Atragon
AKA
Undersea Battleship
(1963)
Starring:
Manda
Sorry. But if you're a MSTie, that's what immediatly comes to mind.
Anywho, the car drives into the ocean and the pait of photographers saw every second of it. The deduce that this "Vapor Man" (no relation to The Human Vapor) is related to the disappearances to scientists across the Earth.
Paying attention? Good. The rest of the movie has very little to do with this. After that false start, to movie waits a few minutes, jiggles the keys, and finally gets the engine running.
Visited by a reporter, a retired Admiral named Kosumi is grilled about an old collegue during World War II who supposedly died during the final days of it, Captain Jinguji. He denies it and ghtey go about their lives.
Wait a minute...the movie's stalled again. Give me a second, I have to get jumper cables............
::click::click::click::VROOM:: THERE IT GOES!
Kosumi and his daughter Makoto are abducted by a taxi driver (I could say a certain line from a certain Robert DeNiro movie at this point, but I'll leave that to your imaginations). This taxi driver is an agent of an acient empire under the sea called Mu. It used to be Moo, but over the years, they decided it was silly to let their most sacred animal, the cow, name their empire and thought it was in their best interests to shorten it to something that can be taken more seriously. Finally the opening begins to have something to do with the movie, and Mosumi and Makoto are saved by the photographers, Susumu and Yoshito, and the Mu agent jumps into the ocean and never surfaces.
Later while at a police station, a package arrives for Kosumi from the Mu Men of Mu (no that's not what they're called, but it was fun to type). Their immediate thought is a bomb, but instead of evacuating the room, the resident bomb expert decides it would be more fun to let the intended victims watch while he opens it. It turns out to not be a bomb, but a film. Oh god, please not another fan made Star Wars prequel from fanboys who claim they know more about Star Wars than George Lucas. Luckily it was just a film declairing world domination. The Mu people claim life underwater is boring and the Earth should prepare to be conquered, because their weapons are useless against them. All but one, the Atragon submarine being developed by the surviving Captain Jinguji (oh good, let's point out our one weakness in our declairation of war). The people of Mu ask the land mammals to destroy this submarine for them, and they won't kill too many of them.
The people of Earth refuse, and Mu destroys many cities around the globe in potentially exciting action sequences that we don't see a minute of.
Kosumi can't hold his tongue any longer, Jinguji is still alive and he knows where he lives. He also lets it slip out that Mokoto is not his daughter, but Jinguji's. Akward moment, moving on. Kosumi seeks out the aid of Jinguji with Mokoto, the two photographers, and that damned reporter guy from the beginning of the movie who you know for a fact is a Mu agent, but the movie hasn't said so yet, so you play along.
They find Jinguji, and he's a total asshole. He has built Atragon (despite the fact that it's often refered to as Atragon and it's the title of fucking movie, the ship is actually called Gotengo), but he won't use it to save the world because he built it for Japan, and Japan alone! Of course, that's sound logic. The Mu people can destroy the entire world, but they'll never touch Japan!
Fairly soon, the Mu reporter that was a secret Mu agent shows himself to be from (dun dun DUN) Mu, and kidnaps Mokoto and her new photographer friend Susumu and are taken to Mu, where they are threatened to be fed to Manda, the giant sea serpent god of Mu.
It takes the kidnapping of his daughter to finally get Jinguji off his lazy ass and do something. Will Atragon be effective? Can they save them in time? Could this movie have even less action in it?
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