Hostile aliens from the planet of Natal make their presence known to the people of Earth. All that they demand is complete surrender. But humankind won't go down without a fight. All the nations of the planet are thus motivated to band together. An integrated crew mans two rockets that are flown to the moon, where it is believed that the aliens are headquartering."Battle in Outer Space" is fun to watch, to a degree, although this viewer never found it as exciting as he might have liked. It is slightly overlong, and plodding. It takes until the final quarter hour of the movie until the title battle can take place. The characters, by and large, lack any really interesting features, except perhaps for the dedicated scientist Professor Adachi, played by Koreya Senda. There is a quiet romantic interlude early on, but it's over before too long.At the least, it can be said that this is fairly colourful (both literally and figuratively) entertainment. The visuals are nicely photographed in widescreen by cinematographer Hajime Koizumi, and the special effects are rather dazzling. Some of the sequences on the moon are reasonably creepy. One fine moment occurs when one of our human characters risks their own life to ensure that the other heroes can make a clean getaway.The extremely prolific Japanese genre director Ishiro Honda gives the proceedings a decent amount of style. His movie does just fine as a selection for a slow Sunday afternoon.Six out of 10.

"Battle in Outer Space" is another gem from Toho Studios. The film boasts some excellent (for 1959) special effects. The color print is stunning as well. The plot is similar to "The Mysterians" with aliens trying to take over mankind. In the end of course, earth triumphs over the aliens. The acting is decent, the dubbing is passable. The music score is done well. The real star of this film are the outer space scenes. I really enjoyed the spacecraft as well as the battle scenes. Toho Studios are more well known for their monster films (Godzilla, Rodan, Mothra)but these space films are just as good. If you get a chance, catch this as well as "The Mysterians".

I saw this film in 1960 playing with "The Time Machine" as a double feature. Though not as rich in story line as "The Mysterians" this film really takes off when the two Speep earthships go to the moon to battle a base set up by the planet Matal who also fly "Mysterian" style flying saucers. On the moon the action really starts with marvelous raygun battles between the enemy and earth forces. The earth forces possess a marvelous heat ray cannon as well as smaller but potent raygun rifles. Later in the film, the earth forces battle invading flying saucers and a mother ship with X-15 styled fighter craft equipped with heat ray guns. The finale with the mother ship's ray gun destroying Toyko is done quite well.For the time this film was made, the special effects are quite good. Considering my nickname is ray-gun 3, this is a ten star IMDb vote scale film in that department. I think the best scene in the film is on the moon where one of the crew stays behind with his ray rifle destroying flying saucers so the earth force can get away in their Speep spaceship. This scene is one of the best piece of special effects I have scene in this type of movie. A thought to remember is the film was made 17 to 18 years before "Star Wars". An outstanding accomplishment by Toho studios.

I saw "Uchu daisenso" or as it was titled when I saw it, Battle in Outer Space" when I was a kid- a long time ago. Now of course the inevitable comparison to modern space operas will reduce the impact of this simple picture, but taken in the context in which I first viewed it, this was a really cool movie. For starters, it was in glorious color, a rarity in sci-fi in the late 50's I can tell you. I saw a lot of horror and sci-fi movies when I was kid and color was rare. And like most Japanese sci-fi imports of the time this was the whole world united against the invading alien hordes. Yeah a little like Independence Day but In "Uchu daisenso" the United Earth already existed. It didn't take an invasion from outer space to unite the planet. Good (relatively speaking!) effects, a noble if simple plot, combined with beautiful Eastmancolor and this was the perfect drive-in movie.