Gorath Movie Review

One of the few Japanese sci-fi flicks you'll see with a display at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. Title refers to a collapsed star on a collision course with Earth. Top scientists of 1979 cooperate internationally to construct huge nuclear jet engines in the Antarctic to literally shove Earth out of Gorath's path. Imaginative details (a la Immanuel Velikovsky) show disasters spawned by Gorath's gravity, like the sucking away of Saturn's rings. Because Toho Studios specialized in giant monster movies, a last-minute cast addition was ‘Magma,’ a pre-historic walrus awakened by the heat. He's been cut from the print on U.S. home video – no great loss – but the re-edits and clumsy dubbing (half the actors speak with distinct pipes of voiceover artist Paul Frees) lend a tacky feel to this elaborate space-disaster drama. AKA: Yosei Gorasu.

1964 77m/C JP Ryo Ikebe, Akihiko Hirata, Jun Tazaki, Yumi Shirakawa, Takashi Shimura, Kumi Mizuno; D: Inoshiro Honda; W: Takeshi Kimura; C: Hajime Koizumi. VHS, Beta GEM, PSM