5/29/09: The Mysterians (1957)
In a recent entry, we pondered which movie stars or directors made the most frequent appearances on RightWingTrash. Somehow, we forgot Godzilla. The radioactive lizard made so many appearances here that we almost retired him into a Hall of Fame. In the process, we neglected some other important movies from Japan’s legendary Toho Studios—like
The Mysterians.
This sci-fi extravaganza seems to have built its reputation thanks to constant airings on Los Angeles television. We certainly never saw it on the Southern stations that were airing plenty of other Toho product. In fact, we never even heard of the movie until Johnny Slash mentioned it on an episode of
Square Pegs. R.I.P., Merritt Butrick.
Our bootleg copy (circa ’87) probably isn’t the definitive version, but let’s go with what we have. The film starts with a moody astronomer (or astronomy student) named Riyoichi Shiraishi having a lousy time during some kind of harvest festival. We’ll later learn that Shiraishi is really into the idea of an asteroid belt that he fancies to be a former planet that he’s called Mysteroid. That’s shorthand for “mysterious asteroid.” Shiraishi is distracted when a forest fire breaks out near the festival. Not long afterwards, the same village—which has somehow become the focus of Shiraishi’s studies—suffers a huge mudslide that makes for some state-of-the-art miniature special effects.
Shiraishi has a scientist pal named Joji Atsumi who goes to check out the situation at the village. He hooks up with the local cops just in time to see a giant robot monster emerge from a mountainside. The monster rampages through the village, peeps in on a bathing beauty (who happens to be Shiraishi’s sister), wreaks havoc, and then plunges to its doom when the military blows up a bridge that probably would have collapsed under the robot’s weight, anyway.
This is how the Mysterians send their message of peace.
The alien race has been hiding out behind Earth’s moon, but has also dropped down long enough to set up a Mysterian base underneath a lake by that village. The army shows up when the base rises from the water, but The Mysterians announce that they will only speak to the five scientists in the group. The men of science enter the base, where they learn that Shiraishi was pretty much right about that whole theory involving the asteroid belt. The people of the planet of Mysteroid (if that isn’t a contradiction) nuked themselves into oblivion about a thousand years ago. Some survivors immigrated to Mars, but a lot of damage was done to the gene pool.
The Mysterian leader makes a big deal out of how he’s talking to the scientists because they’re so much more sophisticated than military men, and then explains that all the Mysterians need is the three square kilometers of land around the lake where their base has been built—and also some Earthling women for the breeding of non-mutated li’l Mysterians.
That could probably be arranged if the Mysterians hadn’t already chosen the babes they want. The women include Shiraishi’s sister and his former fiancée. Atsumi knows them both, and he’s one of the scientists talking to the Mysterians. Negotiations go badly from there. Actually, Atsumi’s personal angle is probably necessary for it to be believable when the scientists agree with the generals about how those Mysterians have to go.
This is where
The Mysterians touches on a recurring issue with RightWingTrash. Obviously, the aliens are a metaphor for the American occupation in Japan. A good Leftist professor would love to discuss this film in whatever course he’s teaching on Popular Culture. He’d still have to ignore how
The Mysterians—like so many other old Leftist scripts—ultimate serves conservative thought. For those who don’t remember, the American occupation didn’t turn out to be a bad thing for Japan. The country did a good job of getting its act together in the wake of World War II. They certainly deserve respect for taking North Korea more seriously during the ’90s than Madeleine Albright ever did.
Today,
The Mysterians is about the importance of going to war against so-called enlightened types who talk so rationally about peace, but are really just power-hungry creeps. A lot of Japanese monster movies cover this territory. As noted, we’ve written up a few—and passed on the chance to ramble about similar (but more fleeting) moments in films such as
Destroy All Monsters.
The Mysterians nails the future in plenty of ways, including how the aliens respond after easily defeating the first strike by the Japanese army. In the aftermath, they make a big deal out of appealing to the public about how they’re a peaceful bunch of Mysterians who just want three kilometers of Earth. Seriously, what’s the big deal?
We see a French newspaper with a headline pondering whether the Mysterians are allies or enemies. An English publication called
The Liberal Times announces a big UN conference. It’s a little less believable when a Japanese scientist gets to ask the very intelligent question of if it’s believable that the Mysterians came all the way to Earth for three kilometers of land.
We haven’t mentioned that Shiraishi has become a traitor who takes over the airwaves to tell Earthlings to give in to the superior Mysterians. He seems honestly shaken when the Mysterian commander explains to him that the aliens will soon be taking over all of Japan. For a while, we thought Shiraishi might be a government astrophysicist. This was the part that convinced us he was a college student—or maybe a professor.
We learn that the American military is keeping track of the Mysterians via satellite technology in Arizona, while Shiraishi shows back up on television and explains that the aliens are really great guys. His remorse didn’t last long. That’s probably because most of Shiraishi’s enthusiasm seems to be about how much the Mysterians adore Earthling scientists.
The military eventually defeats the Mysterians, but that’s not really a spoiler. The robot monster at the beginning wasn’t exactly invincible. First, however, there has to be a lecture from a Japanese scientist about how Earth can’t defend itself with nukes, lest we end up fragmented like Mysteroid. No problem, though. An American scientist shows up to announce that the USA now has something called a Markalite Gun, and it can blow up Mysterians real good. Not surprisingly, the Japanese scientist doesn’t doubt the American’s claims.
It isn’t entirely left to American ingenuity to save the day. Atsumi gets to be an action hero, but the Markalite certainly helps matters. We learn the Mysterians have been grabbing up a lot more than five women. And it’s probably okay to go ahead and reveal that Shiraishi has a change of heart, since that’s no less bizarre than the rest of the movie.
Also, we finally get to see what the Mysterians look like under their helmets. It’s not pretty—but not as funny as when the aliens are revealed in
Godzilla vs. Gigan. That link, incidentally, leads to an entry that links to another Godzilla entry, so new readers can see that we aren’t kidding about all the times that the big lizard makes an appearance here.
Make it your own: It's no surprise that
The Mysterians has received a lovingly restored reissue
on DVD—but it was several years ago, which means we didn’t jump on the disc like we did for
our review of
Earth vs. the Flying Saucers. That one certainly seems to have influenced our friends at Toho.
