Two years after the release of The Mysterians, producer Tomoyuki Tanaka brought the winning team of Ishirô Honda, Eiji Tsuburaya, and Akira Ifukube back together to do yet another space opera of epic proportions. The Battle in Outer Space was the result and became somewhat of a sequel to The Mysterians. Both films feature alien invasions, similar looking flying saucers, and two of the same main characters (Etsuko Shiraishi and Professor Adachi). However, the invaders from outer space have a completely different motivation than before. Actually a clear motive is never discovered, they just want to seem to conquer Earth and wipe us out.

The opening of the movie surprisingly has a good deal of action. A space-station above our planet is attacked by a trio of flying saucers. Later in Japan, a train is derailed and crashes after a bridge is suddenly lifted into the air by some unseen power. It turns out that similar attacks, or rather, terrorist actions have been taking place all over the world. A conference is held at the United Nations to discuss these strange events and to showcase an array of new weapons and rocketships that are being developed by the world's top scientists. At the head of the project is Japan's own Professor Adachi (played this time by Koreya Senda). One of the men at the conference, Doctor Achmed from Iran, suddenly gets a headache and then strolls in a trance-like manner into the bowels of the building. He tries to steal a prototype of a new ray-gun but is thwarted. Doctor Achmed tries to escape from the building and is cornered outside. Suddenly a flying saucer arrives on the scene and blasts Dr. Achmed with a ray, turning him to dust.

Professor Adachi and his colleagues sift through Achmed's ashes and discover a small chip. Clearly Dr. Achmed was being controlled by malevolent alien beings. To combat this new threat to mankind, the U.N. recruits a special team to take two rockets to the moon on a reconnaissance mission. The team is made up of Professor Adachi, Doctor Roger Richardson, Etsuko Shiraishi, Ichiro Katsumia, Iwamura, and several others, but little do they all know that Iwamura has actually been abducted by the aliens from Natal and is now under their control. (Even poor Iwamura doesn't really know.) After a ticker-tape parade (before a rocket launch?!), our intrepid heroes set forth on their adventure to the moon. The trip there is not by any means uneventful either. After passing part of the wreckage of the space-station seen in the film's first five minutes, the two rockets have to blast and dodge their way past a sudden shower of meteors. During this intensely dangerous moment, Iwamura is overtaken by the Natal and tries to sabotage the ship. After he is incapacitated and the danger is past, the teams arrive on the moon.

Iwamura is tied down into a chair while everyone else goes out to search the moon's surface in two moon rovers (that have an amazing resemblance to the Oscar Meyer Weenie Wagon). After driving (and sometimes hovering) above the moons surface, the recon team finds a large cave and enters it. By sheer dumb luck, the Earth's saviors discover the Natal moon base and attack it with their lasers. While the battle rages on, Iwamura awakens and is beckoned by his controllers to blow up both rockets, thus stranding the humans on the planet. Iwamura breaks free of his bonds and manages to blow up the first ship. As he's preparing to detonate the second rocket, Professor Adachi and the others manage to heavily damage the Natal base. In doing so, the Natalians lose control of Iwamura and he quickly tries to make up for the wrongs he has done. As his fellow team mates arrive at the landing zone, Iwamura gives them some cover fire with a laser rifle. He manages to blow up three flying saucers in a row before being incinerated.

The others make it safely back to Earth where preparations are made to defend against a retaliatory strike from the Natalians. In the real world, nations would be arguing over who would lead the charge against the invading aliens or who would mass produce the proper weapons of war. But in the Toho universe, everyone works together without argument and gets a fair piece of the action. Earth's Defense Forces plan to produce a few dozen scout rocketships armed with powerful frontal lasers. Along with large earth-based laser cannons, our planet seems more than secure. But our defenses are swiftly put to the test when a group of flying saucers and a huge mothership race toward Earth. The Earth Defense Force launches a volley of our scout ships at the impending alien menace and the Battle in Outer Space finally commences. The battle shifts back and forth with no clear winner and several of the Earth's major cities suffer some massive damage.

New York City and the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco are both decimated by "space-torpedoes" that were launched from the Natal mothership. Tokyo sees the worst of it though when the alien's mothership unleashes it's most powerful weapon: an anti-gravity beam. Supposedly, when something is frozen to absolute zero in an instant, the pull of gravity is destroyed and the object floats up into the sky. (Hey don't call me crazy, I'm just telling you what I've heard from this movie!) After wrecking large chunks of the city the mothership is destroyed by two crosscutting blasts from Earth's laser cannons. With the destruction of the massive Natal mothership, the "all clear" is sounded and everyone across the world rejoices. Once again, the people of Earth have banded together and fought off a common enemy. (Which means that now they can all return to bickering amongst themselves!)

The Battle in Outer Space has a fairly simple storyline and doesn't have too many plot twists to follow. To make up for the lack of an interesting or thought provoking plot, the film makers decided to fill this movie with some of the best miniatures and special effects available. Eiji Tsuburaya really outdoes himself this time with his effects work, with the highlight being the anti-gravity ray's effects on downtown Tokyo. The most noticeable improvement this movie has over The Mysterians is the animation used for the laser blasts emanating from the spaceships and ray-guns. The colors are brighter and more solid, giving the beams and rays more depth. Akira Ifukube's score for this film is fantastic and as always, he lends some fantastically rousing musical marches to the proceedings. (I would also like to add that a good chunk of the Ifukube's music from this film was later used in 1972's Godzilla vs. Gigan.) Without his music, this movie wouldn't even be half as good!

The Battle in Outer Space is simply one of Toho's greatest sci-fi offerings and boasts some of the best music and effects that the late 50's had to offer. Though the storyline is now old and hackneyed, it's kept alive with a good amount of action and small dose of intrigue. Unfortunately, The Battle in Outer Space is currently not in print in North America. But wait, how did I manage to obtain a copy? I'm glad you asked! You can get a DVD-R of the film (in widescreen format with the original Japanese audio track and English subtitles) at Video Daikaiju. The disc is of the upmost quality and includes the movie's original theatrical trailer. However, seeing as how Media Blasters is putting out The Mysterians and other lost Toho titles (including Matango, Yog, The Space Monster, and more), our wait for a legitimate Region 1 release of The Battle in Outer Space may not be so far off.