giant mushrooms themselves. Scripted by Kimura and directed by Honda, Matango is a flat-out hallucinatory masterpiece, rich in allegorical meaning and jam-packed with unforgettable imagery. Toho however were not at all keen on it, with Honda never again being allowed to helm such an offbeat, personal project, and a disgruntled Kimura (who later cited it as his own favourite) thereafter sourly submitting his scripts under his anonymous Kaoru Mabuchi pseudonym. Matango was sold direct to US TV by AIP (under the idiotic re-title Attack of the Mushroom People), but was, as noted, given a theatrical release in the UK by Nat Miller’s Orb Films, doubled billed with Goke Bodysnatcher From Hell. The MFB, as previously, were unimpressed: “Not one of the best of Toho’s special effects exercises, though the mushroom people are quite fanciful, and the mushrooms come in all shapes, sizes and colours. ‘Everything seems pretty weird’ says someone early on in the proceedings; but though this might apply to some of the scenes in the fungus-covered derelict ship, the rest is disappointingly dull. The whole thing sags miserably in the middle when the characters get down to bickering amongst themselves, and the dubbed dialogue is half-hearted (‘It must be the rainy season’ someone opines after someone else has remarked that it has been raining for a whole week).”
(xv) The Green Slime (1969) When a rogue asteroid is detected on a collision-course with Earth, two US astronauts are urgently dispatched from orbiting space-station Gamma III to destroy it with specially-planted explosives—however the asteroid’s surface is covered with pools of weirdly sentient green slime, some of which is accidentally transferred back to Gamma III where it rapidly grows into endlessly multiplying, death-dealing tentacled monsters which finally force the station’s evacuation and deliberate destruction. The Green Slime was the only Toei fantasy to get a UK theatrical release, being an international co-production with Ivan Reiner’s RAM films, Reiner supplying the script and (all-Western) cast, while Toei provided the director, technical crew and studio-space. The budget was about $300k for a seven-week shoot—dramatically scaled down from the original proposals, but still roughly three times Toei’s typical spend. The shooting title was Battle Beyond the Stars, later exploitatively changed by MGM when they picked it up. Director Kinji Fukusaku intended it to be a Vietnam allegory: “I wanted to show America struggling with something it doesn’t really understand and can’t control… To show the base about to be overrun by this germ… Science fiction was a venue to do this kind of thing.” Whether US audiences picked up on these topical undercurrents is debatable, particularly given the utterly ludicrous rubber monsters standing in for the Vietcong, and the film now looks like an uncannily prescient dry-run for Alien (1979). Either way, The Green Slime is an absolute hoot from beginning to end, particularly in Fukusaku’s brisk Japanese cut (which runs a tight 77 minutes—the US version is an unnecessarily padded 90 mins). MGM’s only other sci-fi release of the year was the far less sophisticated 2001. Even the MFB were in a tolerant mood: “Junior league science fiction, somewhat oddly accorded an ‘X’ certificate at a time when Godzilla and gigantic company are stomping across the screen with a genteel ‘U’. The earlier phases of the story, with orbiting space station, space flight and expedition to blow up an asteroid, is certainly schoolboy stuff. Most of this space opera aspect is well enough done, and the first appearance of the green slime looks promising, but the transformation of the lurid jelly into stock monsters is something of a let-down, even if the cumulative effect of multiplying numbers keeps the suspense going until the end. The personal conflict between the spacemen is tedious, and Luciana Paluzzi’s presence as a most unlikely space station doctor is mere decoration.”
Japanese international poster and the equivalent US one-sheet. If a British poster for Yog actually exists it’ll probably adapt art from one of this pair, most likely the latter.
(xvi) Yog, Monster From Space (1973) An unmanned spaceship en-route to Jupiter passes through an alien-cloud which redirects it back to Earth, where, crash-landing near a Pacific atoll, it causes several animals (cuttlefish Gezora, spider-crab Ganime, and turtle Kameba) to grow to giant size and terrify the natives—luckily our investigating heroes discover that the controlling alien force is vulnerable to high-frequency sound, so collect and release hundreds of bats to make the confused monsters turn on one another before being consumed in a volcanic eruption. Yog was Toho’s last non-Godzilla kaiju, and marked an exit for several key contributors including Honda, Ifukube, Kita and Arikawa. The first two would later return, but others were now gone for good: Tsuburaya had died two days into shooting, and when an emotional Arikawa requested he be given a special posthumous credit—but Toho curtly refused—his disgruntled protege resigned in protest. Unfortunately Yog is hardly a classic send-off, as its script (by veteran Toho action-specialist Ei Ogawa, now best remembered as the author of three cult Dracula epics) is uninspired, playing out like a Sekizawa / Kimura greatest-hits tribute. The sheer relentless silliness is mildly amusing, but a general air of creative exhaustion is pervasive—even Tanaka complained it was too much of a retread. Yog was released by AIP in the States, but (their relationship with the defunct Anglo-Amalgamated now long over) it took two years before appearing in the UK, being eventually picked up by EJ Fancey’s New Realm (1939-1985), one of the oldest independent British renters. As with its predecessor Gappa (handled by EJ’s wife Olive, remember), the UK release of Yog in June 1973 is shrouded in mystery. Very little dedicated publicity seems to have been produced, and it is uncertain what film it was paired with, or even how widely it was screened—to judge by Gareth Jones’ withering MFB review, the less widely the better: “The first sight of the giant octopus—haloed by a ring of bats, its red eyes flashing like Belisha beacons, and walking overland on its tentacles—is the only moment in which this characteristic Toho product achieves the degree of pure fantasy to which it aspires. Bulging with non-sequiturs and spurious sci-fi detail, the erratic storyline provides enough excuses for a high enough rate of monsters per minute to hold an average audience of schoolchildren in thrall, though as usual it’s not the quality but the number of cardboard huts and toy palm trees to be devastated which counts. The regular cross-cutting between actual exteriors and studio models of something only vaguely similar combines with the gross over-exposure of the monster models to preclude any kind of imaginative involvement. The dubbed dialogue is asinine without the saving grace of stylisation; and (with the exception of the photographer hero) the American voices are excruciatingly inappropriate to the faces from which they purport to emanate.”
(xvii) Latitude Zero (1974) A group of oceanographers desperately trapped on the seabed in a stranded bathysphere are rescued by a mysterious Sea Captain in his futuristic submarine the Alpha (berthed in a secret undersea base at Latitude Zero), and become drawn into his bitter rivalry with a crazed mad-scientist enemy, currently transplanting human brains into various mutant animals including bat-men, giant rats, and a huge flying lion. Latitude Zero was the last of the big US-Japanese international co-productions, and its quite disastrous history left Toho reluctant to ever try anything similar again. US producer Don Sharpe (who had acquired the rights to writer Ted Sherdeman’s original wartime radio-serial) supplied three big stars—Joseph Cotten, Cesar Romero and Patricia Medina—then promptly went bankrupt just as the trio touched down in Tokyo. When a mortified Tanaka had to awkwardly explain (via an interpreter) to his disbelieving stars that they wouldn’t get paid for at least six months, they were all set to fly straight home again until it became clear this would inevitably mean his personal disgrace. After briefly conferring, the trio—with genuine integrity—agreed to do the film on expenses and deferred payments, causing a relieved Tanaka to burst into grateful tears But everyone’s troubles were far from over. With Toho suddenly having to put up most of the finance, the budget was cut from Y360m to Y290m and Sharpe’s US-partner Warren Lewis made himself deeply unpopular on the set with constant insulting suggestions. He reduced actress Mari Nakayama to tears when she lost an earring, condescendingly lectured Honda about his heroes’ supposed ‘unAmerican’ behaviour, and tried to persuade Linda Haynes to do a nude scene—an exasperated Honda blanked that one outright. Joseph Cotten became so ill he had to be literally propped up for his final few close-ups before flying home in agony. The whole experience left a bad taste in just about everyone’s mouth, but that could have been overlooked if only the result had been a success. But the fact is Latitude Zero is a bloated, overstretched bore. Sherdeman’s script (Sekizawa only wrote the Japanese dub, the film being shot entirely in English) is draggy, hopelessly incoherent, and feels interminable (the original cut is 108 minutes, and even at 95 mins the drastically-shortened US version still seems to go on forever). The monsters are quite fun but little seen, there is far too much stilted chat, and the stars (with the exception of an OTT Romero) appear to be performing behind glass. Latitude Zero was released in the US by National General, waiting almost four years before being picked up by EMI in the UK, who screened it as support to Australian animated-feature Marco Polo Junior in August 1974. David McGillivray in the MFB was his usual tolerantly-amused self: “In Latitude Zero the Toho studios seem to have employed their specialised talents and resources to produce an outlandish and expensive leg-pull. The story begins sensibly enough with the bathysphere floundering in the wake of a spectacular underwater eruption. But suspicion is aroused by the first appearance of Cesar Romero and Patricia Medina dressed like the king and queen of the serials, and before long the cards are on the table. The giant rats, it would seem, were created by the mad brain surgeon in order to get his hands on the anti-radiation serum, and since there is scarcely a breathing space between escalating absurdities, children will no doubt find it all enthralling. Even so, it is a sad fact that the special effects are notably variable, and the model work in particular looks extremely shoddy by comparison with the refined processes of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson. Under the jocular circumstances, however, it is perhaps enough of an achievement that Cesar Romero manages to keep his face straight.”
(xviii) The Lost World of Sinbad (1976) A sailor-adventurer (originally Sukezaemon, re-christened Sinbad in AIP’s dub) becomes involved in a power struggle between an ailing king and his treacherous usurping Chancellor, having to battle the latter’s various allies (including a cruel pirate and medusa-like witch who can turn enemies to stone), while being aided by a rag-tag band of rebels (led by a tomboy thief and lecherously incompetent wizard able to haphazardly transform himself into other people and animals). Toho’s original title for this romp was The Great Thief, and (while boasting lush production values and a terrific cast) most critics now tend to agree it’s rather slow and lacking punch in comparison with more boisterous US inspirations like Jack the Giant Killer, The Magic Sword and Captain Sindbad (the absence of any monsters doesn’t help). The playful script was a rare collaboration between Sekizawa (hilariously miscredited as Director of Photography on US prints) and Kimura, with direction by veteran Senkichi Taniguchi (who later made the infamous spy-thriller International Secret Police—Key of Keys, subsequently redubbed by Woody Allen into the spoof What’s Up Tiger Lily). AIP released Sinbad in the US in 1965, but it waited a full ELEVEN YEARS before being eventually picked up (along with Tiger Lily) by Focus Films in the UK for a double-bill with moody Western melodrama Winterhawk in March 1976. The MFB’s Tony Rayns essentially thought it a historical curio: “Although the main character was called ‘Luzon’ before AIP dubbed Daitozoku into something resembling English for its American release, Mifune’s translation into Sinbad is reasonably credible; Toho clearly modelled the movie on the Hollywood line in swashbuckling fantasy from the start. The trouble is that Taniguchi and his colleagues (several of them veterans of contemporary Toho monster epics, like special effects director Tsuburaya and co-scripter Sekizawa) can hardly begin to compete with Harryhausen on his own ground. The movie is both over-plotted and under-scored by Western standards, and its relatively lavish production values cannot disguise the excessive emphasis on possible romances between five or six of the principals, or the curious reluctance to go beyond two varieties of special effect. Mifune’s role is so formulary that he scarcely registers as a presence, let alone as an actor, and no one else is given anything very substantial or amusing to do. Daitozoku was made in the same year that Mifune tried his own hand at directing, and that Kurosawa directed him in High and Low; the main interest of this extremely belated release is that it probably represents the norm of Toho’s non-Kurosawa vehicles for Mifune, and provides ample evidence of why he opted for independence as an actor a few years later.”
(xix) The Last Dinosaur (1978) A super-rich oil magnate (and obsessive big-game hunter) learns that one of his crews drilling in the North Pole have accidentally stumbled across a huge subterranean cavern containing living dinosaurs—determined to capture a T-Rex at any cost, he builds a Polar Borer machine and recruits a small team of experts to accompany him on his quest, but the group soon finds itself trapped and at the mercy of both killer dinosaurs and hostile natives. The Last Dinosaur was, appropriately, the last 1970s Japanese fantasy film to get a screening in UK cinemas. It was another international co-production, this time between Rankin-Bass (of King Kong Escapes fame) and Tsuburaya Productions (now run by its founder’s second son Noboru), with the US (as previously) supplying the script and stars, and the Japanese the director and technical crew. In many respects the film is in fact strikingly similar to the concurrent (both shot spring 1976) British adventure At the Earth’s Core. Most of the live action was filmed in Kamikochi national park in Nagano Prefecture, though director Tsunugobu ‘Tom’ Kotani later admitted star Richard Boone was so consistently drunk that shooting had to be occasionally halted to allow him to sober up. Boone nevertheless provides a richly fruity performance, and the cheesy man-in-suit effects (again strikingly similar to At the Earth’s Core) are a lot of fun. The Last Dinosaur was originally intended for US theatrical release, but when Rankin-Bass failed to attract a distributor it was sold direct to TV at the last minute for screening as an ABC Friday Night Movie in Feb 1977. However European conglomerate CIC (Paramount-Universal) picked it up and released it (with little fanfare) in the UK in March 1978 as low-key support to William Friedkin’s notorious The Wages of Fear (which had cost c.25 times as much). The MFB’s Tom Milne inexplicably (and atypically) seemed to miss the joke: “Although it was made for theatrical release, The Last Dinosaur was premiered on American television. Its producers, Arthur Rankin Jnr and Jules Bass, who are well established in the field of television specials for children of all ages, would in fact have done well to restrict its release to the small screen. This, at least, would have minimised the glaring weakness of the film’s special effects; blood spurts from this Tyrannosaurus Rex like a leak from a paint can, and most of the shots featuring both creature and humans are woefully contrived. But no screen, however minute, could disguise the equally juvenile plot, script and characterisations, or the highly uncertain acting of Richard Boone as the ludicrously named human dinosaur Masten Thrust. ‘This forty-foot monster with a brain the size of a dried pea, ‘ he shouts after discovering the ravaged camp, ‘has just destroyed a man with one of the great minds of this century!’ Laughter seems the audience’s only recourse.” Well, yeah.
END OF PART 3