Hard to believe, perhaps, but before director Teruo Ishii turned to the sleaze and violence of pinku cinema he was director of children's TV series Sûpâ jaiantsu (Super Giant) in which Ken Utsui played Starman, a humanoid alien with incredible powers (well, he can fly with the help of a very visible harness) who is sworn to protect the human race from danger. In Invaders From Space, a feature cobbled together for the US market from several episodes of the series, Starman battles the evil salamander men of Kulimon (sp?) who release a deadly disease in Japan as part of their evil plan for world domination.
The film opens on a planet 2 billion miles away where a council of incredibly daft looking aliens elect to send Starman to Earth; if the rest of the film was this unintentionally funny, I was in for a grand time. Sadly, despite the equally amusing introduction of the first salamander man, Invaders from Space quickly descended into tedium, a disjointed, episodic adventure with extremely repetitious fight scenes between Starman and his scaly foes, most of which look more like elaborate dance routines than desperate battles to the death.
And talking of dance, let's not forget the unnecessary avant-garde number in a theatre where the salamanders are posing as stage performers. Or the bit where several supposedly cute Japanese kids find themselves threatened in the woods by the athletic aliens busting their moves. I guess if modern dance is your thing, there's a remote chance that you might find this interesting, but I found myself seriously struggling to stay awake.
The film opens on a planet 2 billion miles away where a council of incredibly daft looking aliens elect to send Starman to Earth; if the rest of the film was this unintentionally funny, I was in for a grand time. Sadly, despite the equally amusing introduction of the first salamander man, Invaders from Space quickly descended into tedium, a disjointed, episodic adventure with extremely repetitious fight scenes between Starman and his scaly foes, most of which look more like elaborate dance routines than desperate battles to the death.
And talking of dance, let's not forget the unnecessary avant-garde number in a theatre where the salamanders are posing as stage performers. Or the bit where several supposedly cute Japanese kids find themselves threatened in the woods by the athletic aliens busting their moves. I guess if modern dance is your thing, there's a remote chance that you might find this interesting, but I found myself seriously struggling to stay awake.