So much average

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

A truly great science fiction epic with plenty of futuristic hardware, alien invaders and cool spaceships. The best! It's finally available as of 2009 on DVD, although if you look hard you can find gray-market versions or bootlegs from Laserdiscs. The color is suitably lurid, the acting is done in earnest, the heroic Earth combatants do their best, the music is stirring -- it's really the PERFECT Japanese science fiction film! Why hasn't it been available before now on DVD?The whole Earth joins together to fight the "interstellar bandits" as one actor calls the threat. The spirit of the entire production is tremendously uplifting. It's a terrific picture that holds together even with the sometimes goofy Japanese translations. Absolutely the stuff of dreams for any little kid that loves old science fiction movies. A genuine treasure. Buy this one now while it's available!

A race of no-count aliens plan on invading earth. They make their base of operations on the moon. An expedition of folks made up of people from all over the world embark on a mission to the moon in order to thwart the dastardly extraterrestrials. Director Ishiro Honda relates the absorbing story at a reasonably snappy pace, maintains a serious tone throughout, and stages the stirring action with rip-roaring gusto. While the opening third is a bit slow and dull, the narrative fortunately picks up considerable steam and momentum once the mission is underway. The sequences on the moon are quite gripping and suspenseful. The spaceship dogfights are likewise very lively and exciting. Another memorable highlight occurs when the aliens destroy Tokyo. The cast give admirably sincere performances, with an especially stand-out turn by Yoshiro Tsuchiya as a scientist who falls prey to the aliens' ability to control human minds. Akira Ifukube contributes a robust and rousing score. Hajime Koizuma's bright color cinematography makes breathtaking use of the widescreen format. The squeaky-voiced aliens are a total hoot. Best of all, Eiji Tsuburaya's nifty and impressive special effects are truly something to behold, with striking matte paintings and nice miniatures (the opening scene with a train being wrecked rates as a particularly memorable moment). Moreover, there's even a positive and uplifting central message about how the human race can be a mighty and unbeatable force by banding together against a common foe. A solid and satisfying item.

I saw this film in 1960 playing with "The Time Machine" as a double feature. Though not as rich in story line as "The Mysterians" this film really takes off when the two Speep earthships go to the moon to battle a base set up by the planet Matal who also fly "Mysterian" style flying saucers. On the moon the action really starts with marvelous raygun battles between the enemy and earth forces. The earth forces possess a marvelous heat ray cannon as well as smaller but potent raygun rifles. Later in the film, the earth forces battle invading flying saucers and a mother ship with X-15 styled fighter craft equipped with heat ray guns. The finale with the mother ship's ray gun destroying Toyko is done quite well.For the time this film was made, the special effects are quite good. Considering my nickname is ray-gun 3, this is a ten star IMDb vote scale film in that department. I think the best scene in the film is on the moon where one of the crew stays behind with his ray rifle destroying flying saucers so the earth force can get away in their Speep spaceship. This scene is one of the best piece of special effects I have scene in this type of movie. A thought to remember is the film was made 17 to 18 years before "Star Wars". An outstanding accomplishment by Toho studios.

I saw "Uchu daisenso" or as it was titled when I saw it, Battle in Outer Space" when I was a kid- a long time ago. Now of course the inevitable comparison to modern space operas will reduce the impact of this simple picture, but taken in the context in which I first viewed it, this was a really cool movie. For starters, it was in glorious color, a rarity in sci-fi in the late 50's I can tell you. I saw a lot of horror and sci-fi movies when I was kid and color was rare. And like most Japanese sci-fi imports of the time this was the whole world united against the invading alien hordes. Yeah a little like Independence Day but In "Uchu daisenso" the United Earth already existed. It didn't take an invasion from outer space to unite the planet. Good (relatively speaking!) effects, a noble if simple plot, combined with beautiful Eastmancolor and this was the perfect drive-in movie.