Warning from Space | |
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Directed by | Koji Shima |
Produced by | Masaichi Nagata Asata Fujii[1] |
Written by | Hideo Oguni Gentaro Nakajima |
Music by | Seitaro Omori |
Cinematography | Kimio Watanabe |
Editing by | Toyo Suzuki |
Distributed by | Daiei |
Released | January 29, 1956 |
Running time | 87 minutes |
Budget | ¥???,???,??? |
Gross revenue | ¥???,???,??? |
Country | Japan |
Language | Japanese |
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SECRET AGENT: seductive android woman... MISSION: warn earth of planet x's time table for its bloody conquest!
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— American tagline |
Warning from Space (宇宙人東京に現わる?, lit. Spacemen Appear in Tokyo) also known as Unknown Satellite Over Tokyo Uchūjin Tokyo ni arawaru[2] and The Cosmic Man Appears in Tokyo[3] is a 1956 Japanese daikaiju eiga (giant-monster movie) about aliens named The Pairans coming to earth and destroying Tokyo. The film is also the first-ever giant monster film from Daiei and was first Japan's first science-fiction film in colour.
Plot[]
The Pairans people, who were observing the earth from a star called Paila in the universe, found atomic clouds that frequently occur on the earth these days, and they did not use the destructive power of nuclear power for war in the old days. I remembered that I had a hard time. He then boarded a spacecraft and approached Earth to let the foolish Earthlings know how they used nuclear power peacefully. It was said that a flying saucer appeared on the earth that did not know such a thing, and Dr Komura, the director of the Tokyo Castle North Observatory, Toru Isobe, and Dr Matsuda, a cousin of Komura and a physicist, was enthusiastic about researching the mysterious disk. The spacecraft decided to connect to the earth in Japan and sent Paila messengers one after another, but people were afraid to approach because of the strange form. The Paila people who boiled their karma transformed one of them into a Japanese woman named Ginko and sent it to the earth. Ginko succeeded in entering Dr Matsuda's house. Ginko, who has a clear brain peculiar to the Paila people, reads the equation of the explosive uranium, which has more energy than the atomic bomb, which he secretly discovered, and while revealing his identity to the doctor, he researches it on the earth. I warned the madman to stop the announcement because it was an explosive. The doctor burned down the equation. Around that time, a new object R appeared and was in an orbit that collided with the Earth. The world was astonished, and the atomic bombs of each country were launched all at once to destroy R. However, both were unsuccessful. A minion in a certain country kidnapped Dr Matsuda and tried to write an equation. The doctor, who was saved by the Paila messengers in a dangerous place, wrote an equation to Ginko with a promise not to leave it on the earth. Uranium was created by the Paila people, and R disappeared due to its explosive power, and the earth was saved. Ginko left the earth on a spaceship.
Cast[]
- Sachiko Meguro as Tokuko Isobe
- Frank Kumagai as Astronomical observatory correspondent
- Kanji Kawara as Doctor Takashima
- Tetsuya Watanabe as Sankichi
- Akira Natsuki as Pairan No. 3
- Shunji Tsuda as Pairan No. 4
- Gai Harada as Sailor
- Seiji Izumi
- Yasuko Hanamura as Geisha
- Kenji Tani as Bouncer
- Ko Sugita as Reporter
- Yuji Hayakawa as Policeman
- Noriaki Yuasa as Lake Chuzenji onlooker (uncredited)
- Keizo Kawasaki as Doctor Toru Isobe
- Toyomi Karita as Hikari Aozora / Ginko Amano
- Bin Yagisawa as Pairan No. 2
- Isao Yamagata as Doctor Eisuke Matsuda
- Shozo Nanbu as Doctor Naotaro Isobe
- Bontaro Miake as Doctor Yoshio Komura
- Mieko Nagai as Taeko Komura
- Kiyoko Hirai as Kiyoko Matsuda
- Fumiko Okamura as Madam Ohana
- Toshiyuki Obara as Kenichi Hideno, reporter
- Shiko Saito as the Mystery man
Video releases []
Alpha Video DVD (2003)
- Discs: 1
- Audio: English
- Subtitles: English
- Notes: Released on October 7, 2003.
Arrow Video Blu-ray (2020)
- Region: A or B
- Discs: 1
- Audio: Japanese, English (both LPCM Mono)
- Subtitles: English
- Special features: Booklet containing essays on Taro Okamoto by Nick West and the English dub by David Cairns (first pressing only), audio commentary by Stuart Galbraith IV, teaser and theatrical trailer, image gallery
Unlicensed DVDs of the English-dubbed version of Warning from Space proliferated in the United States for years, as the film was presumed to be in the public domain. The companies behind these releases include Alpha Video, Digiview Entertainment, Miracle Pictures, and AFA Entertainment.
Production[]
After the success of Toho's 1954 film Godzilla, which depicted a giant dinosaur attacking Tokyo, many Japanese film studios began to produce similar monster films, including Warning from Space. Along with other films such as Shintōhō's Terrifying Attack of the Flying Saucers and the American Forbidden Planet, Warning from Space became part of a fledgling subgenre of films based around science fiction creatures. The film also used the theme of atomic bombs that were present in many films at the time but showed how the weapons, which devastated the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki a decade earlier, could be put to good use. Still, others noted the film used another common theme of cosmic collisions in the style of earlier films such as the 1931 film End of the World, which depicted a comet on a collision course with the Earth.
The Pairan aliens were designed by the prominent avant-garde artist Tarō Okamoto, which used a single eye that is common among science fiction aliens. Although official film posters showed the Pairan aliens towering over buildings, the actual cinematic version of the aliens was on the scale of humans, at about two meters. Walt Lee reports that Gentaro Nakajima's novel, on which this film was based, was in turn based on the Japanese folktale Kaguya-hime. The film was one of fourteen Japanese colour pictures produced in early 1956, but the first colour Japanese science-fiction film.