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Battle in Outer Space (1960)

 
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Tue Apr 28, 2015 2:42 pm    Post subject: Battle in Outer Space (1960) Reply with quote



~ All the posters for this movie suck, so I made one myself. Very Happy
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From director Inoshiro Honda (Japan's answer to George Pal, in some ways), comes this slam-bang, special-effects-laden war of the worlds.

Honda is the man behind "Godzilla", "Rodan", "The H-Man", and many others. This one was intended to top "The Mysterians", the previous year's successful sci-fi bonanza.

In Battle in Outer Space we get to see a wheel-shaped space station, fleets of Earth rockets and alien saucers, laser-filled shoot 'em ups, and other marvels. Much of the action takes place on the Moon.

Click on the image below to see a larger version with more detail. Very Happy






The designs of the sets and props are well above average for their time. The Earth spaceships are modified X-15's, a very dynamic design.





The effects in this movie are extremely good. Here's a few examples.







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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)


Last edited by Bud Brewster on Sun Oct 16, 2022 5:40 pm; edited 12 times in total
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bulldogtrekker
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PostPosted: Tue Apr 28, 2015 7:52 pm    Post subject: This is my favorite Japanese Sci-fi Movie Reply with quote

Very entertaining movie. Somehow I missed it until TCM showed it 8-10 years ago.

Available on DVD: Icons of Sci-Fi: Toho Collection (The H-Man / Battle in Outer Space / Mothra) and well worth it.




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Robert (Butch) Day
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PostPosted: Tue Apr 28, 2015 8:20 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

And the rockets are realistic in design!

http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/index.php
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orzel-w
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PostPosted: Tue Apr 28, 2015 9:38 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Robert (Butch) Day wrote:
And the rockets are realistic in design!

http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/index.php

Say what?
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 29, 2015 10:28 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Butch is right. The rocket designs are aerodynamic, they don't have pretty (but unnecessary) wings, and the landing structures make much more sense than what the poor old Luna was saddled with.

They're basic rocket designs with just enough bells and whistles to give them real class. Very Happy



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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)


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Eadie
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 29, 2015 12:37 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

My bad. I gave my Godfather the site. The complete web address did not load for some unknown reason. Here is the corrected one:

http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/index.php

The sub-section within Project Rho is Atomic Rockets and you will learn all you budding writers need to know about spaceships!
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 29, 2015 1:49 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Oh, lord me, YES! I've seen that website before, and I LOVE that rocket. I fixed the link in Butch's post. Very Happy

Thanks, Eadie.



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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)


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Robert (Butch) Day
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PostPosted: Wed Jul 11, 2018 5:50 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

From the very old ASF site. BTS of the SPIP FFE 1 (or maybe SPIP FFE 2):



All pre-production paintings for all of the movies by Ishirō Honda are by his staff illustrator, Shigeru Komatzusaki:





From a planned but never filmed scene, what the Mysterians presented to the UN Council of how they envisioned living underground, This was abandoned for the underground complex of the dome,:



The space station:



The "MarkoLite™" atomic heat-ray cannon on top and the flight deck of the EDF ships Alpha and Beta below:



The "MarkoLite™" atomic heat-ray cannon flight ship used in many movies:



A BTS of the Beta:



Models of the two different fighters:



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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Sat Jan 19, 2019 5:13 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

This is one of the Japanese movies I enjoy because of it's imaginative concepts and special effects.

The trailer below includes the dynamic voice of Dick Tufeld (the LOS robot), which "Americanizes" the feel the movie a little. But I have difficulty enjoying this and the other Japanese productions because the Japanese culture is produces Japanese actors who just don't act like American actors! Shocked

And the English dubbing makes everybody appear to be wired up on caffeine. That's not their fault, of course.

Forgive, but that's just the impression I get. Sad
________________________________


Battle in Outer Space - Trailer in Widescreen with Dick Tufeld narration


__________

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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)


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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Mon Feb 04, 2019 2:08 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

I saw this movie when it was first released at my local theater with a few friends. I was never overly impressed with the Japanese movies we went to, but this one is definitely the best of the bunch, and they usually drew a good crowd.

That's why I mentioned this movie in my novel set in 1967, and created this illustration for the header of chapter 3 —






— in which the teenage main characters attend a Saturday matinee. I made this illustration for that scene.





I was careful to mention in the novel that it was a re-release, but I'm not certain that really happened in 1967. (Artistic license and all, old chaps. Cool )

I watched a fine DVD of this movie today from Netflix. The production values are really quite good, with large sets portraying a United Nations meeting with enough extras to make it look convincing.






I couldn't help wondering why the English dubbing gave many of the Japanese characters Japanese accents during the early part of the movie. After all, in most of the scenes we're supposed to be hearing the characters speak Japanese (translated for the movie), not English with an accent!

However, most of the Japanese characters spoke English with no accent.

We all admire the fine special effects in this film, of course, and all the scenes of the rockets, both on the launch pads and in space, look spectacular.

I was amused by the fact that the first two cars we see in the movie where 1957 Fords, one of which had a small TV screen on the dashboard. Sweet! Very Happy

My family had a green two-tone 1957 Ford exactly like the one shown below, but it didn't have a TV screen on the dash. Damn . . . I guess it wasn't standard equipment. Wink



___________



The late Bulldogtrekker (Tim Edwards) and I watched this movie together a few years ago while chatting on FaceBook. Tim was often amused by the fact that I could recognize actors just by hearing their voices, even when the actor was in an early role and much younger than the roles I might be familiar with.

Faces change because of age or Hollywood make-up, but distinctive voice are easy to recognize.

For example, although I can't be certain, one brief narration at the 26:00 mark during an official ceremony for the departing astronauts sounded a lot like Walter Brooke, who played Gen. Samuel T. Merritt in Conquest of Space, four years before this movie. I thought that was ironic in view of this movie's subject matter! Laughing

As the ceremony concluded and the band played to the cheering crowd while paper streamers filled the air, the astronauts enter the lead car in a caravan of five gorgeous American classics (two Chevy Impalas, one Ford Fairlane, and one I didn't recognize) and drove off to the space port to board the waiting rockets.

Ain't it ironic that these days, with no more American space shuttle, our own astronauts going up to the ISS ride to the Russian launch pads in Japanese cars . . . Rolling Eyes

The interior of the spaceships are beautifully designed. We see the astronauts climbing up a ladder towards the camera, with seats on each side oriented the way they are in the Space Shuttle, facing "upward". In the background we see the floor below, with other astronauts looking up while they await their turn to climb the ladder.






Obviously the set was actually built vertically and the camera was pointing straight down for this shot.

The Launch Control Room has an impressive design. Look at the SIZE of this thing! Two levels, and more dials and readouts than in the Houston Space Center! Notice the giant TV (barely visibly on the far right) with a blue screen!










The gantry next to the spaceships is as complex as the actual gantries we see with the Saturn 5's of Apollo, and the scene of the two rockets launching is one of the finest special effects from the 1950s. Nothing that was done by American films in the 1950s comes anywhere close!






I have to confess to being disappointed by the scene which takes place shortly after the ships cut their thrust and the captain tells the crew to release their seat belts. One crewmen floats up and panics at being weightless. The rest of the crewmen laugh and help him back down while chatting about how strange weightlessness feels . . . and then all they just walk away and head into the control room as if gravity was normal!

No mention of the lack of gravity is made for the rest of the movie . . . Rolling Eyes

But a great scene soon after that made up for that error, when the two ships pass several fragments of the space station destroyed in the opening scene, along with the floating body of a crewmen. The way the camera moves smoothly passed the objects as the ships cruise by was extremely well done.

The astronauts watch solemnly, and the captain suggests they all say a prayer for the lost crewmen.








Immediately after this emotional scene we see a shot of the two ships cruising through space, with a gorgeous nebulae in the background. Very impressive. Very Happy

~ Click on image to see the HD version.






Both the images of the retreating Earth and the approaching Moon are plum gorgeous.







The battle between the rockets and the alien saucers which takes place during the trip to Moon is packed with great action and special effects. The sets of the rockets' interiors make these scenes a joy to watch.

The special effects of the two ships turning themselves with attitude jets and descending towards the lunar surface are flawless. I was dazzled by the beauty of those scenes, and the actual landings of the ships was done extremely well.

I didn't make any screen shots of those scenes, because I discovered that still images just didn't do them justice. It was the perfectly accurate movements of the turning ships that really made them such a joy to watch.

After the lunar landing, we’re treated to the marvelous details of the miniature ships, such as the robotic arms that deliver the crewmen to the surface in a sort of "cherry picker". The ships also included two moon-mobiles which were deployed from the hull and lowered to the ground.

~ Click on image to see the HD version.






Unfortunately the imaginative plot plays fast and loose with science from time to time, such as when a scientists near the beginning claims that the aliens neutralized Earth’s gravity by lowering the temperature well below zero in some areas, thus causing terrible disasters.

One interesting concept seemed to be scientific flaw at first, but I’m not sure it was. As the two moon-mobiles are headed for the alien base, the astronauts notice they’ve entered an area that has a measurable amount of air pressure. This allowed them to use the vehicles’ air jets to float along over the moonscape.

After destroying the aliens base and heading back to their ships, the air pressure outside the moon-mobiles reverts to a vacuum and they have to drive along the surface again. This suggests that perhaps the screenwriters included unused dialog which stated the aliens had generated a force field to create an area with a low-density atmosphere around their base.

It’s too bad this concept wasn’t made clear in the film. Sad

All in all, my recent viewing of Battle in Outer Space has made me aware that this movie was the perfect Saturday matinee for kids back in 1959 — a year in which the only sci-fi movie which dealt with the subject of space flight was First Man into Space!

The optimistic ending of this movie, with all nations of the Earth united to combat alien invaders, is a wonderful message for kids, then and now.

And just when I thought the movie was about to end, I realized that there was fifteen minutes left! A new space battle was about to begin between the alien invaders and the newly developed fighters which Earth had built!






The fact that the space fighter’s design was based on the gorgeous X-15 rocket plane seems very fitting. The actual aircraft which was capable of going to the very edge of space was, in this movie, allowed to defend mankind against alien invaders!

I wish American filmmakers had put this much effort and imagination into more of the sci-fi movies from the late 1950s. Several Russian productions during this period demonstrated excellent production values which also eclipsed many American films. But after Forbidden Planet in 1956, no Hollywood productions were given the kind of treatment that Battle in Outer Space and the Russian productions received.

The Golden Age of American science fiction ended not with a bang but with a whimper. Hollywood had no idea how badly American audiences yearned for quality science fiction adventures until almost twenty years later when Star Wars captured the imagination of the world.

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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)


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Gord Green
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PostPosted: Mon Feb 04, 2019 5:39 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

This is one movie I've always seemed to miss!

Your comments are so interesting I'm going to have to find it and give it a look!

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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Mon Feb 04, 2019 6:17 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

Netflix, Dude! You DO have it, don't you? Confused

If not, please don't be like good old Bulldogtrekker, who resisted getting it for six years and then finally did . . . just one month before he passed away, God bless him. Sad

But if you do have Netflix, put this wonderful movie on your list, and I'll keep my DVD from them until yours arrives. Then we can watch it together!

However, if Netflix says "Very Long Wait" when you put it on your list, that means I'll have send mine back and buy it from on Amazon. In his post above, Bulldogtrekker recommended the DVD, so he must have bought it, and that's how he and I watched it together a few years ago.

Help me, Gordie Wan Kenobi! You're my only hope! Tell me what to do! Shocked

By the way, this thread needed a better poster for such a fine movie, but they're all so damned cluttered and badly rendered by poor artists!

In other words . . . they all suck! So, I made one myself!

It's whatcha call "simple but effective". Very Happy




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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)


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Krel.
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PostPosted: Tue Feb 05, 2019 2:07 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Bud, remember the reason for the cherry picker on the rocket was because of the rocket's atomic engines. It got the crew over the irradiated Lunar soil.

David.
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 29, 2024 7:49 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

Brilliant! I did NOT know that. My admiration for this movie just keeps going up.

When Bulldogtrekker and I watched it a few years back, the merits of this film went right over my head. Rolling Eyes

David, would you be interested in joining Gord and I in the chat room to share this movie sometime in the near future?

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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)
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