The bus doesn’t “barrel” through the streets so much as it casually lumbers along, as if Eastwood couldn’t get it out of first gear. Though I understand it was likely done so to give the stunt guys more time to riddle it with gunfire and thus make it look more impressive, it makes no sense for Eastwood’s character to drive that slow no matter how “cool” he may have wanted it to look. It only gets worse though, when the bus comes to a halt on the steps of City Hall, as if a metaphor for the movie itself whose common sense lies in a similar lifeless heap from here on out, mimicking the now deceased metal giant with it’s blown engine and burst tires. Eastwood and Sandra Locke exit the bus to a mob of police officers, each holding a gun bead on the heroes with a standing shoot-to-kill order but with no one willing to, pardon the pun, “execute” said order. Now, I can understand a group of cops not wanting to gun down one of their own, especially when he’s unarmed, but the total absurdity comes next as the great William Prince (playing the evil commissioner/mayor/comptroller) shoves his way into the middle of the crowd, shouting “Kill them! Shoot them! You have orders! Do what I say! SHOOT THEM!”. His lackey (the assistant DA) is put into a headlock by Eastwood, who then holds a gun to his greasy wormy skull and tells him to spill the beans in front of everyone regarding the dirty deeds Prince is responsible for. Mr. Prince instead grabs a gun from one of the cops and shoots up his lackey and Eastwood, only to be gunned down by Locke, who holds Eastwood in her arms, telling him not to die… while an army of cops continues doing what they’ve been doing while this whole hostage double murder firearms discharging assault played out: not a fucking thing. Probably the most nonsensical, “let’s just wrap this shit up and be done with it” ending I’ve ever seen… and this from a man who would go on to direct Academy Award winning films.

With this one ridiculous scene, Clint Eastwood the star and Clint Eastwood the director both put on their rattlesnake skin, barb wired wrapped cowboy boots, strapped some razor sharp spurs onto their toe-tips and proceeded to kick me fiercely in the groin area, not once but repeatedly, thus shredding my reproductive organs and generally mutilating my gootch, anus and inner thighs until you couldn’t distinguish the area from that guy’s face at the end of New York Ripper. What does this have to do with Warning from Space? I don’t know Captain Philosophy Major, you think everything has so much friggin’ “meaning”, why don’t you go figure it out yourself!? Anyway, while you’re busy pondering, the rest of us will get on with what we’re here to do: review this movie.

Warning from Space was released by the crew from Daiei Studios, those fine folks who, 9 years later, would go on to introduce the world to the greatest wanna-be Godzilla ever: Gamera! Don’t get me wrong, I love ol’ fang-faced, whirling dervish of flaming appendages Gamera, but even the people at Daiei would come right out and tell you they were just trying to cash in on the giant atomic monster craze! So much so even that in 1956, in order to try and sucker potential viewers into seeing their new sci-fi disaster pic Warning From Space, they went so far as to create a promotional poster for the movie that included art of a giant starfish monster (that bares a striking resemblance to DC Comics’ Justice League villain Starro the Conqueror, who would be created four years later…) attacking a city… which has all of jack and shit to do with the actual movie and Jack’s off thumbing little old ladies’ pies somewhere.

No, the space stars in general are not building toppling daikaiju as the advertising leeches would have you believe, but are actually a race of human-sized star people from the planet Pairon (though these days you’d probably find them on planet Pokemon under a different name…) and they’re not hear to conquer the world, but rather to save us from a rogue planetoid currently hurtling straight for us through space. But first, let’s learn a little more about these wacky Pairins, shall we? I don’t care if you don’t want to, you’re doing it anyway… Why? Because it’s good to build up your social personality and part of that includes meeting people you may not want to otherwise. Now go over there and shake Mr. Pairin’s, uhm, star limb thing…

The planet Pairon is in a dead heat orbit with the Earth, transfixed on the exact opposite side of the sun from us. Because of this exact orbit, we’ve never been able to see Pairon thanks to that big gas ball that makes a better door than it does a window. The Pairins, however, are apparently way ahead of us in terms of technology and have long been observing our planet via a spy satellite… and given their lack of hands, telekinetic powers or the simple ability to bend or flex their extremities, the fact that they managed to create any technology, let alone space travel and transmutation such as they have, is either fucking tremendous or the ancient secret writing technique called “uhm, I didn’t think that far ahead…” in which the writers use an idea they think sounds interesting while completely abandoning any and all sense of logic. For instance, I’m writing a movie about a sentient bunt cake that has nothing that discerns it from any other bunt cake, yet it somehow manages to befriend a group of kids, teach them valuable life lessons on such topics and dealing with bullies and safe sex practices, then saves the world from a mad scientist in the final reel who wants to turn all of the adults in the world into bicycles. By using the ancient art of “uhm, I didn’t think that far ahead…”, I need not explain why this bunt cake can talk or see or do drop kicks like it will in the story, because the devil is in the details and I don’t believe in the devil, so I’ll let you make up your own answers to these unnatural occurrences and thus leave the bulk of the actual writing chores up to you, the audience, while being hailed as a visionary and winning statues made of precious metal that resemble naked people.

Back to that whole, “rogue planetoid currently hurtling straight for us through space” inconvenience, the Pairins’ attempts to warn us of our coming Armageddon fall on deaf ears, as the general populace of Japan (the attempted landing point of the star-peoples’ science team) instead opt to run in terror at the sight of UFOs and 6ft tall rejects from a sushi bar. Not considering the possibility that their appearance would freak out the humans (stupid illogical supposedly “superior intelligence” pointy-headed jerk-o’s), the number two high-hog scientisty type Pairin (think of he/she/it as the Commander Ryker of Pairins… preferably the version with the beard) has herself transmutated into the form of a minor Japanese celebrity so she can hopefully get her message across a little easier… not taking into account that by duplicating the body of a celebrity of any kind could result in issues with her being mistaken for said celebrity and, possibly, leading to one of those wacky split screen “two sides of the mirror” movie moments that couldn’t cause shock and wonder in a person these days without a 30000 volt current being sent through their theater seat. Fortunately for Poopy (well, that is what you’d call a number two, right?) this little snafu in logic never comes up, but unfortunately for her she’s not exactly a master of assimilating into foreign cultures neither, despite the Pairins’ claims that they’ve been watching us for thousands of years. After she gets accepted into a small social group of our species, Poopy forgets everything she learned about us by peeping on the human race, leaping 10ft into the air several times while playing tennis. If there comes a day when Pairon and Earth hold an Olympics-type event to decide the fate of our worlds, we’re fucked… unless we make a “no taking human form” rule, in which case we’d really just have to push them over and laugh at them while they squirm back and forth in surrender…

Poopy’s cover is further blown as she de-materializes through a door in front of a small group of on-lookers, medical tests on her prove that she’s got a heightened white blood cell count and no discernable fingerprints, and she solves a complicated mathematical equation in front of a genius-level scientist, thus sealing her unnatural origins. Everybody knows that girls can’t do basic addition, let alone complicated scientific formulae stuff! Well, unless it’s the science of baking pies… mmmm, apple pience. Anyway, with her cover blown it’s time for Poopy to expose herself (not her Pairin goody bag ya pervs, just her mission) to a collective of some of Japan’s biggest brains. Looking into this whole doomsday claim of hers for themselves, the white coats discover that Planet R (don’t ask me what the ‘R’ stands for, scientist types just like to name everything so they can get recognition in books read by the very peers they’re always in a big ego pissing contest with) is indeed on it’s way to blow us all to shit. If Earth goes blooey, this means that Pairon’s orbit itself will be the astrological equivalent of Kim Halsey in The Houston 500: completely and totally fucked in every possible agonizing way. As such, this is why the Pairins have come to help save Earth: not because they were being good neighbors, but to save their own asses… and hey, I can’t say I blame them.

In an effort to show us how ignorant and disagreeable the rest of the world is, Japan calls for an emergency session of the World Congress to discuss the possibility of nuking Planet R out of existence before it can blow us all into cosmic dust. Not willing to give up their A-Bombs for the better interests of the planet as a whole, everybody pops Japan the single digit salute, so our neighbors to the East are left on their own to do what they can against the giant flaming ball that crawls closer and closer to our planet. There is one hope though, as a local scientist by the name of Matsuda has been working on a formula for a new type of super concoction that will make the A-Bomb look like a wet fart from grandma’s ass in comparison. The only problem is getting the proper materials for the project… oh, that and the Yakuza kidnap Matsuda in an effort to steal his new super weapon and hold the world hostage, completely “unfooled” by all the talk of world ending comets and so forth.

As Planet R gets closer and closer to Earth, the World Congress finally gives in and a bombardment of nuclear devices are launched to snuff out the booming body. Even after all that arguing and bullshitting though, the attack has no effect and Planet R continues on its course, galactic fat man bee-lining to the cosmic buffet table that is the third rock from the sun. John Lithgow, watch your ass. The really truly only hope for a peaceful resolution to this problem now is Dr. Professor Matsuda’s experimental super fuel, but since he’s been missing for a weeks, it’s starting to look like everybody is fucked. The plants are withering away, the birds are falling from the sky, the lands are becoming parched, the buildings are starting to crumble and the seas are boiling over into tidal mayhem. It’s actually disturbing to watch this harsh torture of the world play out, compounded by the grainy quality of the old film that only pushes the sensation that you can feel the heat, choke on the air, taste the burnt dirt in your nose and on your tongue and struggle through what are destined to be the last moments of life for not just you, but an entire planet. It’s powerful and completely turned around my opinion of the movie up until this point…

And then, well, Warning From Space pulls a Sinatra and decides to go and spoil it all by telling us ‘I Love You’. With not only humanity, but all of the world on its last legs, the building in which Dr. Professor Matsuda was left has pretty much crumbled around itself, allowing him to finally liberate himself and stumble out into what’s left of the world. Logically, this entire part of the movie pisses me off, because no matter how stupid those Yakuza goons were, there’s no way they were stupid enough to keep Matsuda tied up and left to die when it’s publicly known that he’s the only hope the world has left! Even if they didn’t believe the stories of the world ending at fist, the fact that the whole planet is dying around them would have eventually sank in and they would have let the man go! Beyond this, possibly the most agitating part is that Matsuda’s been left alone for at least a week, tied to a chair with no one to attend to him. Besides the fact that he’d been dead from starvation and dehydration quickly into these heightened conditions, the man’s gotta be swimming is own friggin’ waste products by now, yet he only seems a little sweaty and too tired to stand up straight. Anyway, no sooner does the old man finally hobble his way to freedom than the Pairins finally return to Earth with the materials necessary for the Dr. Prof’s experimental formula. When the other scientists inform the aliens that the man’s been missing for weeks, they reveal that they gave him a tracking beacon, which they immediately activate and use to teleport him back to the work station. The Planet Popper is assembled, launched and does it’s job, blowing R to smithereens and saving the world. The people and animals immediately return to the surface so the kids can play in the burnt out remains of Mother Nature and the adults can try to figure out what the fuck it is they’re going to do to survive… hope everybody likes Twinkies, cuz they’re the only thing other than roaches that could’ve survived all of that.

Truly a dues ex machina finale that you can help but feel cheated from by watching. After so many scenes of global warming to the “Xtreme”, to have it all wrapped up in a nice little five-minute package that’s topped with an “everybody’s happy now!” bow is just not gonna do it. Even if they had pulled the last minute super weapon victory off, it would’ve been more satisfying to have the movie end with something like “the debris from the destroyed planet same raining down to the Earth, not destroying the planet as was originally feared, but tearing the face of the globe up beyond repair and leaving an atmosphere of nothing but ashen death and destruction as a grim umbrella of death and suffering for the survivors. Those left to carry the burden of humanity moved underground to escape the toxic and uninviting surface and grew for generations in tunnels beneath the Earth, becoming a single unified race of mole people, no longer divided by social classes or religious beliefs”.

The gradual progression of Planet R toward Earth is a great build for tension. Though I’m usually a fan for more to-the-point movies about immediate destruction and the majority of “suspense” movies bounce off me like quarters on a kitchen table at a high school kid’s house when his parents are away for the weekend, Warning From Space managed to accomplish one thing and this was it and for that I am nothing if not impressed and appreciative. The sad part is that this shining moment it pulled from under our feet by this last minute miracle ending and all that leaves us with are goofy looking starfish people from space and a series of dumps that the writers decide to take on all manner of science and logic with each progressing scene. If the ending had suitably fit the great nail-biting build up and sympathy for the dying Earth, this could have been a huge upset victory for this non-Gamera Daiei release. As such, my grade must stand. So it is typed, so it shall be. At least you can understand the Gauntlet reference now, right?

What do you mean “no”?...