The X from Outer Space


The X from Outer Space is a 1967 Japanese science fiction kaiju film directed by Kazui Nihonmatsu, and stars Eiji Okada and Toshiya Wazaki.
Stock footage of the monster Guilala from the film was reused in the 2008 comedy film Monster X Strikes Back: Attack the G8 Summit.

Plot

The spaceship AAB Gamma is dispatched from Japan to the planet Mars to investigate reports of UFOs seen near the Red Planet. When the spaceship arrives, it encounters one of the UFOs, which suddenly sprays the AAB Gamma with spores. A sample of the spores is returned to Earth, where one of them begins to develop.
The spore is accidentally exposed to acid, and grows into a giant creature that is named "Guilala". It continues to feed on any kind of energy source, and grows bigger and more powerful. The monster begins a reign of destruction through Tokyo. It spits fireballs, feeds on nuclear fuel, turns into a flaming orb to travel great distances by air in mere minutes, and destroys all aircraft and tanks in its path. Guilala is finally defeated by fighter jets laden with bombs, which coat it in a substance called "Guilalanium", a substance that prevents it from absorbing energy. This causes Guilala to shrink down to its original spore form. Stored in a glass container filled with Guilalanium, it is rendered permanently harmless. The government promptly launches it back into space, where it will orbit the Sun in a nigh-inescapable heliocentric orbit for the foreseeable future.

Cast

  • Toshiya Wazaki as Captain K. Sano
  • Itoko Harada as Michiko Taki
  • Shinichi Yanagisawa as H. Miyamoto
  • Eiji Okada as Dr. Kato
  • Peggy Neal as Lisa Schneider
  • Franz Gruber as Dr. Berman
  • Mike Daneen as Dr. Stein
  • Keisuke Sonoi as Dr. M. Shioda
  • Torahiko Hamada as Mr. Kimura
  • Hiroshi Fujioka as Moon base worker
  • Eizo Kaimai as Guilala

    Release

The X From Outer Space was released in Japan on 25 March 1967. The film was never released theatrically in the United States, but instead was released directly to television in 1968 by American International Television.
The Criterion Collection released The X from Outer Space on DVD through their Eclipse label in a boxed set entitled When Horror Came to Shochiku. This DVD set offers both an English subtitled and a dubbed version of the film. This boxed set was released on November 20, 2012.

Reception

Film historian Chuck Stephens described the film as having "a well-deserved reputation as one of the silliest and, as a consequence, most beloved rubber-suit monster movies ever made". Sight & Sound described the film as a "harebrained kaiju epic" that was "Cheesy, rich in comic non sequiturs and scored with an unpredictable mishmash of 1960s pop and bossa nova. X fits comfortably into one's stoned best-bad-movie rental evening". Author and film critic Glenn Erickson characterized the film as "simply... terrible," describing the monster as "a preposterous concoction, a 20-story chicken with a head shaped like a jet plane." Writing for Turner Classic Movies, critic Nathaniel Thompson wrote that the film "offers a substantial amount of entertainment value, thanks to its dual menaces of a gloppy space entity and a rampaging chicken monster," and included a "jaw-dropping and vaguely pornographic dispatching of the beast at the end."