Space 1979 Prototype Trilogy Finale: The one that maybe inspired 2001

 

Title: Warning From Space

What Year?: 1956

Classification: Prototype/ Mashup/ Anachronistic Outlier

Rating: Dear God WHY??!! (1/5)

 

For this review, I’m rounding out the “Prototype” lineup, and this is one I’ve had in mind pretty much from the beginning. It’s one I first heard of when researching other movies, as nothing less than an influence on Stanley Kubrick. It immediately intrigued me, but it never quite “fit”, and I never quite had the time or mood to give it another look after an initial viewing. Now, I’m finally back to it, and I’m still trying to decide what to make of it. With that, I introduce Warning From Space, and you certainly can say you were warned.

Our story begins with a shot of a space station that looks like a Christmas tree topper. It turns out that the inhabitants are starfish creatures that hail from a planet on the far side of the sun from Earth. They bemoan the warlike nature of humans, whom they have been studying for some time, and make a plan to make contact with Earth’s scientists. After the first few attempts fail when Earthlings panic at their appearance, their senior leader volunteers to be transformed into the form of a human woman. In the guise of a waif, the alien makes her way to a scientist who has discovered a powerful new weapon. She reveals her true nature, and her mission: A rogue planet is headed directly for Earth and her planet, and the only hope of stopping it is his superweapon formula. As the doomsday planet approaches, tides and storms ravage the Earth while the authorities race to develop the superweapon. But before they can finish preparations, the scientist is kidnapped by a group of criminals who want the formula for themselves. Can the alien rescue him, or is the solar system doomed?

Warning From Space was a film from the Japanese studio Daiei, later known for the Gamera series. The film was an early example of the tokusatsu genre, characterized by the central use of special effects and models, and received further attention as the first Japanese science fiction film in color. The film was among the first to feature a collision between Earth and another planetary body, arguably popularized by the 1951 film When Worlds Collide, but failed to incorporate a modern conception of an asteroid. The concept of an Earthlike planet existing undetected on the far side of the sun became the basis of the Twilight Zone episode “The Parallel” and the movie Journey to the Far Side of the Sun. The movie was released in Japan in 1956 and Britain the following year, but did not see US release until 1963. It and other tokusatsu films would receive further note as an influence on 2001: A Space Odyssey. An English dub of the film is considered in the public domain, and has appeared in discount DVD sets.

For my experiences, I first heard of this one when doing research for The Green Slime, which also led me to The Wild, Wild Planet. The possible influence on Kubrick (see also House) was enough to convince me that it was worth covering at some point, and it remains the oldest movie I have seriously considered for Space 1979 (though Plan 9 From Outer Space was filmed about the same time). The strange twist was that while I was debating whether to buy or rent it, I discovered it already on my shelves as part of a bulk DVD collection (also where I found War of the Planets). That allowed for an initial viewing, after which I lost track of the disc for a while, and saw it come and go from Prime streaming. Once I found the disc again, I decided it was time to review the damn thing, and pretty much built the present lineup around it. It was only on the second, very belated viewing that I finally realized just how weird and bad this one is.

The central and most jarring reality of this movie is that it is ahead of its time yet simultaneously seems like a step backward even for its own day. The overall “feel” is a 1970s disaster movie with early-Godzilla effects, except contemporary Toho offerings like Rodan were already doing this better. The weakest moments are certainly the starfish suit-creatures, if anything exacerbated by the fearful reactions of humans who encounter the slow and wobbly aliens. Then there are plenty more elements that are just random, egregiously a scene where the alien makes superhuman leap in the middle of a tennis game, which has the feel of a stone-age Marvel movie. What can’t easily be described in a simple synopsis is the almost hypnotic seriousness of the whole affair. As with the early Toho movies, this lends weight to the film’s better moments, especially the devastated cities and literally hellish skies as the rogue planet approaches (calling to mind Night of the Comet of all things). But it also drains away any sense of energy or pure fun, to the point of making the film’s 88-minute running time feel much longer than it is.

Meanwhile, the core problem is quite simply that the story doesn’t make any amount of sense scientifically or on any other terms, and its telling isn’t nearly entertaining enough to get away with it. To start with, the doomsday planet is generally implied to be similar in size to Earth, which simply leaves no scenario for survival. Once such a body got nearer than the gas giants, it would already be causing irreparable havoc from gravitational pull alone. It is at least stipulated that the plan is to deflect the planet rather than destroy it, which puts it on the halfway-sensible path of Meteor, yet again, it simply doesn’t work on the implied scale. Any detonation that could significantly affect the momentum of a body much bigger than the moons of Mars would either blow a good chunk of its mass back toward Earth or simply break it into a new asteroid belt. Then there are the many plot holes with the aliens’ plan, which they should by all means be able to pull off themselves without revealing their presence to Earth, never mind enlisting human aid. All the problems come to a head with the gangster/ spy subplot. On one hand, it shows the obvious drawbacks of relying on native help; on the other, they don’t really do much to foil villains, to the point that the scientist eventually wanders off when his captors retreat.

That still leaves the “one scene”, and I did have a few to choose from. The one I had in mind from the start is by far the best effect of the movie, the transformation of the starfish creature to human form, which the filmmakers found impressive enough to show in reverse at the end of the film. We start with a view of the machine, which looks vaguely like a giant magnifying glass. After the starfish steps inside, and the camera zooms in as its shape fades and transforms into a human shape. At first, we see only a sort of waxy effigy, then slowly detail and definition are added. It’s all easily recognizable as effects that were already well-honed in the Universal Monster movies, yet done better than usual. (Certain techniques involving variable lighting would have been easier in black and white.) The intermediate shapes get genuinely weird, bordering on grotesque. Then it all resolves into the shape of an attractive woman, ready to go. It’s compelling and eerie, but what it conspicuously fails to do is set a tone or standard for the rest of the movie.

In closing, I must say this is one time I have really wanted not to give a film the lowest rating. However, I have come to sense that this is part of a treacherous slippery slope. This is the kind of movie that can draw you in ready to make excuses. It’s a foreign film, which usually would be enough in itself for me to check my fire (I don’t even count Alien 2 as such), from a culture already plagued by mutual understandings. It was clearly made with a limited budget even for vintage Japanese cinema. Then there were no doubt any number of indignities pushed on it during the process of re-editing, dubbing and later indifferent preservation. What has broken the spell for me is that I like Japanese science fiction films, even though I have never taken in nearly as much as people might expect. More importantly, I like to think that I get Japanese sci fi, certainly better than I do Italian movies and if it comes to that quite a few 1950s American/ western science fiction films. With that full context in mind, this one only fares worse, especially compared to undisputed kaiju classics like Rodan.  The final verdict is that, outside of a few effects sequences, there isn’t anything here that can be appreciated on its own merits, then and there or here and now. That is reason enough to leave this one behind.