The Mysterians (1957)

The Mysterians (1957)

Dir. Ishirô Honda

A festival, what should be a time of joy for all concerned, is interrupted by a mysterious fire. The blaze is followed not long afterwards by an earthquake that shakes the same community. The quiet little mountain village is about to lose the quiet part of its nature.

It;s an alien invasion film from TOHO that once again paired director Ishirô Honda's imagery with the sounds of master musician Akira Ifukube, both of whom had worked on the first Godzilla (1954) film. It has a kaijū of its own for a while, a kind of giant, robotic, metal mole-man, but mostly it's a regular sci-fi film with FX that are really amazing for the era; equal what Gerry Anderson would still be doing over twenty years later! Not just in the model work. The props and set dressings inside the spacey alien dome are also top quality.

The story doesn't go so far as to decidedly blur the line between who's good and who's bad, but it does make it a little more wavy in appearance. The aliens are driven by a need, and if put in their place we might not do things much differently from them. On the other side of the line, the humans act out of fear, a state of mind within which rational decision making is rarely a factor.

-This isn't going to end well.-