My Cultural Diet

Ishirô Honda may be best known for introducing the world to Godzilla and other kaiju including Rodan and King Ghidorah. But he directed a string of sci-fi films throughout the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s, including 1957’s The Mysterians, which Honda ranked among his favorites. Here, Japan faces a one-two punch in the form of a giant robot that lays waste to the countryside and, more importantly, the arrival of the Mysterians, a mysterious (npi) alien race whose arrival was foretold by a now-disappeared astrophysicist. At first, the Mysterians claim to only want peaceful coexistence, but Earth’s suspicions are raised by the Mysterians’ erratic behavior, including their demands to mate with Earth women. But will humanity be able to unite in time to overcome the Mysterians’ vastly advanced technology? Released a little more than a decade after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, The Mysterians is essentially Honda’s warning against placing too much faith in science, albeit one rendered with charming miniatures and scale model work and captured in that classic TohoScope cinematography. Unfortunately, the actual storyline is clunky and disjointed, and it feels like several key scenes were left on the cutting room floor, which undermines the scenes of widespread disaster as well as Honda’s earnest warning.

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