More butt-kicking action from Japanese superhero Starman, once again cobbled together from two episodes (three and four) of the 1950s television series SUPERGIANT. This time around the super-fast paced antics involve the invasion of Earth by a race of evil salamander men (!) who use cool-looking UFOs to send sound waves down to Earth and kill people, spread a deadly disease capable of destroying the human race within days, and of course go around kidnapping kids and scientists. Starman spends the film rescuing those kidnapped and fighting off the Salamander Men by using some acrobatic manoeuvres! It appears that the producers had hired a troupe of acrobatics for filming of this material, as lengthy scenes are set in a theatre showing a kooky dance routine (mind-boggling, it really is) and later many of the fight scenes involve silly flips and jumps through the air for no other reason. Is this really how aliens fight?Any plot exposition seems to have been wiped out other than cursory introductions, leaving a movie that brims over with action, action, and more action. Sadly, the fight scenes seem more like dancing than fighting and are of a lesser quality than in the previous ATOMIC RULERS OF THE WORLD. Still, Starman packs a wallop, and the aliens themselves are a well-designed menace with imaginative-looking and creative makeup, turnip-headed demons if they indeed are! The supporting characters are the usual stiff moustachioed scientists and the obnoxiously annoying children, including the resident child with pigtails and glasses. Why do they never die in these films? Action is what INVADERS FROM SPACE offers and, even if the special effects are not quite up to the task, it certainly entertains on this front. Highlights include kids hanging from ropes over pits of burning acid; Starman chasing a killer UFO through the skies and kicking the reptile backsides of those inside; genuinely disturbing laughing human/alien hybrids, looking like the Joker; an alien exploding underwater (!); dozens of fight scenes, weirdo alien bases in the swamps, even some extraterrestrial action is thrown in to keep things fresh and exciting. Watch out for the wacky High Council at the beginning of the film, complete with bizarro aliens and weirdo robots, and watch in amazement as Starman spends most of the film flying through the air – his feet barely touch the ground in this adventure. Senseless fun the way we like it – and a production designed just so that you can say "they don't make 'em like this anymore".

In 1965, American audiences were given the treat of seeing the Star Man trilogy in "Attack From Space", "Invaders From Space" and "Evil Brain From Outer Space". In each, the Emerald Planet (filled with silly but benevolent weirdos) sends the super-hero Star Man to Earth to fight off an invasion by hostile forces--or just to get rid of him because he looked so silly. Star Man is Ken Utsui--a Japanese guy in a body suit with an antennae on top of his head as well as a cape! I am pretty sure he must have felt ridiculous in this getup. However, ANYONE appearing in these films should have felt pretty silly, as they are amazingly bad--at least in their confusing English-dubbed versions. Originally, they were part of some TV series called "Super Giant" ("Sûpâ Jaiantsu").In this installment, the Salamander People are trying to wipe out the humans with some sort of virus. It's not a terrible idea for a plot. However, it turns out that the virus is disbursed by a modern dance troop of aliens performing in Japan!! Watching their hysterical gyrations and acrobatics is pretty funny. But they must stop both Star Man and Dr. Fukami--and spend most of the film trying to kill or brainwash the pair. Can the Earth possibly be spared? And, does anyone out there even care?! The film abounds with Star Man and the Salamander People doing somersaults and flips instead of actually fighting. I must say, they were quite athletic and talented--that is, until they tried acting or fighting. Then, it was just dreadful. However, the film, like the other two, is so amazingly bad and silly that it might be worth seeing if you are a bad movie addict and love laughing at ineptness. This certainly qualifies as inept!

Hard to believe, perhaps, but before director Teruo Ishii turned to the sleaze and violence of pinku cinema he was director of children's TV series Sûpâ jaiantsu (Super Giant) in which Ken Utsui played Starman, a humanoid alien with incredible powers (well, he can fly with the help of a very visible harness) who is sworn to protect the human race from danger. In Invaders From Space, a feature cobbled together for the US market from several episodes of the series, Starman battles the evil salamander men of Kulimon (sp?) who release a deadly disease in Japan as part of their evil plan for world domination.The film opens on a planet 2 billion miles away where a council of incredibly daft looking aliens elect to send Starman to Earth; if the rest of the film was this unintentionally funny, I was in for a grand time. Sadly, despite the equally amusing introduction of the first salamander man, Invaders from Space quickly descended into tedium, a disjointed, episodic adventure with extremely repetitious fight scenes between Starman and his scaly foes, most of which look more like elaborate dance routines than desperate battles to the death.And talking of dance, let's not forget the unnecessary avant-garde number in a theatre where the salamanders are posing as stage performers. Or the bit where several supposedly cute Japanese kids find themselves threatened in the woods by the athletic aliens busting their moves. I guess if modern dance is your thing, there's a remote chance that you might find this interesting, but I found myself seriously struggling to stay awake.

A bunch of pernicious salamander men aliens from the planet Kulimon in the Moffit Galaxy plan on taking over Earth by unleashing a horrible plague on mankind. It's up to valiant superhero Starman from the Emerald Planet to save the human race before it's too late. Once again, this gloriously ridiculous hogwash eschews standard conventions of logic and coherence thanks to the fact that this slapdash feature was cobbled together from several episodes of a TV series. As a direct result of this, an absurdly solemn narrator works furious overtime in a desperate attempt to give the jumbled plot a modicum of cohesion. Moreover, the lovably rinky-dink (markedly less than) special effects, cruddy dubbing, strenuously protracted balletic fight set pieces (the salamander guys do all sorts of crazy back flips, cartwheels, and somersaults while mixing it up with Starman!), and such inspired wacky touches as the salamander beings disguising themselves as an avant-garde dance troupe, the evil extraterrestrials shooting killer rays out of their mouths (!), and a mysterious nurse who transforms herself into a grotesque hag witch all greatly enhance the considerable unintentional hilarity. An absolute dippy hoot.