Plot so thin, it passes unnoticed.

Good start, but then it gets ruined

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

Equally stupid as SW, and dubbing made things worst. I never avoid watching a movie up to last minute, even stupid ones like this, so i had to break it in four parts in order to be able to finish it.

A princess releases eight magic seeds into space to find heroes to help her people in their resistance against the silver-skinned hordes of the Gavanas Empire. The seeds recruit a motley team including a retired soldier, three hot-dogging space racers and their buddy, a robot, the rightful imperial heir, and the princess' sidekick. Can the reluctant heroes free the enslaved Jillucians, can they protect Earth from the evil Emperor, can they survive the onslaught of the powerful Imperial space-carrier, and will love and honour prevail? Unfortunately, for the answers to these questions, you'll have to watch the film, which is an awful mélange of "Star Wars" (the basic plot and some set pieces such as the attack on the reactor), kid's tokusatsu like "Johnny Sokko and His Flying Robot" (the Emperor and his silver-skinned henchman), and 1960's Italian science fiction (much of the music and fashion, especially in the dance scene). The music ranges from knockoffs of Ennio Morricone's spaghetti western themes to bad '60s instrumental pop to 'as close as you can get without being sued' derivatives of the iconic "Star Wars" (1977) score. Other than old pros Sonny Chiba and Vic Morrow, the acting is amateur and the (dubbed) script makes little sense (and is full of scientific errors). It's a tribute to Morrow's professionalism that he could deliver his fatuous lines with a straight face, especially when playing straight man to a sensitive robot. The special effects are weak (even Showa-era kaiju films had better miniature work) and generally unimaginative (an exception being Imperial fighters), and the story inconsistent, incoherent, and not particularly interesting. I enjoy most Japanese kaiju and tokusatsu (even the goofy TV series such as "Ambassador Magma" (1966) and "Super Giant" (1964)), but I found "Message from Space" a challenge to get through. Definitely for hard core fans of the genre (or of 'camp') only.

Okay, fans, here's a few clear-up moments for you.How did Vic Morrow get in this movie? He needed the money and wanted the vacation. Like Nick Adams before him, he wasn't exactly at the top of his career. He had little inkling though that The Twilight Zone movie was in his near future..Did Star Wars rip off anything from this movie? NO, since it was already made. The Japanese control distribution very carefully, and when they saw the grosses from SW they were in shock. They then summarily blocked it from the Japanese market for long enough for this film to be made. And by the way, the "Death Star Trench" was stolen from the British film "633 Squadron" along with some of its dialog. So, in fact, STAR WARS ripped of this and a bunch of other movies that people who really have seen a lot of movies could name.As for Philip Casnoff, I met him in NY when he was doing, of all things, SHOGUN - THE MUSICAL. I saw him at the stage door (he was wearing an exquisite calf-length coat and a matching hat..) and gave him (again, of all things..) a SHOGUN WARRIORS Liabe (the main ship in the movie). He said "Where the hell did you get this?" and went back through the stage door. I hear him saying "Hey you gotta see this. Some guy just gave me a miniature of a ship from some shitty Japanese movie I did years ago!" Then he came back out and we had a long talk about the movie. Keep in mind, this is the same guy who payed (and sang) the most authentic Frank Sinatra in USA TV's biopic.Is it a bad movie? What does that mean, objectively? I like it. I actually liked it enough to see it four or five times, once in a '70s sticky-floored Times Square theater populated by the first generation of Americas' crackheads and 40 drinkers.It doesn't have the best special effects of its era, but I thought the Bengal tigers in Gladiator looked like cartoons. I love the fake silver stuck-on nose on the warlords' mom's face..the extensive pyro effects, especially the Alliance space carrier. Enjoy it for what it is: an action adventure space opera created to drain off some STAR WARS money.Post Script: I got a chance to see the Japanese original version of this movie, subtitled. It's a completely different movie,mostly because the translation corrects and explains a LOT.Spoiler alert: like, why Philip Casnoff's character doesn't want to fight...why the rich girl is rich...and a whole lot of other stuff that would raise the rating of this movie by a point if viewers had seen the CORRECT version instead of the shortened (but not by much) and mistranslated version seen on TV and in the movies. It's literally a whole different movie.

Where do I begin. I saw this film, in a theater, when I was 7 years old. It was fresh on the heels of a number of Star Wars rip-offs (i.e. 'Battle Beyond The Stars', etc.) This one, however was different. I hated it when I was a child, but I have grown to love it, in a screwed up Ed Wood kind-of-way. It is a terrible film, but it's so terrible, that it is legendary. Sailboats in space. Villains that make Power Rangers look like Academy Award material. Glowing acorns. Planets with rocket boosters on them. Plot holes you could ride an elephant through. Vic Morrow? Sonny Chiba? You could write a doctoral thesis about what's wrong with this movie, but why? Perhaps the most endearing quality of this film, aside from the raging fires in the vacuum of space, is the fact that a game company bought the rights to use some of the dogfight sequences in a very early laser disc arcade game, which I played at a waterslide park in Utah 1982. Believe it or not, this movie was a TV show in Japan, although it did not last long. Seriously, if you love really bad movies, this is the arc of the covenant.