Original Japanese version on DVD

The original Japanese film, YOSEI GORASU, is available on DVD from Video Daikaiju (videodaikaiju.com). It's widescreen, full-length (including the walrus scenes cut from the US version), subtitled. Picture and sound quality are excellent, though the color seems a bit more subdued than in most Toho SF films. The DVD is $15.

Video Daikaiju carries all the classic as well as the more recent kaiju eiga and other Japanese sci-fi and fantasy films from Toho, including the original MOTHRA, RODAN, BATTLE IN OUTER SPACE, THE H-MAN, all the Godzilla films, etc. Their catalogue is $2 but you can deduct that from the cost of an order so in effect it's free. I was put onto this site by others on these boards and they were right about the quality and service. You might want to first email them at [email protected] with any questions and they'll give you a prompt and courteous reply.

I had seen GORATH only once, decades ago as a kid, and had little memory of it, so I was extremely pleasantly surprised by how good it is. The special effects are about what you'd expect for a Toho SF film of that era, but they're probably the most elaborate of any Japanese sci-fi film up to that time, and mostly effective. Surprisingly, the film holds up pretty well even from a dramatic standpoint, not generally the strong suit of Japanese sci-fi. The "science" in the film is patently ridiculous but you go along with it anyway. Ishiro Honda turns in one of his better directing jobs -- GORATH is very fast-paced and lively, aided immensely by a terrific music score by Kan Ishii. Best of all is that the film is played absolutely straight, as with almost all of the early Toho sci-fi classics from GOJIRA in 1954 on through the mid-60s. Later in that decade most Japanese sci-fi films would veer into silliness, with kids befriending the monsters, juvenile subplots and so on, but in the early 60s Toho still made SF films that not only took their plots seriously but often carried the underlying message of the need for nations to band together to ensure peace, and in this case, survival. Nothing deep or subtle, but at least the effort was being made. The film, by the way, mainly takes place in the far-off 1980s, even though everyone still seems to be driving a '59 Chevy.

The acting by the veteran Toho contract players is quite good, with such stars as Takashi Shimura, Ryo Ikebe, Yumi Shirakawa, Akihiko Hirata and many others doing quite well. You'll even recognize some familiar western faces -- American or European non-actors resident in Japan who were often hired to portray westerners in such films -- people you've seen in movies such as MOTHRA and THE MYSTERIANS. (And their English is subtitled in Japanese!)

The DVD also contains both the theatrical trailer, before the movie, and afterward an extensive interview with one of the special effects men. Unfortunately, though the film itself is subtitled, neither the trailer nor the interview are. As Raymond Burr said in the Americanized GODZILLA, "I'm afraid my Japanese is a little rusty." Still, from the tiny handful of words I could catch the effects man seemed to be quite pleased to share the secrets of the film's very elaborate FX, and the interview is accompanied by lots of black-and-white stills made during production, showing how the effects were created, as well as many scenes from the movie, so it manages to be enjoyable even if basically incomprehensible. Two more subtitling quibbles: one, they don't subtitle the credits (except the film's title), which is annoying; and two, they habitually misspell the word "its" (a possessive) as "it's" (as in, "it is"). But then, so do many people on the IMDb boards, it seems.

Anyway, GORATH/YOSEI GORASU is one of the best Japanese science fiction films ever made, a great discovery and one any collector should have. This has been one of the more overlooked of the classic Toho SF films, probably because it wasn't released by a major studio in the US (such as Columbia) but by smaller companies, and it defintitely deserves a look. Listen, any film that has Japanese spacemen swinging their arms up over their heads yelling "Banzai!" has got to be a "must"!