Oh this one was pretty bad, flat and low budget the first 45 minutes, with the highlight being a sinister Pumpkin Pie in outers space(!!) harrassing our sturdy tinfoil ship and its crew. Then you get to the chase, with the giant Aquatic chicken/lizard/guinea hen letting loose on poor old back-lot Japan.
Bad miniatures, bad sound, the three Caucasians are guys we might be intended to identify with ala Raymond Burr in the first Godzilla, but don't you believe it-Franz Gruber looks like a 6 foot Gary Owens from Laugh-in with a Chermann accent, the other two are crosses between Buddy Hackett and Dick York. Peggy Neal has the Angie Dickinson bit down too.
Your Japanese cast are all kinda interchangable, none of them any threat to Tishiro Mifune's reputation. The F/X are lousy, the dialogue and dubbing grade Z.
My fave parts? Besides the attack of the giant Pie? Where do I begin? There's the demo of the Moon's low gravity, showcased by two actors on trampolines in space suits, the trampolines hidden behind a 'crater edge'. The flaming bubbles the monster spits out at the world's worst Tank and plane miniatures. The great chase where two guys in a yellow-green jeep, pulling a trailer carrying a 'cargo of radiation'-filing cabinet with a radiation insignia on its side-race '80'mph down the road, while the 200 foot(100 foot? seems to chage size...)monster kinda shuffles after them, one big rubber paw waving ineffectively at the guy holding the 'Cargo box' and the driver putting the pedal to the metal. You don't for a second believe that the shufflin' X from Outer Space can catch up and grab'em, but he/it/she does. Riot! You also have a funny scene where at Army Headquarters, they show a guy on a step ladder, moving a little X from Outer Space Magnet from one town to another along a wall-map...Oh Lord. That one had me rolling in the aisles.....Then there is the obligatory stomp through the city, where these rubber suited guys always seem to concentrate on poorly made power line miniatures-after which you get the grand finale. They spray some white foam on the X from Outer Space, from a series of straffing runs-the X nailing a few last jets for good measure before being encased in the goo and making like the melting Stay Puff Marshmallow man of Ghostbusters. They then fling the little white sporestone essence of the X into orbit around the Sun, while Peggy Neal and Co. wax philosophic about how Monsters have rights too...Very, Very hard to keep a straight face while watching this one. If MST3K never did it, you have to say what a shame. The movie was a target and then some for Cro and the boys.
What more is there to be said? Sheer incompetance, bad acting, poor F/X....this gets a star for chutzpah and another half for the Villainous Pie.
*1/2 outta ****-if you like bad rubber suited monster movies, this is for you. Just don't say you haven't been warned.
