Tag: Iran

Ishiro Honda
Double Feature
The H Man
(Bijo
To Ekitai-ningen,
美女と液体人間)
and
Battle
In Outer Space
(Uchu Daisenso,
宇宙大戦争)

The H Man

*****

Director – Ishiro Honda – 1958 – Japan – Cert. X – 86m

Battle in Outer Space

*****

Director – Ishiro Honda – 1959 – Japan – Cert. U – 90m

Alongside the standalone release of Mothra (1961) comes a double bill of two more Toho science fiction movies directed by Ishiro Honda with special effects by Eiji Tsuburaya: , The H Man (1958) and Battle In Outer Space (1959). The Toho studio is associated more with monster movies than any other genre, notably Godzilla (1954) and Mothra. The superior entries in this cycle tend to be the ones they directed, including the initial 1954 film which ticked all the right boxes to prove a massive success.

When no-one at Toho was quite sure what had made Godzilla work, the pair collaborated on a number of different SF films before everything came together on Mothra. The H Man is a monster film dressed up in gangster trappings while Battle in Outer Space is an epic with space stations, flying saucers, rocket ships, an alien moon base and alien mind control… [read more]

Over at All The Anime, I review Eureka!’s Ishiro Honda double bill Blu-ray.

Tags 1950s, alien, America, astronaut, Battle In Outer Space, bombardment, cinema building, Cinerama, Columbia, conference, Conquest Of Space, cops, cops and robbers, damsel in distress, detective, East Germany, Eiji Tsubaraya, Etsuko Shiraishi, Forbidden Planet, freezing, gags, gangster, gas, gender bias, George Pal, George Whitman, ghost, Godzilla, Golden Gate Bridge, Great Space War, India, inspector, Iran, Ishiro Honda, Japan, Jasper Sharp, Kaiju, Kyoko Anzai, landscape, life form, liquid, Matango, meteors, mind control, monster, moon, Mothra, mushroom, mutant, New York, nuclear tests, Philippines, police, police procedural, position of women, Puppetoons, ray, rover, Ryu Ikebe, sailor, San Francisco, science, science fiction, scientist, SF, Shinichi Sekizawa, ship, singer, song, space torpedoes, space travel, special effects, Takashi Kimura, The H Man, The H Men, The Human Vapor, The War Of The Worlds, This Island Earth, Toho, Tokyo, trauma, UFO, US, Warning From Space, weightlessness, Yoshio Tsuchiya, zero gravity

Features Live Action Movies

Battle
In Outer Space
(Uchu Daisenso,
宇宙大戦争,
lit. The Great Space War)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 31 March 2021
No Comments on Battle
In Outer Space
(Uchu Daisenso,
宇宙大戦争,
lit. The Great Space War)

*****

Director – Ishiro Honda – 1959 – Japan – Cert. U – 90m

Battle In Outer Space is one of those films that paints on a bigger canvas and sacrifices character development in favour of big-screen visual spectacle, brought to life with state-of-the-art special effects. According to Kalat, the film owes much to the bigger Hollywood 1950s SF feature film films made in colour. These include not only films by former Puppetoon animation creator George Pal such as The War Of The Worlds (1953) and Conquest Of Space (1955) but also This Island Earth (1955) and Forbidden Planet (1956).

Honda’s film wades straight in to alien war scenarios… [read more]

Over at All The Anime, I review Eureka!’s Ishiro Honda Blu-ray double bill of The H Man and Battle In Outer Space.

Tags 1950s, alien, America, astronaut, Battle In Outer Space, bombardment, cinema building, Cinerama, Columbia, conference, Conquest Of Space, damsel in distress, East Germany, Eiji Tsubaraya, Etsuko Shiraishi, Forbidden Planet, freezing, gags, gender bias, George Pal, George Whitman, Godzilla, Golden Gate Bridge, Great Space War, India, Iran, Ishiro Honda, Japan, Kyoko Anzai, landscape, life form, meteors, mind control, moon, Mothra, New York, nuclear tests, Philippines, position of women, Puppetoons, ray, rover, Ryu Ikebe, San Francisco, science, science fiction, scientist, SF, Shinichi Sekizawa, ship, space torpedoes, space travel, special effects, The H Men, The War Of The Worlds, This Island Earth, Toho, Tokyo, UFO, US, weightlessness, Yoshio Tsuchiya, zero gravity

Animation Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Coup 53

Director – Taghi Amirani – 2019 – UK – Cert. 15 – 120m

*****

In cinemas from Friday, August 21st

Virtual premiere Wednesday August 19th, Q&A Thursday August 20th. Film available to view at https://coup53.com/

A documentary begun in 2009 interviewing many people who died before the film’s completion some ten years later, this covers the 1953 coup in Iran backed by President Eisenhower in the US and Prime Minister Churchill in the UK which replaced Iran’s democratically elected, left-wing Prime Minister Mossadegh with the Shah. The UK has never officially acknowledged its role in this coup.

Amirani’s researches lead him to a basement of documents held by Mossadech’s grandson in Paris comprising archive material from the Granada TV 1985 End Of Empire documentary series, for which he is gets access to the rushes from the BFI. Iran was included because it had been controlled by British interests for so long (because of its oil reserves). Amirani’s editor, helping pull all this together, is the legendary Walter Murch (Gimme Shelter / 1970, The Conversation / 1974, Apocalypse Now / 1979, The English Patient / 1996).

The name which keeps coming up in Amirani’s research is that of Norman Darbyshire who reportedly asked for his interview footage to be removed from the film following a pre-transmission screening at the BBC.… Read the rest

Tags 2D animation, animation, archive footage, history, Iran, live action animation composite, politics, regime change, suppressed, talking heads, transcripts, UK, undercover, US