The Kent M. Beeson of Western Civilization

Battle in Outer Space (1959, Inoshiro Honda)

God, I love how these Japanese SF films look.  All Technicolor (well, Fujicolor) and comic booky.  Why couldn’t the future look like this?  When the 70s hit, seems like everyone went grimy, which was great for American cinema, but that was the last of the Japanese SF style, what with the orange jumpsuits and sleek saucers and the loving embrace of artifice.  (Or maybe not.  I aint a scholar.)

As for the movie — I’ve seen it before, and remember it being fairly boring.  But the one scene I did catch this time around involved a bunch of child-size aliens swarming awkwardly over some of the heroes and another guy blasting them with one of those great, fakey Japanese electricity guns, and it was kinda awesome.