In 1977, George Lucas, with his Star Wars, redefined the commercial and technical parameters of science fiction on the big screen. That achievement became obvious in comparison with other filmmakers who were trying to quickly exploit the newly found popularity of the genre by applying special effects which were suddenly made obsolete. One of them was Jun Fukuda, a Japanese director who, only months after the premiere of Star Wars, delivered a spectacular space opera of its own under the title The War in Space.
The plot is set in the autumn of 1988 and begins with the arrival of a giant alien space ship into the Solar System. Soon afterwards, the United Nations Space Bureau loses contact with Space Station Terra, and the Earth is affected by electromagnetic waves that disrupt communication and visited by UFOs that create panic. Experts at the Japanese branch of the Bureau think that it might be a prelude to invasion, and the hostility of the aliens is confirmed when they try to infiltrate the Bureau disguised as humans. This is followed by an open attack on various cities of the world. The only option for Earth to defend itself is the Gohten, an experimental state-of-the-art space battleship designed by Professor Takigawa (played by Ryō Ikebe) which had been abandoned in an underground base for years. Despite the underground base being bombed, Takigawa and his crew manage to put the Gohten into service and defeat alien attack vessels, but their formidable mother ship remains on the surface of Venus. The Gohten begins a long and difficult journey during which the aliens manage to kidnap Takigawa's daughter June (played by Yuko Asano) and force the crew, which includes her fiancé Reisuke Muroi (played by Masaya Oki) and former boyfriend Kojo Miyoshi (played by Kensaku Morita), to conduct an extremely difficult and dangerous rescue mission.
The War in Space was made with only a fraction of Star Wars' budget, and this is most visible in the special effects by Teruyoshi Nakano, which look dated, although they turn out to be adequate in certain scenes, especially those taking place on the surface of Venus, which is created with a lot of ingenuity. Production design, on the other hand, is less effective in the case of the alien vessel, which looks a little too much like a Roman galley. Within the ship, the most memorable detail is the villain's main henchman in the form of a horned wookie armed with a laser axe and forcibly holding a scantily clad June as prisoner. Even with these "campy" details, the film could have been very good, if not for the terrible wooden acting, which is made worse by the love triangle subplot and melodramatic finale. The only thing that makes The War in Space satisfactory to a certain degree is the good music and its short running time, which makes its flaws less annoying, especially for less demanding fans of old science fiction films.
RATING: 5/10 (++)
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