THE MYSTERIANS (1957)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological*

Some of director Ishiro Honda’s ballyhoo for his two late-fifties alien-invasion films—1957’s THE MYSTERIANS and 1959’s BATTLE IN OUTER SPACE—emphasized his stated desire to see Earth’s quarreling countries make peace, if only in reaction to a common enemy. BATTLE, though fairly dull in terms of characters, gets this theme across quite ably. However, the dubbed version of THE MYSTERIANS only mentions “the Americans” once, and no other nationalities are seen on-camera. The 1957 film therefore seems like another instance of Honda re-fighting World War Two in such a way as to let Japan win—but over Earth’s common enemy, rather than the Allied Forces.

The titular aliens do provide teachable moments about the horrors of nuclear war, however. The Mysterians— all full-sized humanoids perpetually clad in spacesuits, rather than the weird dwarves of BATTLE—explain to a coterie of astonished Japanese delegates that thousands of years ago, their race inhabited a planet between Mars and Saturn. They unleashed nuclear forces that destroyed the entire planet, but some of the Mysterians emigrated to Mars, where they apparently concealed themselves for centuries until finally deciding to take up residence on Earth. The aliens claim that they only want a small portion of land and some Earth-women with whom to breed, since their own bodies have become polluted with strontium-90, resulting in misshapen offspring. However, the Mysterians can’t resist overplaying their hand by abducting a few women to start off their harem. The Japanese don’t stand for no one messin’ with their women, so they declare war on the immensely superior technology of the invaders. Presumably the rest of the world fights them too, though the Japanese get the featured role, much as the Americans did in 1953’s THE WAR OF THE WORLDS.

Like BATTLE, MYSTERIANS excels in terms of its many high-tech battle-scenes—not quite up to the WAR OF THE WORLDS standard, but effective nonetheless. Oddly enough, the Mysterians’ most memorable weapon gets vanquished early in the film—a giant, drill-nosed robot named Mogura (Japanese for “mole”). Given that Mogura comes from under the earth, and the ship of the Mysterians is first seen buried in the ground, the screenwriter might’ve meant to suggest that Mogura did the aliens’ tunneling for them. Then again, Honda might’ve wanted to throw in one giant monster to lure in the fans of Godzilla and Rodan, only to dispose of said monster as quickly as possible. Mogura, by the way, later turned up in a Toho Godzilla film, GODZILLA VS. SPACE GODZILLA.

Though MYSTERIANS starts with four Japanese characters—two men and two women—the women are merely objects to be fought over, as well as early abductees of the aliens. The two male friends, Atsumi and Shiraishi, provide a bit more character-tension than anyone in BATTLE, simply because young Shiraishi not only discovers the Mysterians’ advent, he turns his coat to join them, causing his buddy Atsumi some distress. However, in the end Shiraishi learns the error of his ways and lays down his life to foil the insidious invaders, thus paving the way for Earth’s safety—if not total peace.