A Saturday or Sunday afternoon favorite of mine as a kid, The Mysterians represents a high point in the special effects career of Eiji Tsuburaya, one of the creators of Godzilla (other alumni of the 1954 Gojira returning to work on this war of the worlds tale include director Ishiro Honda and actors Takashi Shimura -- also a frequent collaborator with Akira Kurosawa -- Momoki Kochi, and Akihiko Hirata), and the vistas of destruction he creates here include flash floods, earthquakes, sinkholes and, of course, lots of model pagodas getting crushed to bits by a large, rampaging monster.

One thing my TV viewings of this movie did not include, however, were the widescreen compositions pulled off in the film by Honda and a couple of key collaborators -- cinematographer Hajime Koizumi and an unusual position, a "composition director" named Hiroshi Koyama -- and these are impressively shown off on this dvd.

This was, in fact, the first widescreen, full-color, special effects driven film ever made in Japan (which may account for the presence of the composition director), and from the first moments of the movie, with the TohoScope logo dissolving to the shot of earth and the Mysterians' mother ship, while a brassy fanfare suddenly drops into the eerie chords of Akira Ifukube (yet another Gojira alumnus) the imagery in the movie is first-rate stuff.

You also have the option (and I recommend this) of watching the movie in Japanese with subtitles instead of the English-language dub, so you can get the full impact of the original sound mix.

The Mysterians have picked the Earth for conquest from behind the cover of the sun (their planet Mysteroid is always coveniently on the other side and thus hidden from the view of 1957's most powerful telescopes), since their own world has been ravaged by nuclear warfare and they need not only our clean air but our women in order to replenish their population.

As the proper storyline of the movie begins, we meet one of the women the Mysterians have been scoping out, as she attends a local festival with her beau and their mysterious scientist friend. Tragedy cuts the festival short as lights are glimpsed in the sky and fire breaks out, surrounding several villagers and killing them.

Before too long, a monster comes on the scene, a giant robot that, I think, is one of the most ingenious kaiju suits Tsuburaya's effects came up with. Because the robot is already artificial, it doesn't have to convey the life that, say, Godzilla or Rodan have to be able to in order to work, and so the fact that it's a suit works in its favor. As it advances, making weird noises and inspiring the manic flight of dozens of extras from their homes, you really feel like you might actually be watching a robot. You get all the classic monster shots, like the view from inside the bathroom window as our heroine bathes with the robot walking by outside, and if you're any kind of kaiju fan that's the kind of gold you're mining for.

I mean, the effects in this movie aren't realistic by any means (this is, after all, a science fiction movie from the 1950's) but you can tell they were executed with love. There is a scene in which a tank disappears into a swirling vortex of earth as one of its occupants tries in vain to leap to safety which brings a smile to my face every time I see it, because you can just feel the sweat and long hours that went into its execution.

Eventually the robot is defeated and the Mysterians request a meeting with a group of scientists in order to outline their plan -- all they want is the land they already occupy and the chance to do the wild thang with a few of our women so they can rebuild their world with some offspring that is only half radioactive mutant (you have to wonder if this wasn't some secret comment about the Americans that occupied Japan after the end of World War II).

Naturally not wanting to subject the ladies of Japan to the lusts of a bunch of radioactive mutants wearing uniforms that today carry the stain of the mighty-morphin-power-rangers, they balk at this suggestion and continue fighting. And to make matters worse, there's a traitor involved.

Will mankind survive? Will the ladies of Japan turn out to actually like having sex with radioactive mutant aliens from the other side of the solar system? Will the cool giant robot from the beginning of the movie reappear again?

These and other questions will be answered when you check out The Mysterians.

The folks at Media Blasters must share my love for this movie because they've given it a pretty tricked-out dvd. In addition to the language options I mentioned above (and you can also watch the movie in Spanish, if you so desire), the audio design of the disc also includes a music-only track, which Ifukube's work here richly deserves, and a commentary track by Koichi Kawakita, who actually worked alongside the late Eiji Tsuburaya joined by Shinji Higuchi, who did the special effects for the recent string of Gamera movies. They analyze the film mostly in regard to the effects, but they do talk a little about the cast of the movie and Ishiro Honda, the director. But mostly they geek out over how inventive the effects work is for the time, and how the film still manages to play well for modern audiences. Since this is the kind of film worth geeking out over, the track is a lot of fun to listen to (and read, since the audio commentary is in subtitled Japanese!).

There are also brief galleries of stills and storyboards from the film set to the main title theme that run a few minutes each, and the original theatrical trailer.

Now, what would be really cool is to find a little toy of the robot from the movie ...