Preview: Enemy Monsters: Warning in Space

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Enemy Monsters is a sub-series focusing on non-Toho films inspired by, intended to compete with, or otherwise relevant to the Godzilla movies.

Daiei Film’s 1956 Warning from Space, known in Japan as Spacemen Appear Above Tokyo, is a highly significant entry in the history of Japanese tokusatsu (special effects) films. This is even though Warning from Space (I shall use the international title for the sake of brevity, even though the Japanese title is obviously way more awesome) is not a giant monster movie in the traditional sense - monsters are featured, but they are more or less human-scaled. Nor was the film even the first major science fiction production by Daiei; way back in 1949 the company had released The Invisible Man Appears, which featured special effects by Tsuburaya Eiji six years before he would provide them for Gojira and Toho’s own version of The Invisible Man the same year.

But the Invisible Man, as a concept, has its roots in H.G. Wells’ 1897 novel, and the general visuals of the character were immortalized in James Whale’s 1933 adaptation for Universal. Whereas Warning from Space, like Gojira, took its cues from the science fiction films of the 1950s, used the formula to explore a nuclear theme, and was made with the prestige treatment - frequent Kurosawa collaborator Oguni Hideo (already famous for writing duties on Ikiru and Seven Samurai) provided the script, while reliable drama filmmaker Shima Koji was tapped to direct. While the exact degree of inspiration that Gojira provided is unclear, that film’s lofty ambitions and A-list talent would have been an obvious role model for the Daiei producers looking to get in on Toho’s science fiction box office. And while Warning from Space didn’t end up making a huge cultural splash, it proved prescient in its own way.

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