gorgozilla wrote:
MGM needs to release this as a Midnite Movies double feature with The Green Slime.

Totally. I don't know why they haven't. It's funny that Fukasaku's lesser known stuff is all making it to DVD but The Green Slime and Message From Space, his two most famous films in America pre-Battle Royale, still languish unreleased.

The Japanese cut of Message is the same as the US version, cut wise, so it can be easily "synced up" to the US audio and the Toei DVD looks nice. The Green Slime is tricker business, as the Japanese cut (Fukasaku's preferred version) runs 11 minutes shorter. The whole "Horton-Paluzzi-Jaeckel" love triangle subplot has been axed as has much of the jealousy subplot between Horton's Rankin and Jaeckel. I don't think the movie's as good without that stuff, it's in a weird way more interesting than the goofy H.R. Pufinstuf monsters. And the song is omitted in the Japanese version. To me it ain't The Green Slime without the SONG!

Is it any coincidence that Fukasaku wanted The Green Slime to be a more politically-oriented film about the Cold War and then, years later, when he did Virus, which is a more serious and critical Cold War-era sci-fi epic that almost deals with leftover subject matter, the evil colonel who is pretty much responsible for the death of all of humanity since he had MM88 created is also named Rankin? Rankin in The Green Slime and Rankin in Virus are actually sort of similar: they are arrogant military jackasses whose bungling results in the release of a scary, unstoppable germ (Rankin smashes the canister with the green slime and gets it on the man's suit, other Rankin's men bungle the operation to get back MM88 and cause the vial to be smashed).