Dear Internet,
For
starters, I have to clear up a mistake first.
I did not watch and will not review "The Monster X Strikes
Back/Attack of the G8 Summit." Now,
before you start to jump on me and begin to start throwing mud at me, there is
a perfectly reasonable explanation. One
of the rules of this experiment is that I must have viewed previous works that
come before anything I review. This
means that before I could have watched "The Monster X Strikes Back/Attack
of the G8 Summit," I must have watched "The X from Outer Space"
first. I have not seen the first film
before, so I changed up the film for the day to fix this. Tomorrow I will follow up with the
sequel.
"The
X from Outer Space" is another one of those giant monster films from
across the sea in Japan. There are
miniatures, a guy in a rubber suit, and a horrible English dub that only ended
up highlighting the film's flaws than convey the story. The film begins with a space expedition to
Mars, via the Moon, to determine what forced five other crews to end transmissions
and go missing. As they travel into the
void of space, the crew find themselves held captive by a magnetic interference
by a UFO. After being held in place for
some time, the UFO departs. The crew
finds some unknown compound affixed to the tail of their spaceship. Cleaning off the material yields a small
circular object that the crew brings back to Earth for examination. In the wee hours of the night, the object
disappears with a strange footprint found nearby. Later, a building tall creature begins to wreak
havoc upon the Japanese mainland as it feeds on electricity and radiation. The only hope lies upon re-creating the
compound that will cause the creature to revert to an egg state.
This
might not seem like such a bad premise if it was not for everything that I left
out. The film revolves heavily around
the crew more than the monster. This is
not a bad thing upon itself. The
original "Godzilla" remembered to center its story on a cast that
pushed the story along more than the monster.
The problem here is that the cast of characters are unbelievable to the
point that their behavior breaks the storyline.
There is a four man crew that pilots the spaceship AAB Gamma. I remember the name of the ship because it is
repeated throughout the film whenever a radio call goes out from the ship,
Earth, or the Moon base, usually three times in one breath whenever it is
mentioned. The crew of the ship often
disregards the orders of the captain, trying to do what they think is best
instead of doing what they are told.
Take for example the replacement doctor that has to replace the first
doctor who turns ill when traveling in space.
The replacement is reluctant to go on the mission to the point that he
might have been considered to be insubordinate already. When he travels with them in space, the ship
gets caught in the magnetic beam, making the ship stay still despite the
efforts of the ship's rockets. The
captain decides to not use the rockets because they are ineffective and the use
thereof will eat up vital fuel. The
replacement doctor decides that this is not the best idea, runs to the ship's
controls, and burns through the rest of the ship's fuel. Or how about we take the ship's biologist.
The
ship's biologist, named Lisa, is the most memorable character. This has less to do with her influence on the
story and more to do with the fact that she is the token white blond character
who sticks out like a sore thumb in a cast of Japanese actors and one or two
other white guys. I do not mind that she
is a Western character in a cast of Eastern actors. Making a film about space
travel would, and does, require an international level of communication and
cooperation to create a sense of believability. I do not mind that she is one of only two
women in the cast. What I mind is that
she is one of the most stereotypical lady-scientists that I have come
across. When the crew is told of how
they are going on a mission to determine what caused five other crews to go
missing and that they have a high chance of following suite if they are not
careful, the film quickly switches gears to one or two of the rest of the space
crew swooning over her. They were just
told that there is a good chance of them all dying, but the film wants to
interject some comical romantic banter that shows the entirety of the pervious
discussion did not sink into their heads.
When they are in space, she does not like to take orders from the
captain, wanting to treat the sick doctor instead of rushing him to the base
like the captain wants. When they want
to go outside the ship to investigate the goop, she refuses to stay behind like
instructed and goes out to examine the material. Eventually, another woman appears that has
some interest in the ship captain. The
female jealousy meter goes off more than the Geiger counters in this film
before the final conclusion. Then there
is the whole incident where her leg gets pinned under some fallen debris. Less than five minutes after a team of people
get her out from under, she is walking around pretty comfortably for what had
appeared as a broken leg. She makes a
few advances in the plot by actually analyzing the various compounds, but those
moments are glossed over more for the scenes that highlight her femininity
rather than her intelligence.
The
film's special effects are a big problem.
The miniatures are done well enough that you will "Ooo" and
"Ah" at seeing a mountain explode and get excited when seeing the
tanks roll in. The rest of the sets are enough to make you laugh at the film
rather than with it. In numerous spots
in the film, there are computer consoles that operate machinery. They all are a maze of unlabeled buttons,
glowing lights, and knobs. Nothing seems
to have any sort of real purpose other than to give the impression that the
workers know what everything does. The
only identifiable item on any console was on the spaceship. There was a gauge that appeared similar to a
turn and balance indicator or a gyro horizon on a plane. It showed the amount of rocking that was
occurring on the ship at any one time.
This leads to one of the most notable problems with the film. Every time the ship is traveling in space, it
rocks back and forth as if it were on the ocean. The camera tilts back and forth to drive home
this point to the point that I began to feel seasick at one point. The characters even stumble a bit from this
swaying motion. Maybe it is a side
effect from having artificial gravity in the ship, but it is hardly better than
when there is no gravity and objects "float" around like being held
on fishing wire.
 |
| It was probably next to the cup holder. |
The
film's monster is not much better. In
fact it is probably one of the worst looking Kaiju I have seen. It has the head of a tropical parrot, arms
that look like they are made from a flat worm, antennae from a bug, and is
pudgy in the limbs. The final effect is
a laughable monster that at least is able to destroy the various tanks and
airplanes that came after it. That is
not much of a compliment considering that every other Kaiju can do that as well. Occasionally, we see the monster Guilala
attacking people in the same screen. At
that point you can cue the off scale hand or foot that reaches in from off
camera, sometimes at the wrong angle from where the limb would have been
located for that shot. Guilala at least
has a large enough amount of abilities to make it feel unique at first. It absorbs a number of different energy forms
to power itself, has a fireball breath, and is neigh invulnerable short of one
Achilles heel chemical. Other than the
one unique weakness, it feels too much like the Godzilla of later films that
feeds off nuclear energy to heal itself.
This might have more to do with the time placement of when this film was
made, so I will not discount this against the lumbering beast.
 |
| Our lumbering behemoth chasing a car. |
The
film's music is always out of place whenever the spaceship is showcased. There is some ska/lounge music/easy listening
song that plays during these moments that completely subtracts away from the
space age theme that the film is trying to go for. This rolls into the scenes that the
characters are lounging around or attending celebratory parties. These scenes are dated straight to the time
that the film was in production as a showcase of the fads of that time. Retrospectively, they make the film show its
age. Looking at the film even within the
context of a space film makes it seem out of place because there is no
indication that the timeframe of the story is thrown into the future. It is like assuming that ladder sunglasses
are still a thriving trend forty years from now.
"The
X from Outer Space" should have stayed there. It is a laughable film that is not notable
for anything but its faults. The film
fails in everything it tries to do and forgets to entertain. I found myself bored and hoping that the
monster would stampede over everyone. I
do not think anyone even died, short of those five unnamed crews before the
film began. Worse than that, the film
completely ignores the UFO that repeatedly interfered with the spaceships. Was it some sort of alien bouncer keeping the
humans from getting into Club Mars? We
will never know, nor does the film even acknowledge their presence at the
close. The film mutely says, "Just
ignore it," something that I would exactly say about this film.
Yours in digital,
BeepBoop
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