I remember as a kid seeing promotional art for this movie that showed a giant Godzilla-sized alien starfish standing in the flooded streets of Tokyo, and I thought it looked pretty creepy and cool. I saw this in the craptastic book "Godzilla, King of the Movie Monsters" and was interested by this mysterious old film, "Warning From Space."
Last weekend I was at an outlet mall and saw this sucker on DVD for $5 (craptastic - there's that word again - Alpha DVD) and grabbed it along with the Alpha DVD of "Monster From a Prehistoric Planet," a.k.a. Gappa. I know, I know, Media Blasters is going to release Gappa soon, but I don't think I'm going to like Gappa that much so I'll settle for a poor cheapy disc instead of shelling out $20 bucks for a great one. If I like it enough, I'll go ahead and by the MB disc, and I'll have two versions of the film for completist's sake!.
Anyway, I read some reviews on the Internet and was shocked and dissapointed to discover that the aliens in Warning From Space are not daikaiju. What a jip! Luckily I found this out before I saw the film and did not have to be sorely dissapointed within the film itself. Well, I watched the film, and was quite bored throughout, but I was left with positive feelings after watching it - the flick's got some charm. Here are my thoughts:
The two main problemos I had with the movie were that there were not many scenes featuring creatures or mass destruction due to the renegade planet. Thus, the film is very slow paced. I found myself fairly bored and uninterested in the first half of the film, my interest raising only at scenes of the aliens and during the last stretch, when the renegade planet is nearing ours and all the world is engulfed in a red-tinted heat wave (you barely notice though, because the crappy picture on the Alpha disc is sepia toned most of the film). I did like one scene where one of the aliens, diguised as a human (a Japanese starlet, to be exact, not the best disguise.
) is playing tennis with the humans and shows off some super-human jumping abilities. The effect is pretty well-done and the scene overall is kind of funny.
Oh yah, those aliens. They sure are goofy looking. They are basically actors in a baggy and obvious starfish costume. The actors stand in the costume with their arms stretched out parallel at all times, and occasionally walk by taking little waddling baby steps. Their eyes also blink when they talk. They're pretty ridiculous looking, but if you're a kaiju fan with imagination you'll be able to get into the film okay (I did).
There are not a whole lot of effects in the film but one that I loved was part of a building - in which a main character is tied up - collapsing. I really liked the way that was done. The main alien's transformation from starfish to human was pretty cool too, accomplished by "time-lapsing" the alien changing into a human mold and eventually into a living human.
I might also mention that the dub for this film was done by Titra, so I recognized a few voices from Godzilla vs. The Thing, which was pretty cool and gave the film a familiar air.
All-in-all, Warning From Space is an okay sci-fi film from Daiei. Perhaps in my second viewing I'll be able to soak it in and appreciate the slower pace better. Time will tell. I wonder if this will ever see a decent DVD release?
