I was only eight when this picture hit the screens. As you know, all things "Outer Space" was my meat back then and watching the promo ads for this title on our state-of-the art Black & White Muntz later kept me from thinking of all else.
It soon came to the local theater, The Starland and I soaked in all the stills posted outside grinning from ear to ear.
As childhood disappointments go, missing the opportunity to see Battle in Outer Space, was right up there with socks for Christmas. I made due playing with a little Revell model of the X-15 my brother had bougth and built replicating the scenes from the ads for my pleasure and also making drawings on line paper at school for the apporval of my friends who nodded knowingly and would say things like, "Yes, that's what it was like. You should have seen it!"
Somehow I survived the blow. Later I waited for ABC's Channel 7 to show it on The Six O-clock Movie and sure enough it turned up one day -- but I missed it.
"Life is cruel." A good lesson for any youth to learn and I think I am a better man for having learned it!
But life is also full of surprises and to my surprise, here in 2011, I finally got to catch a viewing of Battle in Outer Space on our color television set just yesterday.
I had not been feeling well, the weather had been gray and wet for several days and that did not help my circumstances any. As I was trawling through the Xfinity listings to pass the time, I allowed the strength I had mustered to hold my lips together for everyday life to relax and my jaw went slack and my eyes could not believe the opportunity was now at my fingertips and I only had to press a button to see this missed classic at last.
You see, I'd read the magazines, visited the sites, and over the years would wonder why all such movies in their reviews and recollections did not refer to Battle in Outer Space, the Granddaddy of them all, the gold standard of Deep Space warfare cinema. Certainly George Lucas owed it a great debt, but I never heard him make mention of it and thought it was strange.
With a trembling hand I poked the button and the screen went dark...but only for a moment. The familiar Columbia Pictures logo appeared and I didn't care that a Three Stooges short would not follow.
Battle in Outer Space, was right up there with socks for Christmas.
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hobnob53
13 years ago
Th-that's th-the s-saddest tale I've heard s-since th-the l-last Jerry Lewis t-t-telethon-on-on-on.
But today -- today you are a Better Man for having seen it!
Uchu daisenso!
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escalera-2
13 years ago
Don't cry for me, hobnob53. Maybe someone will make a Movie of the Week out of that woeful tale. It has all the right elements.
I guess Battle in Outer Space would have been the baddest movie I had ever seen back then had I been holding that Golden 75 cent ticket to get me past the gates of The Starland that weekend and I'd be defending it's worth to my dying breath.
OK, it was still a very ambitious title and if I could suspend belief for 94 minutes I know it could fulfill all my dreams about it. I think I spent too many years making up my own scenario and naturally the real thing would not compare.
And don't doubt that I'll watch it again, hob. I'm even going to look for The Mysterians (1957). I caught that one and was myself caught by surprise by it back in the late 50's when it turned up on KNXT Channel 2's The Early Show. Blew me away when I was a wee lad.
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hobnob53
13 years ago
Aha, your mention of The Mysterians -- Chikyu Boeigun (Defense Force Earth), its catchy Japanese title -- brings up my own tale of childhood deprivation.
When it came out in the US in 1958, it was playing at the local the-yater in the little resort community on the island where we then lived with my grandparents. I cried and begged to be allowed to go see it, but I was too little and had to go to bed by 4 o'clock or something, so no. But my teenage cousins went. Next day I remember asking them how it was -- I had seen the ads on TV showing the giant lumbering robot, which looked really cool -- and about all I remember being told was that it was pretty good. When I asked specifically about the 'bot, I was told only, "I think they killed it in Japan." Not a terribly helpful family there. I had to wait a few years till channel 2 in NYC (WCBS-TV) finally ran it in the mid-60s, and then I think it was broadcast in b&w.
But now I have my very own DVD, in the original Japanese, plus a dopey English re-dub.
BTW, the neatest thing I recall about seeing Uchu daisenso/Battle in Outer Space on channel 7 (WABC-TV) in the 60s was that it took place in 1965 -- still a year or two in the future when I first saw it. Bad Statue of Liberty model (and in the wrong place) at the end, though. (Uchu daisenso actually translates as The Great Space War.)
Incidentally, another memory: on the evening of Tuesday, Nov. 9, 1965, I was at home watching Mothra on channel 7 when the picture suddenly began dimming until everything -- everything -- went out: the great Northeast blackout of 1965. 1965! I assumed the BIOS aliens were behind it.
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escalera-2
13 years ago
Funny, ain't it? The things that mattered so much when green. And now as purple twilight descends --- We're still on about it!
I know I would have been greatly impressed with Battle in Outer Space back then. Nevermind the ill-fitting football helmets that the one guy unceremoniously throws off as quickly as he can when no one was watching (hey! -- why didn't it just float there? Oops! -- that's the "adult" me kickin'!). Besides, at the time it was more than just a movie, it was a cultural phenomena. Missing these events made us outcasts! Outcasts, I tells ya! Then the time wasted and the tall tales told to get back in the good graces of those peer (now unaccounted for and never gave a switch for anyone but themselves anyway).
Now, it's been years since I saw The Mysterians but as I recall that wonderfully imagined giant robot didn't do all that much, am I right on that? Kind of stood around and got bombarded as he lifted his pointy arms to zap this and that?
The lights going out on you must have freaked you out! Not unlike the coincidental blackout during the infamous 1938 Mercury Theater of the Air Halloween night broadcast.
Ah! -- the stuff of youth.
Glad to have you back, hob.
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hobnob53
13 years ago
Yeah, they threw the giant robot into The Mysterians just because Toho always wanted a monster of some kind in its sci-fi movies, even when inappropriate. You're right, this guy didn't do much or have much screen time before he was zapped in an early Earth victory.
Toho forced Eiji Tsuburaya to insert an extraneous giant walrus in Gorath, which he objected to. Again, little screen time, quite beside the point of the movie. By the way, that's one of the best Japanese sci-fi films, but I've only found it in its fantastic original form from Video Daikaiju -- the Americanized version has never been released on DVD. I understand that version cut the walrus (really).
What's funny about that DVD is how the dubbed version handles a scene where Japanese officials meet with Americans. Toho often used westerners living in Tokyo, non-professionals, to appear in small parts requiring western characters. (You see this in the scenes in "Rolisica" in Mothra, for instance; also in the original version of King Kong Vs. Godzilla.) In The Mysterians the westerners meet the Japanese. They speak English, with an interpreter for the Japanese characters (and audiences) repeating the lines in each language as required. In the dubbed version, they have the Japanese also speaking English, so that when they say something in English, the interpreter repeats it to the Americans in English, then they reply in English, then the interpreter tells the Japanese what was said in English...and so on. Hilarious.
I believe Uchu daisenso was left intact for the US Battle in Outer Space release. Why no giant monster made it into this movie I can't say. Clearly the aliens could have sent down another robot or something. But only space rays and meteors here.
Doo-doo-doo-doo-doo, b-doo b-doo b-doo! Space rays.
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escalera-2
13 years ago
Thanks for the background on the US releases and the originals.
You know, that giant robot in The Mysterions was a good selling gimmick if nothing else. It worked on me.
It looks like a lot of time and money was poured into Battle in Outer Space and that left little for any possibliity for an extraneous giant creature.
By the way, allow me to suggest you visit the Uchûjin Tôkyô ni arawaru /Warning from Space (1956) IMDb page http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053388/board/thread/113902014?d=182986787 #182986787
and check out entries by jadow81 under "Some more differences between versions (SPOILERS)". Good stuff. He also entered some background in another thread, I think it is the one right below that one (right now).
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hobnob53
13 years ago
I have Warning, though only the dubbed US version -- the original isn't available except without subtitles. That was Daiei Studio's first entry into the sci-fi field against "giant" Toho. Not bad.
Leaving for a bit but will be back soon -- in a big way, no doubt. Have a good one, old paint.
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escalera-2
13 years ago
Thanks, hob, old thing. Off to the land beyond beyond... to the world past hope and fear, are you? You kids have a great time.
Warning from Space was a pretty good entry. Sure, the alien concept didn't quite come off -- as they are, they'd be more at home with H.R. Pufnstuf -- however, it is a good effort overall.
Battle in Outer Space was quite an epic movie for the time, they pulled out all the stops (except in the writing department if you ask me) and I would count it as essential viewing for anyone interested in producing a movie like taking place in outer space.
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hobnob53
13 years ago
Lots of toys and explosions. What more could a growing boy ask? Even at 50-something! Bye for now.
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