"Calamity Star Gorath" (1962)

Above, the DVD box art.

A rogue star 3/4 the size of Earth but with a mass 6000 times that of Earth has entered our solar system and is on a collision course with Earth. Mankind bands together to devise a way to prevent the catastrophic collision.

The star was named Gorath and that is also the name of the movie, Gorath (or Calamity Star Gorath). It was produced in 1962 by Toho Co., Ltd. and features a who's who of Toho actors, including Akira Kubo, Kenji Sahara, Kumi Mizuno, Takashi Shimura, Akihiko Hirata and Ryo Ikebe. It was directed by Ishiro Honda.

Above, actor Kenji Sahara and Armand.

It has been ages since I've seen Gorath. I recently purchased the DVD and finally sat down to watch it. The special effects were top-notch by 1962 standards (by Eiji Tsuburaya). The movie proved once again (at least to my eyes) that watching scenes of destruction with the use of miniatures is a lot more fun than with computer-generated imaging.

Gorath was an enjoyable sci-fi/disaster movie and my grade is A.

Happy 56th Birthday, Godzilla!

While the media pundits are busy analyzing yesterday's election results, I am switching gears to make note of today's "birthday boy."

56 years ago today, on November 3, 1954, Godzilla was released in Japan. It was a landmark film which started the genre of Japanese science-fiction and fantasy movies (the giant monster genre is known as daikaiju eiga amongst fans).

The movie was produced by Tomoyuki Tanaka and directed by Ishiro Honda. The special effects were created by Eiji Tsuburaya.

It starred Akira Takarada, Momoko Kôchi, Akihiko Hirata and Takashi Shimura.

56 years later, the monster king is still making movies. Legendary Pictures and Warner Brothers are in pre-production of a new American Godzilla movie that is slated to be released in 2012.