Sekai daisensô

Tensions escalate between The Federation and The Alliance (proxies for NATO/SEATO and the Warsaw Pact respectively) as Japan pleads for peace (or at least for commitments to not use nuclear weapons). The film, which also follows the impact of the impending conflict on a small Japanese family, is a cautionary tale that addresses contemporary concerns about a nuclear conflict, both deliberate and secondary to an accidental launch. The film also portrays Japan's feeling of helplessness, 16 years after having been destroyed militarily and now flanked by two belligerent, nuclear-armed powers. The version of the film I watched on-line was 'fan-subtitled' (apparently originally in Italian) that was quite well done (assuming that it was true to the original Japanese) and differs from the American version (based on the description in Stuart Galbraith's book 'Japanese Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror Films' (1994)). The American film opens after the war, with sailor Takano (Akira Takarada) returning to a devastated Tokyo rather than following a linear narrative that ends with the sailor's return. Also, the children sing a traditional Japanese New Year's song and not 'It's a Small World After All', and the film closes with a plea for peace from the (fictional) Japanese Prime Minister and not J.F.K. The special effects and miniatures (supervised by Eiji Tsubaraya) are generally excellent and there are some very jarring images, such as bodies reduced to mounds of ash after a tactical nuclear strike. The scenes of panic, and later empty Tokyo streets, are also very well done. Paralleling the military-political story, the film follows Mokichi Tamura's (Frankie Sakai) family, who live in Tokyo and have to decide whether to abandon their home or hope for de-escalation. The story of the family (eldest daughter Saeko (Yuriko Hoshi) is engaged to Takano) is touching - pathos without excessive sentimentality. The script and the acting of the Japanese characters is very good (based on the subtitles) but the scenes featuring Federation and Alliance missile control officers (all of whom speak English) are clunky and phoney sounding (especially the trite moralising about war and the highly contrived false alarm scenes). Note: this film is 'Sekai Daisenso' , sometimes translated as 'The Final War' or 'The Last War' and is frequently confused with the similarly themed 'Dai-sanji sekai taisen: Yonju-ichi jikan no kyofu' ('The Last War, WWIII Breaks Out') (1960), a B/W Toai Studios Production).

This film has (almost) always been hopelessly confused w/THE FINAL WAR (B&W) in the past, so beware of this when referencing older reviews.

SEKAI DAISENSO was to have been theatrically released in U.S. back in early '60s by Edward G. Alperson's BRENCO PICTURES CO. (after Columbia Pictures passed on it), but this never actually occurred. An English dubbing & edit was attempted by Brenco, but not quite finished. A trailer was also made using JFK's "...mankind must put an end to war..." speech. When shown on U.S. television as THE LAST WAR starting in the '70s, it played strangely because the circular opening & ending was incomplete. Later prints of it by Heritage Enterprises tried to correct this. Disneys' "It's a small world after all" song pops up one too many times in the US soundtrack for me, though.

The small-scale miniature sets of various global metropolis's vaporized by all-out nuclear war were actually built out of sugar wafers for maximum explosive effect. However, on the day of shooting the Japanese technicians found that rats in the studio were getting first crack!

For days after watching this movie for the first time (summer of 1982 on TV), I would start crying everytime I thought of it. The version I watched was dubbed in English and titled The Last War. One part of the movie that was especially memorable to me (and inspired several poems) was where Seiko (the oldest child) returns home (after spending time with her boyfriend) to be with her folks and kid brother and sister so they can all die together when the bombs and missiles all hit in a matter of mere hours. She goes out into the back yard where her mother has just planted some tulip bulbs and breaks down and cries, saying that, next spring, all of the tulips will come up, but nobody will be left to see them. This movie was an ancestor to THE DAY AFTER, which was also well-made and driving the message home. In spite of the fact that THE LAST WAR was more of a low-budget film, it was, in many ways, more haunting than THE DAY AFTER. Anybody who thinks that war is cool instead of a last-resort necessary evil should watch this movie and understand that war isn't some sort of video game you play and then go eat and do your homework.

I was fortunate to obtain a widescreen subtitled edition of this 1961 movie, which is really the proper way to see it, devoid of bad English dubbing and rearranged sequences etc. In its original version, there are some great SFX sequences by Japan's master Eiji Tsubaraya, who was responsible for all the Godzilla movies, but rather than shock the viewer for its "graphic" depiction of nuclear war, as the filmmakers hoped to do, they just come across as neat-interesting in the "Armageddon" way of filmmaking that we see today. What makes "The Last War" more entertaining then films of today like "Armageddon" is that the acting is better (at least the Japanese actors), and there's just a greater sense of style in films from this era then what we see today.

Not that the movie is without flaws. The anti-nuclear war message is delivered in a very pretentious fashion, and its depiction of how the war breaks out is, as noted below, totally ludicrous with no context offered as to why tensions are escalating between the "Federation" (i.e. NATO and the US) and the "Alliance" (i.e. the USSR) in the first place. Scenes of the "Federation" and "Alliance" at their military bases are shot in English and feature very bad amateur "actors" mouthing dialogue that no one with a real grasp of the English language would ever have written (the Alliance commander at one point utters a dated exclamation, "Egads!" among other things) We also get that nice coat of whitewashing of Japan's aggressive past as an Imperial power that infests every Toho sci-fi movie that gets on a soapbox about the evils of atomic weapons. And the ending blatantly plagiarizes the ending of "On The Beach" to not good effect.

Still, I recommend owning a copy of this in the original widescreen subtitled format, just as a fascinating curio piece and also the chance to see some great special FX for the day in full splendor. Along with "Gorath" and "The Mysterians" it shows how there was much more to Toho FX movies of the 50s and 60s then just Godzilla and other giant monsters.

Sorry but this pathetic japanese try to create a warning about the threat of a nuclear war during the cold war is so dumb it hurts. The movie shows us how an international crisis escalates to a global nuclear war wiping out mankind! The second plotline shows us the life of an average japanese family in Tokyo which dies when the city is hit by a nuclear warhead. The problem is that this movie has a completely unbelievable storyline not to mention the cheap SFX. World War Three takes place in the year 2015!! but the cities we see, especially Tokyo, the cars, the complete technology is that of the sixties of the twentieth century. The uniforms of the military are pure fantasy designs, the soviets look more like nazis and the NATO-soldiers look like the came out of an extremely cheap SF-movie. But the main problem with this movie is that the whole scenario is unrealistic, the superpowers seem to trigger the war just for fun. No real political and believable crisis takes place, no military action that makes really sense (the script by the way doesn´t make sense too). Add the extremely cheesy dialogue and you know why the movie cannot fulfil its purpose. When the miniature missiles finally hit the city models in the end you don´t really care (actually you have to see some very bad SFX and see how Tokyo is covered by LAVA!!) and I was actually glad that this bad movie finally came to an end.