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Rating: 6.5 stars

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Seen on: 07/01/2011

View on: IMDb | TMDb

Message from Space (1978)

Directed by Kinji Fukasaku

Science Fiction

Most recently watched by sensoria

Overview

The peaceful planet of Jillucia has been nearly wiped out by the Gavanas, whose leader takes orders from his mother rather than the Emperor. King Kaiba sends out eight Liabe holy seeds, each to be received by a chosen one to defend the Gavanas. Each recipient, ranging from hardened General Garuda to Gavana Prince Hans to young Terrans Meia, Kido, and Aaron all have different reactions to being chosen.

Rated PG | Length 105 minutes

Actors

Sonny Chiba | Hiroyuki Sanada | Tetsurō Tamba | Sandâ Sugiyama | Harumi Sone | Nenji Kobayashi | Mikio Narita | Hirohisa Nakata | Vic Morrow | Tadashi Naruse | Noboru Mitani | Genzô Wakayama | Jerry Ito | Makoto Satô | Etsuko Shihomi | Peggy Lee Brennan | Philip Casnoff | Shōzō Iizuka | Junkichi Orimoto | Hideyo Amamoto | Seizô Fukumoto | Shôtarô Hayashi | Machiko Soga | Mari Okamoto | Masazumi Okabe | Hiroshi Mizushima | Takayuki Akutagawa | Isamu Shimizu

Viewing Notes

It’s hard not to like Message From Space for the gleefully unapologetic way in which it rips off Star Wars. It’s a mess of a movie, but so full of random fun and goofiness that makes it enjoyable to watch.

Directed by Kinji Fukasaku, best known for the Japanese sequences of Tora! Tora! Tora!, Battles Without Honor and Humanity and Graveyard of Honor; or more recently, the excellent Battle Royale; among 66 other directorial efforts. Yeah, he’s been pretty prolific.

I’ve seen a few of his movies over the years, and Message From Space has to be the messiest. It’s just all over the place. A lot of the action scenes are hyper-kinetic, with wildly over-the-top physical action, reminiscent of Japan’s super hero TV series such as Ultraman and Kamen Rider, coupled with always-on-the-move handheld camera work and quick zooms.

Throw in ridiculous outfits, garish, low budget sets, an international cast overdubbed in English, and a barely coherent plot, and you would normally have a big steaming pile. What’s amazing is that all this crap, when added together, adds up to more than the sum of it’s parts. In short, it somehow works. By no means is it a good movie, but it is a great bad movie!

My kids loved this for it’s wackiness and obvious riffs on Star Wars. The miniatures, models and SFX scenes were a lot of fun to watch, especially because the Japanese really know how to work that sort of thing, having had decades of experience. And they didn’t skimp on the explody goodness either.

Aside from the miniatures, some of the best scenes are the sword combat scenes with Sonny Chiba, who is far and above the best actor on set here.

Apparently Vic Morrow was hard on the bottle during this period of his career, and it’s pretty easy to believe watching him act here. It’s a shame that he was killed while taking steps towards a serious comeback while filming Twilight Zone: The Movie. It was a horrible accident that also killed two young child actors.

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