Found a Japanese disc of this 1962 Toho film (Yosei Gorasu). I remember seeing stills of it in Famous Monsters magazine back then but could never find it in theaters or on TV.
It's sort of a Japanese When Worlds Collide, but instead of another planet coming our way, it's a "star" that's 3/4 the size of Earth but 6,000 times its mass. (I know, I know.)
[SIZE=3]In WWC the solution to the impending collision was an arc-type rocketship to find a new world. In Gorath, they decide to move Earth out of the way by installing a huge array of thrusters in Antarctica.
A mostly silly 90-min movie that runs 60 min too long. But it has a couple of cool scenes. One is the view of Earth from space with Antarctica all aglow from the thrusters. The other is Gorath's gravitational field stripping Saturn's rings as it passes.
This release contains the missing 6 minutes of the giant walrus (awakened by the melting of the Antarctic ice) that were cut from the version released in the US because they thought it was too silly. Probably a good decision. It did nothing for the story (what little there is) and looked like a hand puppet.
TohoScope's 2.35:1 aspect ratio demands a large screen.
The subtitles are all English except during the UN scenes when people are speaking English -- then they switch to Japanese. I've never seen this before, but it works.
Why am I wasting so much time writing about this? [/SIZE]
This post was last modified: 06-24-2005, 08:14 AM by fpw.
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