Astronauts sent to investigate the disappearance of previous Mars bound missions, return to earth with a strange object found attached to their ship. The object grows into a giant energy absorbing monster called Guilala. Impervious to conventional weapons, the astronauts travel back into space to find a means of destroying the rampaging monster.
The X from Outer Space (1967) is much maligned because of the appearance of the monster, Guliala. To be honest though, he isn't any goofier looking than beloved Godzilla foe, Gigan. The only thing that works against him is that the filmmakers opted not to film at high speed in order to give Guilala more of a sense of size and weight, so his antennae bounce around quite a bit, but Guilala is pretty menacing in terms of the level of destruction he's responsible for. The monster is actually just a tiny, though important, bit of this movie which seems to be trying to make a serious attempt at depicting future space missions and the complications that could befall them, in this case UFOs. The special effects are almost all done in camera to varying degrees of success, but all have a real charm and sense of fantasy to them. The sets and costumes are all sixties futuristic, and must have influenced Space: 1999. The whole movie has a classic Disneyland Tomorrowland feel to it, which I found very pleasing. The cast of characters are all likeable enough though pretty generic, and the movie is all about the idea of cooperation - here on a global scale, that so much of Japanese entertainment centers around. I really enjoyed this.
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