The X from Outer Space (1967) poster

The X from Outer Space (1967)

Rating:

(Uchu Daikaiju Girara)


Japan. 1967.

Crew

Director – Kazui Nihonmatzu, Screenplay – Moroyoshi Ishida, Eiji Motomochi & Kasui Nihonmatzu, Photography – Shizuo Haraze, Music – Taku Izumi, Special Effects – Hiroshi Ikeda, Production Design – Shigemori Shigeta. Production Company – Shochiku.

Cast

Toshiya Wazaki (Captain Sano), Peggy Neal (Lisa), Itoko Harada (Michiko Taki), Franz Gruber (Dr Berman), Shinichi Yanagisawa (Miyamoto), Eiji Okada (Dr Kato), Mike Daneen (Dr Stein), Keisuke Sonoi (Dr Shioda)


Plot

The Japanese launch AAB Gamma, an internationally manned mission to Mars under Captain Sano. All previous space expeditions have mysteriously failed. As the crew reach the same orbit where contact was lost with the other ships, they are buzzed by a UFO. This leaves the ship coated with a mysterious substance. After returning to Earth, this substance is found to contain an egg. The egg hatches into a giant monster and bursts out of the laboratory. Named Giulala, the monster rampages across Japan as it devours energy.


The Japanese Monster Movie had begun with Toho’s Godzilla (1954). Toho had enjoyed enormous success with a series of Godzilla sequels, as well as creating other monster movies and then bringing them all together for a series of battles against one another. The Japanese company Daiei joined the bandwagon with Gammera the Invincible (1965) and followed the same formula in turning out a series of sequels and monster bashes. By 1967, when The X from Outer Space was made, both Toho and Daiei had begun to combine the monster movie with alien invaders and Space Opera elements.

The X from Outer Space was a monster movie from another Japanese company Shochiku. Originally formed as a kabuki company in 1895, Shochiku moved into film production in 1920 and for a number of years made a series of domestic comedies and dramas. In the late 1960s, they decided to join the Japanese monster movie fad and briefly produced a handful of efforts with The X from Outer Space, Genocide (1968) and Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell (1968).

The X from Outer Space starts out as a fairly solid Space Exploration film as we join a Japanese space launch made up of an international crew. During these scenes, we visit the launch base and watch the ship set out on its journey. These are good model effects for what was being produced in this era and favourably compare to Toho’s better-budgeted Gorath (1962).

Giulala in The X from Outer Space (1967)
Giulala – possibly the most ridiculous of all Japanese movie monsters

This also includes a stop off at a moonbase, which comes with the scientifically absurd notion of ‘man-made water’. (Creating water by combining hydrogen and oxygen is something you can do in a high school chemistry lab, although this would simply create regular water and there is no reason that it should feel artificial or odd as people report here). Half the film is taken up by the space launch scenes. Oddly for all that this is the focus of the early part of the film, the team never reach their stated goal of landing on Mars. Nor is it ever explained where the UFO that buzzes the ship comes from.

About halfway through, the film introduces its monster. This is something that promptly kills what had up to then seemed a halfway reasonable film. Giulala is quite possibly the most ridiculous looking monster to ever turn up in a Japanese Monster Movie. It resembles a bipedal lizard with big red glowing eyes and a head that is shaped like a cross between a hammerhead shark and a samurai’s kabuto helmet. Moreover, the quite good level of effects sustained during the space scenes give way to a series of uncommonly shoddy model effects as Giulala smashes and tears up shabby model buildings, tanks and ships.

Four decades later, Shochiku made a sequel with Monster X Strikes Back: Attack the G8 Summit (2008).


Trailer here


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