Scott LeBrun Hostile aliens from the planet of Natal make their presence known to the people of Earth. All that they demand is complete surrender. But humankind won't go down without a fight. All the nations of the planet are thus motivated to band together. An integrated crew mans two rockets that are flown to the moon, where it is believed that the aliens are headquartering."Battle in Outer Space" is fun to watch, to a degree, although this viewer never found it as exciting as he might have liked. It is slightly overlong, and plodding. It takes until the final quarter hour of the movie until the title battle can take place. The characters, by and large, lack any really interesting features, except perhaps for the dedicated scientist Professor Adachi, played by Koreya Senda. There is a quiet romantic interlude early on, but it's over before too long.At the least, it can be said that this is fairly colourful (both literally and figuratively) entertainment. The visuals are nicely photographed in widescreen by cinematographer Hajime Koizumi, and the special effects are rather dazzling. Some of the sequences on the moon are reasonably creepy. One fine moment occurs when one of our human characters risks their own life to ensure that the other heroes can make a clean getaway.The extremely prolific Japanese genre director Ishiro Honda gives the proceedings a decent amount of style. His movie does just fine as a selection for a slow Sunday afternoon.Six out of 10.

Woodyanders A race of no-count aliens plan on invading earth. They make their base of operations on the moon. An expedition of folks made up of people from all over the world embark on a mission to the moon in order to thwart the dastardly extraterrestrials. Director Ishiro Honda relates the absorbing story at a reasonably snappy pace, maintains a serious tone throughout, and stages the stirring action with rip-roaring gusto. While the opening third is a bit slow and dull, the narrative fortunately picks up considerable steam and momentum once the mission is underway. The sequences on the moon are quite gripping and suspenseful. The spaceship dogfights are likewise very lively and exciting. Another memorable highlight occurs when the aliens destroy Tokyo. The cast give admirably sincere performances, with an especially stand-out turn by Yoshiro Tsuchiya as a scientist who falls prey to the aliens' ability to control human minds. Akira Ifukube contributes a robust and rousing score. Hajime Koizuma's bright color cinematography makes breathtaking use of the widescreen format. The squeaky-voiced aliens are a total hoot. Best of all, Eiji Tsuburaya's nifty and impressive special effects are truly something to behold, with striking matte paintings and nice miniatures (the opening scene with a train being wrecked rates as a particularly memorable moment). Moreover, there's even a positive and uplifting central message about how the human race can be a mighty and unbeatable force by banding together against a common foe. A solid and satisfying item.

marcolm Battle in Outer Space brings back some happy memories. I recall seeing this movie at the local Strand Theatre. I was (10) years old at the time and it was such a revelation to see an outer space film in "Color". In those days most Saturday afternoon Sci-Fi was in B/W. True, there were a few high dollar efforts like War of the Worlds and Forbidden Planet but for the money, or lack there of, this "B" films brilliant colors & special effects (loved those jitter-bugging saucers)held its own with the big boys. I recently bought a Japanese DVD version at eBay, with English subtitles, and believe me it's just not the same as the dubbed English version. Forget the bad lip-sink, that "Voice of Doom" from the Natal Moon base is not nearly as ominous in Japanese. Glad to see others remember this little "B" gem too. Hope to see it properly released in DVD soon.

rudge49 Saw this when I was 11 years old, I recall the rocket fighters sent up by the Earth Forces are based on the X-15 rocket plane. One thing I remember-and it moved me at the time, and is one of the movie's strengths-is the scene where the earth space ships go past the area where the space station was destroyed-and you see the bodies of the crew. The action moves at a brisk pace, no long winded speeches or philosophizing. The SFX are pretty good for the time. As a side issue, I got a chuckle when I saw "Star Wars" in 1977, I recognized the "futuristic weapons" as being models of British Lee Enfields, German MG-42 machine guns, Heckler & Koch submachine guns.