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Captain Sano (Toshiya Wazaki) and his crew (Peggy Neal, Mike Daneen,
Shinichi Yanagisawa) are to pilot the spaceship AAB to Mars to find out
what has become of all other Martian expeditions so far, which disappeared
off the radar at some certain point in space. And really, and that same
point in space, AAB is attacked by a UFO, too, our heroes are almost
killed due to a crack in the ship's hull, and weird organic matter is
found clinging to AAB's thrusters - of which science officer takes a
sample aboard. But with the help of moon station staffer Michiko (Itoko
Harada), AAB makes it back to the moon, and subsequently back to earth -
where Lisa and Michiko realize they are both in love with the same man,
Sano. Now this might be a tragedy to some, but the far bigger tragedy for
all humankind is that the tiny speck of organic space sample Lisa has
brought back to earth develops into the giant spacemonster Guilala in no
time which destroys city after city after city, feeds on atomic power,
preferably consumed directly at the source (power plants, which it likes
to smash), sometimes it transforms into a luminescent red ball to fly
around, and what's really worrying - it cannot be stopped by anything
known to man ... except for, at least according to Lisa's theory,
Guilalanium, which there is plenty of on moon. So it's back to the moon
for the AAB crew and Michiko, but on their way back to earth with the
Guilalanium, they are attacked by the UFO again, discover it's not 100%
safe to travel with Guilalanium and so on and so forth - but they finally
make it back to earth, just when the space center they are supposed to
land at is attacked by Guilala - but captain Sano and his second in
command (Shinichi Yanagisawa) still have the nerve to create a diversion
while the others get the Guilalanium ready, and ultimately, Guilala is
molten back to the tiny organic space speck it originally was and shot
back out into space. And Lisa gives up Sano for Michiko's sake as she
doesn't want to stand in the way of true love. By 1967,
Japanese giant monster movies were pretty much a dime a dozen, and when it
came to plot, they were less than inventive - and The X from Outer
Space is no exception. And it's not that well written either (only a
few Japanese giant monster movies are though), it spends way too much of
its running time with the build-up, which feels like a underdeveloped
space opera with not much stringency put into it and topped by an
unnecessary romance subplot, the science aspect of the film is lacking in
logic, and finally the characters are all very weakly developed and hardly
beyond one-dimensional. But what makes this movie (besides ok done
destruction sequences) is the very weird shape of the monster's head
that's just too endearing to not ... well, be endearing - and also the
reason why Guilala eventually returned in a sequel more than 30 years
later, the satire The Monster X
Strikes Back: Attack the G8 Summit. To sum all of this up, no, The
X from Outer Space is by no means a "good" or even original
movie - but fans of trashy giant monster movies will love it all the same.
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