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The Mysterians (1957)

★★ — The Mysterians (1957)

Released two years after Gojira (1954) established Ishirō Honda and special effects maestro Eiji Tsuburaya as Toho's defining creative partnership, The Mysterians marked the studio's first venture into widescreen colour science fiction, shot in the then-prestigious Tohoscope format. Honda was working at considerable pace during this period, turning out genre pictures almost annually, and the film sits comfortably within the broader 1950s wave of alien-invasion anxieties that gripped both American and Japanese popular cinema, coloured in Japan's case by very recent memories of atomic devastation. The screenplay draws loosely on a story by Jojiro Okami, and Tsuburaya's miniature work, already celebrated from the kaiju pictures, here had a considerably larger canvas to fill with spacecraft, ray weapons, and city-scale destruction.

The Mysterians (1957) is exactly what you’d expect from a mid-century Japanese sci-fi epic: grand ambitions, rubbery alien costumes, wobbly miniatures, and enough dome-headed invaders to fill a toy store. Directed by Ishirō Honda and featuring effects by Eiji Tsuburaya (the dream team behind Godzilla) it’s classic B-movie spectacle with a Cold War-era fear of the unknown baked into every frame. The story follows an alien race from Mars (yes, Mars) who crash-land in Japan, demand Earth women for breeding, and defend themselves with giant robots, force fields, and oddly polite speeches. Visually, it’s a mixed bag. The special effects are charmingly bad by today’s standards, miniature towns crumble like biscuits, spaceships hover on wires, and the Mysterian suits look like rejected jazzercise gear from another planet. But there’s something undeniably cool about its ambition. This was big-budget sci-fi for Toho at the time, and you can feel the effort in every laser blast and collapsing bridge. And yes, it does feature some of Japan’s finest actors of the era, bringing surprising gravitas to lines like “They want our women to save their species!” That contrast (serious performances against utterly ridiculous material) is part of what makes it a cult favorite. It doesn’t play as pure camp; it’s sincere in its absurdity. Watchable as a curiosity, a milestone in kaiju/sci-fi history, and a fascinating glimpse into postwar Japanese pop culture. Not good by any strict measure, but not junk either. A specialty film for fans of vintage tokusatsu, it’s a must-see mess.

Rating: ★★ | Year: 1957 | Watched: 2025-10-18

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Where to watch (US)

Stream: Criterion Channel · FlixFling
Rent: FlixFling
Buy: FlixFling
Physical: Amazon UK

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