Prince of Space, 1959, about 80 minutes, B&W, Japanese, released in U.S. by Belluca Productions. Directed by Eijiro Wakabayashi. Starring Tatsuya Umemiya as Wally the shoe shine boy/Prince of Space and Joji Oka as Phantom of Krankor. Schlock-meter rating: three stars out of 10 (Eight stars if you're looking for a good laugh).
This is one hysterically funny film. Words will fail to adequately describe what an inept, poorly crafted, poorly choreographed, badly acted, ridiculously plotted, low budget piece of tripe this Japanese sci-fi offering is. That said, it's very funny, even more so if you catch it with the folks from MST3K. There's an evil phantom from outer space with a chicken beak who follows each threat with a loud ˙heh, heh, heh, heh.˙ A wimpy shoe shine boy who doffs a ridiculous costume and beats the baddies every time they meet. Horrendously bad fistights that degenerate into slapfights. A fat giant robot who resembles Ross Perot and dances like Joe Cocker, and cheap dime store rockets that move jerkily against dark screens and endure ˙meteor showers˙ that resemble popcorn popping. Oh, there's much more inanity, but to see it, watch the film.
The plot involves the evil phantom from Krankor (the one with the heh, heh, heh, hehs) wanting to control the earth. He constantly promises to destroy a major city, but never gets around to it. Although he kidnaps several scientists and takes them into outer space, the scientists never change their well-pressed suits. No one on earth seems too concerned anbout the threat from Krankor. Prince of Space constantly beats up on the phantom and his beak-nosed buddies, but takes his sweet time finishing them off before rescuing the inept scientists, who rarely say anything except ˙Oh, Prince of Space.˙ By the way, the U.S. dubbing is just as pathetic as the film itself.
It may seem futile to offer advice to a film this bad, but I'll hazard a suggestion. Our hero Prince of Space constantly reminds his beaked adversaries that ˙your weapons are useless against me.˙ That's true but it's never explained why. Certainly the prince does not seem the physical type to withstand even the feeble Krankor assaults. If you want a laugh, by all means see ˙Prince of Space.˙