Surprisingly incoherent and boring

Just perfect...

How sad is this?

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

This movie presents some shortcoming typical of TOHO/low budget Japanese productions, EG some miniatures look like garage sale toys and some SFX are poor, yet i found it extremely enjoyable. Remember it was 1962, much before big budgeted Hollywood movies. The movie is easily watchable (got a letter-boxed edition), images are very clear, SFX very good period-wise. The plot (albeit very simple) unfolds nicely. There are many far fetched assumptions and scientific nonsense, EG the moon gets destroyed, earth is moved 400.000 km, YET nothing major happens as Gorath drifts away in the deep space. The space mission obsession continues. In 1982 (that's when Gorath was supposed to collide with earth ) they portray dozens of space stations, and tremendous ease to travel upto Saturn, Jupiter etc. We're 25 years past 1982 and not the tiniest fraction of such advancements has been made. There are a few subplots, which do not get in the way. Character development is extremely limited, if any. All in all an enjoyable movie worth watching twice. I saw the giant walrus, too. I suppose it was a diversion to improve the rhythm, which was running in circles around the Pole operation. A giant planet, whose extension is barely 3/4 earth's but whose mass is 6000+ times, is on collision course with earth. A first space mission perishes while trying to investigate the matter. Yet UN scientists have been alerted and plan to install reactors to the pole to propel earth 400.000 away, to avoid Gorath's devastating gravity. Pretty much all there.The scientific rationale behind stars of incredible density/gravity was popular back then and stemmed from (incorrect) assumptions about the origins of gamma ray bursts first uncovered by US spy satellites looking for Soviet nuclear tests. Gamma ray bursts (according to a theory popular back then) originated from Gorasu kind of stars.

Gorath is not the name of a giant Walrus in the Japanese version of this film. Though not badly done, as giant Walruses go, this is not a giant Walrus film. It's as you can see by other reviews a space/disaster film. The Walrus and one other scene of a group of men deciding to spontaneously sing a song while flying in a helicopter are really the only two bad moments in the film. I guess the Walrus is gone from the American print which might be just as well, though the widescreen FX and photography really need to be seen letter-boxed to be appreciated.Overall this is a pretty large scale disaster film with many, and mostly good, miniatures, a number of them on a very large scale, fleets of ships, the Arctic, Tokyo being flooded etc. The whole film moves much better than the American film WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE and is especially helped by a very good musical score that reminds me of those done by James Bernhard for Hammer horror films.The killer "star" which gives the films is named Gorath and it is quite well done as are all the space effects. This film will disappoint giant monster fans since the giant monster is only in a couple of scenes, but those who like science fiction films will find a pretty serious and mostly credible film here, one that looks far newer than it's actual age. Recommended to fans of director Honda and certainly those of Japanese Science fiction, those who prefer films that actually work rather than those that are just silly and insane. I enjoy both types and found this film to be well worth checking out, letter-boxed and in Japanese at least. Oh as is typical, even in the Japanese language version, some characters do speak English occasionally

This was the first Japanese film that I saw that didn't rely on a giant monster to make it an interesting story (there is a giant monster, but it is mainly used as filler). Essentially, the message of this film is about how the people of Earth should learn to cooperate, especially when faced with extinction. We do not need an extreme threat like an onrushing planetoid to learn to cooperate due to the fact that we have such threats as global warming, pollution, crime and hunger that are already eating away at us. Also, I hope one day that an uncut version of this film is released in this country. The message of this film has all but been hacked to pieces by the American distributors of this classic piece of Japanese science fiction.

This movie just proves that the main theme of Science Fiction movies in 1997 is not a new thing. The idea of large planetary bodies crashing into Earth has been a sci-fi movie idea since the time of When World's Collide.Gorath is a planet (which looks like a small star) that is on a collision course with the Earth. Mankind unites to come up with a rather unique way to avert total destruction. It's not Armageddon or Deep Impact...but if often seems better acted than either of those huge-budgeted B-movies.