Battle in Outer Space (1958)

Note: This review is of the American version of the movie.  Also included on the DVD is the original Japanese version.  I’ve never seen this version so I can’t say that it addresses any of the issues that I’m going to bring up in my review.

The plot to Battle in Outer Space is very straightforward and simple.  Aliens have decided to enslave Earth and make their presence known by destroying stuff with their freeze cannon.  See if you freeze something to absolute zero gravity doesn’t apply anymore and it starts to float away!  The powerful nations of Earth band together and send a couple of rocket ships to the Moon to check out the alien’s base there.  After destroying it the Earth then builds a fleet of spaceships to fight off the actual invasion.  The aliens are defeated and the Earth is saved!

This is one of those movies that I remember loving as a kid.  I have to say, at least story wise, the movie just didn’t hold up for me.  There really isn’t much to the plot at all, with the first part of the movie being dominated by uninteresting characters chatting about dubious science (freezing things makes them float off the planet?), followed by an hour or so of models flying around the screen blowing things and each other up.  When I was younger I used to love the space battles in this movie, but now as an adult I have to admit I was sort of bored by them.  Battle in Outer Space focuses so much on the special effects that you really never connect with any of the characters.  Making what happens to them as they zip around really tedious. 

Now all of that said this movie looks incredible.  The special effects with the models are spectacular and far beyond anything else you would have seen at the time.  I love Ray Harryhausen and his style of effects, but Battle in Outer Space really does surpass what he was doing away.  Now to be fair Toho studios has put a great deal of resources into these effects, far more than Harryhausen probably ever had to work with.  The model work is very detailed and the film does a great job cutting the live action stuff with the miniatures.  Really other than a couple of terrible matte paintings this movie’s effects are perfect.  I also think that being in color helped make the movie stand out even more from most of the B & W genre films in the states.  

So basically what we have here is an excellent Sci-fi movie that focuses so much on looking good that it ends up ignoring story and character.  Honestly that is kind of a damn shame considering the great technical achievements.  Sure they might look dated now but for the time this was cutting edge stuff, that I still think looks good today.  Give me a model spaceship blowing up over a computer-generated effect that looks like it belongs in a video game any day!  That said I still can’t ignore the plot issues, but the fact that I’m still giving the movie a decent rating ought to tell you how great it looks.

2 out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer

© Copyright 2009 John Shatzer