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Re: A Little Help?
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Hachigatsu
MESSAGE FROM SPACE (1978)
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Mar 16 07 8:10 PM
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You are searching for the film "Where fantasies are real... and reality is fantastic!" -- Kinji Fukasaku's MESSAGE FROM SPACE (Uchukara-no Messeji, 1978).
Bandai model kit of the Liabe Special
Mikio Narita as Gavanas Emperor Rockseia XII
Here's an article about the film:
MESSAGE FROM SPACE
Appreciating Cosmic Chiba
Author: Patrick Macias & August Ragone
Source: Originally published in Asian Cult Cinema (1996)
"There are more beautiful dreams in space."
-- General Garuda (played by the late Vic Morrow)
As the fallout from the "Star Wars: Special Editions" continue to permeate popular culture, one thing is clear -- the space opera is back! -- and as we learned back in 1978, you can't have STAR WARS without MESSAGE FROM SPACE. Simultaneously, just as George Lucas is presenting his own brand of digitally-enhanced nostalgia, Japan's 19 year old entry in the space sweepstakes has been resurrected too, if only on video and in the hearts of fans in the know. Toei Video has re-issued UCHU'KARA-NO MESSEJI ("Message From Space") in a stunningly re-mastered laser disc featuring a new digital transfer personally supervised by director Kinji Fukasaku.
This deluxe presentation of a film sadly misunderstood and unfairly maligned in the West offers a perfect opportunity for rediscovery. Lying just under the surface of this five million dollar sci-fi re-telling of the Japanese legend "Satomi Hakkenden" (and NOT the SEVEN SAMURAI as is widely supposed) lays another film, containing as many elements of the Toei action and yakuza film as there are echoes of STAR WARS. For instance, the climatic sword duel between the good Prince Hans (played by Sonny "Street Fighter" Chiba) and the evil Emperor Rockseia XII (Mikiko Narita) is not just a stand-in for Darth Vader's and Ben Kenobi's light saber showdown. It's a conflict that occurred before, minus the swords and space gear, when Chiba and Narita played cutthroat gangsters in the second entry in the landmark yakuza series JINGI-NAKI TATAKAI: HIROSHIMA SHITTO-HEN (1973), also directed by Fukasaku.
Yet STAR WARS does bare it's mark everywhere from the characters, to production design, numerous scenes, and even musical cues. But what little coverage MESSAGE FROM SPACE has received in the past has over-emphasized these incontestable "rip-off" crimes at the cost of overlooking everything else. In retrospect, the film deserves to be a frequently visited paradise for fans of Japanese cult cinema. To gain admission all you have to do is as Vic Morrow advises his faithful friend and robot buddy Beba 2, "Forget your medals and keep your eyes on the stars."
Like many a Japanese genre movie, MESSAGE FROM SPACE has a curious pre-production history behind it. After a failed attempts to get the Tudor Gates' scripted "Kongorilla" off the drawing boards (DeLaurentis' KONG '76 helped seal its fate), and all pre-production stalled on another giant primate property, entitled "Mortal", Toei decided to switch gears and create a more Japanese-styled monster. Conceived as an US/Japan co-production, "Devil-Manta" was to be a big-budget entry in the crossover disaster/monster picture market, featuring a death-dealing giant, flying manta ray from the void. While securing interests from abroad -- which weren't exactly stacking up on Toei's desks -- STAR WARS hit, and created a shock wave that was felt throughout the film industry.
Toru Hirayama, a long time creative producer at Toei, assembled a team to hammer out story ideas and concepts on the project now entitled "Star Wars in Japan." This team consisted of manga creator Shotaro Ishimori (CYBORG 009 and KAMEN RIDER), SF writer Masahiro Noda, and scenarist Hiroo Matsuda (who was delegated the final task of screen writing after his success on Fukasakus PLOT OF THE YAGYU CLAN) while another talent was brought in to direct the film.
Kinji Fukasaku, a writer/director who had previously helmed commercial films, edgier material, and large-scale international productions, was the perfect choice for the job. With a filmography running from the silly to the sublime, Fukasaku's name evokes not only his previous international science fiction effort THE GREEN SLIME (Gamma Sango Uchu Daisakusen; 1968, Toei), as well as the all-star TORA! TORA! TORA! when Akira Kurosawa bowed out of the project (he had attempted suicide over his daughters death). Not only did he helm these international efforts, but also the trippy, cinematic funhouse of the Rampo Edogawa/Yukio Mishima-inspired BLACK LIZARD (Kurotokage, 1968, Shochiku).
He also made momentous contributions to the yakuza genre. The FIGHT WITHOUT HONOR (Jingi-naki Tatakai) series and the traumatic DEATH OF HONOR (Jingi-no Hakaba, 1976, Toei) both opened the door and closed the book on the celebrated, if still not widely seen, ultra-violent gangster films of the early to mid 1970s. Fukasaku brought MESSAGE FROM SPACE many of his visual signatures, including a virtuoso hand-held camera style that pushes the already energetic film into an endearingly (or, as detractors would say, annoyingly) hyperactive one. For more information on this remarkable filmmaker, check out the DEATH OF HONOR coverage in ACC #14.
Also brought on board was an extraordinary international cast; with the Japanese players alone culled not just from the A-list, but from myriad gangster, exploitation, and special effects productions as well. In fact, taking a closer look at this line up is a good means of demonstrating just how simultaneously insular and inclusive the Japanese film industry can be -- an amazing place where gangsters and Godzilla movie producers hang out with Hollywood has-beens and where everybody is only a few degrees away from the deadly fists of Sonny Chiba.
Playing the steel-skinned rulers of the evil Gavanas Empire is Mikio Narita as Emperor Rockseia XII and Hideyo Amamoto, in drag, as Mother Empress Dark. Narita, long a familiar face in yakuza films, had previously worked with Fukasaku both in the HINGI-NAKI TATAKAI series and in the third installment of the HISSATSU! (Sure Death!) series. He also appeared on international screens as the Nazi bad guy ROARING FIRE (Hoero! Tekken; 1982, Toei). Amamoto is a veteran of numerous Japanese special effects films and TV shows. He played the diabolical Dr. Who in KING KONG ESCAPES (Kingu Kongu-no Gyakushu; Toho, 1967) and can be spotted in numerous other productions for Toho. Amamoto is also well known as the vampiric Dr. Death, one of the commanders of the Shocker organization on the KAMEN RIDER TV show.
Leading the struggle for the liberation of the enslaved planet Jillucia are Etsuko Shihomi as the beautiful Princess Emeralida and Makoto Sato as her volatile guardian Urocco. Shihomi, a protégé of Chiba's and the first female member of his stunt team the Japan Action Club, is best known for playing the title role in the SISTER STREETFIGHTER series. In MESSAGE she plays against her martial arts image by exhibiting a softer, more vulnerable side. Prolific character actor Sato has appeared in everything from Ishiro Honda's THE H-MAN, to the comedic TRUCK YARO! films, to director Teruo Ishii's THE EXECUTIONER starring Sonny Chiba.
The interstellar Rough Riders (the cosmic equivalent of Japan's "Speed Tribes"), the lively group of young people who are chosen by the gods to aid in the Gavanas-Jillucian conflict, are a particularly odd bunch. Hiroyuki Sanada, who plays Shiro Hongo, the pilot of the Comet Fire, is best known for his star vehicle ROARING FIRE (where he was humorously billed as "Duke Sanada" in the States). As Sonny Chiba's chief protégé, Sanada wound up with a stellar career in television and feature films like Toei's NINJA WARS and SATOMI HAKKEN-DEN. Occidentals Philip Casnoff and Peggy Lee Brennan, who play Aaron Solar and Meia Long, the respective pilots of the spaceships Galaxy Runner and the Liabe Special, were snatched off the stage of a Broadway production of "Grease" (now use your imagination and picture young John Travolta as the hotheaded Aaron!). Casnoff has since done much TV work, most visibly as the lead in the FRANK SINATRA biopic and in the trio of NORTH AND SOUTH mini series. Brennan remains active doing theater work in New York City and was spotted recently in the audience of the Actor's Workshop TV show introducing herself to Christopher Walken (with no mention of her MESSAGE FROM SPACE credentials)!
Masazumi Okabe plays Jack, a character whose cowardly anything-for-money attitude and tasteless cheap suits have lead to Japanese reference books to brand him a "space chinpira (yakuza street punk)." Okabe is indeed deserving of the title, having delivered similar performances in many yakuza movies for Toei.
Shinichi "Sonny" Chiba, who choreographed the sword fights and hand-to-hand scuffles, plays Hans, the exiled Prince of the Gavanas Empire. Chiba had a particularly rough outing during the filming. While performing a stunt that would have him chasing after Amamoto and sliding under a descending gate, his leg was fractured. Fragments of this painful take can still be seen in the finished film. (For a detailed Chiba filmography, look to ACC# 15.)
The late Vic Morrow may at first seem like an odd, almost arbitrary choice to appear in a leading role here. With a career that began by playing one of the screen's greatest juvenile delinquents in 1955's THE BLACKBOARD JUNGLE, and despite playing one of the featured heavies in KING CREOLE opposite Elvis Presley, Morrow had failed to develop into a celluloid idol. His TV series COMBAT! was another matter entirely. The show became a sensation in Japan and soon its star was being courted by the likes of Toho producer Tomoyuki Tanaka. Yet despite these associations, MESSAGE FROM SPACE is Morrow's only appearance in a Japanese production. His surprisingly nuanced performance as the Earth Self-Defense Force's hard drinking-hard fighting General Garuda is perhaps the heart and soul of a film that shorts the majority of it's characterizations. Morrow's accidental death on the set of TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE remains one of Hollywood's most tragic debacles.
Among the smaller roles is the ubiquitous Tetsuro Tanba, who continues his single-minded quest to appear in as many films as he possibly can, by showing up as Earth Federation Chairman Ernest Noguchi. Half-Japanese actor Jerry Ito, who played the abominable showman Nelson in MOTHRA (1961, Toho) and also showed up in THE MANSTER (also 1961), makes a nearly unrecognizable cameo, as Noguchi's blustery second. American ex-pat William Ross, who has quietly been co-producing, dubbing, and starring in Japanese productions since the 1950s, appears as Meia's chauffeur/pilot. It's fun to note that Ross also shows up in Toho's THE WAR IN SPACE (Wakusei Daisenso, 1977), making him the only actor to appear in both of Japan's STAR WARS homages. Surely the strangest appearance of all is crooner Chris Isaak (of "Wicked Game" fame). Apparently in Japan doing a brief turn as a boxer, a very young Isaak can be spotted playing cards with gangster Big Sam (himself played by pro-wrestler Thunder Tsukamoto!) in the nightclub/cantina sequence. Look for the fair-haired gaijin wearing a glitzy outfit that would shame anything in magician Doug Henning's wardrobe.
Equipped with the largest budget ever on a Japanese film up to that time (Fukasaku's VIRUS would eclipse it in 1980), every element of design and art direction was given first-class treatment. Over 3000 people were involved in bringing the film to the screen -- as well as a momentous amount of props and resources. A 1/1 scale, 40-meter long mock-up of the Prayer Star, Jillucia's distinctive sail ship of the cosmos, was constructed at a cost of 2, 200,000 million yen. 2, 400,000 million yen was spent to build Emperor Rockseia's Gaudi-inspired palace at the Kyoto Toei Studios where much of the film ended up being lensed. Supervising these Herculean tasks was well-known special effects art director Tetsuzo Osawa, who would contribute to the Heisei-era Godzilla films and is currently hard at work on the ULTRAMAN TIGA TV series.
Nobuo Yajima directed the special effects themselves, employing nearly every possible optical, miniature, and pyrotechnic technique imaginable. Yajima is an unheralded giant of the tokusatsu (special effects) genre, having contributed to such landmark teleseries as CAPTAIN ULTRA, GIANT ROBO, and SPECTREMAN. He established his own effects workshop, Special Effects Research Inc., and would go on to play a major role in the development of effects technology. Yajima made good use of two new innovations for MESSAGE FROM SPACE -- one is the NAC-developed "snorkel camera," used to obtain super-tight close-ups of miniatures ships and sets. The other is the Totsu ECG System, a video to film process that is the forerunner of the high-definition video effects commonly employed today.
Even the staunchest of MESSAGE FROM SPACE skeptics must acknowledge the artistic success of the abundant spaceship designs. Although they are sometimes credited to Shotaro Ishimori, it is actually Ishimori Productions staffer Akio Hio and influential design firm Studio Nue (who would go on to create mecha for anime productions like MACROSS and CRUSHER JOE among many others) who submitted the final drafts. Hio also was responsible for the MESSAGE FROM SPACE manga adaptation.
The best tribute to these men behind the scenes is the desperate assault on the Gavanas stronghold by the nuclear-warhead armed battleships of the Earth Defense Forces -- a special effects symphony, deftly edited, and unfolding in huge sensuous plumes of conflagration -- one of the finest effects sequences ever to emerge from a Japanese production.
MESSAGE FROM SPACE was released on April 29, 1978. Fukasaku's film had beat STAR WARS to Japanese screens by about five months. It did brisk business at the domestic box-office and not just because of the thirst for Lucas' up-coming film. Animated sci-fi productions, particularly the theatrical versions of Yoshinobu Nishizaki's and Leiji Matsumoto's SPACE BATTLESHIP YAMATO saga, had stimulated a national craze for "uchu romansu" (romatic space) adventures. Seen from a Japanese perspective MESSAGE FROM SPACE is a contributor to this genre, and not merely an opportunistic imitator.
Sadly, the film was obsolete before it had even opened in the USA. In November 1978, MESSAGE FROM SPACE was released by United Artists (with posters adorned with the bizarre tag line "Help Us!") across the States; the movie-going populace was still worshipping Star Wars and little else. It was immediately lumped alongside the other "imitators" and disregarded.
To its credit, UA did a good job of domesticating MESSAGE. Not a frame of footage was cut (something that was still all too common with Japanese genre films), the Western actors were allowed to retain their own voices, and the overall translation by Lionheart of New York, was wholly faithful. The only major blemish, which may have been the result of insurmountable technical problems due to the English dubbing, was the sound. The delicate four-track stereo mix (aka 'Space Sound 4') of the original was reduced to mono, and several of Ken'ichiro Morioka's soundtrack cues were curbed in the process. As of this writing, no version is available on domestic home video.
UA struck quite a few prints, and the film wound up making second and third runs, if only on the bottom half of double bills, in the years that followed. The authors of this article have fond memories of catching MESSAGE FROM SPACE in some particularly delirious pairings -- with Carpenter's HALLOWEEN, THE TERROR OF GODZILLA (aka TERROR OF MECHAGODZILLA), Luigi Cozzi's STARCRASH, and Disney's abysmal THE DEVIL AND MAX DEVLIN.
Back in Japan, the saga continued. A mere two and a half months after the theatrical premiere came the TV series -- MESSAGE FROM SPACE: GALACTIC BATTLE. Running 27 episodes, using many props and models from the movie, and starring Hiroyuki Sanada (although in a different role than that in the film), this Toei production followed the war against the Gavanas a generation after the events of the film. In 1983, a compilation movie drawn from the series, SWORDS OF THE SPACE ARK, was broadcast on the Christian Broadcasting Network. 3-B Productions, who adapted a number of Japanese properties in the early 1980s, also hawked episodes of the series on home video as SPACE NINJA.
Fukasaku had clearly not tired of big-budget international productions. He would go on to direct the massive, somber, and eerily prophetic VIRUS in 1980. Most interestingly, he would partially re-make MESSAGE FROM SPACE by going back to the source material. 1983's SATOMI HAKKENDEN (aka "Legend of the Eight Samurai") was a magnificent period adventure film featuring many returning cast members from MESSAGE including Chiba, Sanada and Shihomi.
MESSAGE FROM SPACE is not the greatest film ever made, nor even the greatest Japanese sci-fi movie ever. But it does deserve some recognition for what it accomplishes within and without the specter of STAR WARS -- as a fast moving, highly imaginative, and fully realized entertainment. Regardless of origin, it makes a nice contribution to the cinema's love affair with science fiction imagery. And while mainstream film will remember a STAR WARS rip-off, cult film will remember Sonny Chiba in outer space. Now that's a Force to be reckoned with!
MESSAGE FROM SPACE (Uchukara-no Messeji) A Joint Production of TOEI COMPANY LTD. and TOHOKUSHINSHA COMPANY LTD. Executive Producers by BANJIRO UMEMURA, YOSHINORI WATANABE and TAN TAKAIWA Producers TORU HIRAYAMA, YUSUKE OKADA, SIMON TSE, NAOYUKI SUGIMOTO and AKIRA ITO Original Story SHOTARO ISHIMORI, MASAHIRO NODA, HIROO MATSUDA and KINJI FUKASAKU Screenplay HIROO MATSUDA Director of Photography TORU NAKAJIMA Original Music Composed and Conducted by KENICHIRO MORIOKA Performed by THE NIPPON COLUMBIA ORCHESTRA Special Effects Director NOBUO YAJIMA Directed by KINJI FUKASAKU
VIC MORROW as General Garuda SHINICHI "SONNY" CHIBA as Prince Hans PHILLIP CASNOFF as Aaron Solar PEGGY LEE BRENNAN as Meia Long HIROYUKI SANADA as Shiro Hongo ETSUKO SHIOMI as Princess Emeralida MIKIO NARITA as Emperor Rockseia XII of Gavanas MAKOTO SATO as Urocco TETSURO TAMBA as Chairman Ernest Noguchi MASAZUMI OKABE as Jack EISEI AMAMOTO as Mother Empress Dark JUNKICHI ORIMOTO as Elder Kido NOBURO MITANI as Kamesasa TADASHI NARISE as Hikiroku ISAMU SHIMIZU as Robot Beba 2 HARUME SONE as Lazarl
August Ragone
Author,
EIJI TSUBURAYA: MASTER OF MONSTERS
Coming September 1st from Chronicle Books
Director,
SHOCK IT TO ME!
Classic Horror Film Festival
October 2007 Castro Theatre San Francisco
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Poverty Row
The World of Sherlock Holmes
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