1959 - Toho's THE GREAT SPACE WAR aka BATTLE IN OUTER SPACE or whatever

Thankfully back to some fun after the last 2 posts about the human condition. This is the 2nd of Toho's space trilogy and a sequel to The Mysterians.

 

The Natal, a bunch of alien midgets have decided to take over the planet Earth and make everyone their servants or slaves or something. They have set up operations on the Moon and it's up to the nations of the Earth to set aside their differences and work together to kick their little alien asses back to the planet Natal.

Primarily led by the Japanese, two spaceships head to the moon where they destroy the alien moonbase. This escalates the conflict and results in an all out battle between the earth defense forces and the flying saucers in the upper atmosphere of earth.

 

 

This thing was directed by Ishiro Honda who had previously filmed the original Godzilla and whose career was mostly involved in making "giant monsters stomp all over Tokyo" films for Toho. Honda was a golfing buddy of Akira Kurosawa and towards the end of his career he worked as a special assistant to Kurosawa on his final films. Hondo assisted and possibly co-directed scenes on Kagemusha, Ran, Dreams and Rhapsody in August. An amazing career in film.

But lets get serious here, everyone watches these films to see the detailed models get destroyed and that is the work of Toho's famous special effects technician Eiji Tsuburaya. This guy was prolific, he worked on over 250 films in his lifetime. Tsuburaya's son has given interviews where he talks about playing with his father's elaborate toy models as a kid what a great childhood that must have been.

To wrap it up, above is a picture of Eiji Tsuburaya (who is in the center) and some of the production team posing with the cast of Destroy All Monsters.

93 minutes, written as usual by Shinichi Sekizawa.