ferbs54 My fellow Trekkers who rent Ishiro Honda's 1970 offering, "Space Amoeba," expecting to see an 11,000-mile-long, single-celled organism on the order of the one shown in the classic "Immunity Syndrome" episode may be a bit disappointed here. Rather, the sparkling hive colony in this film that attaches itself to Earth's unmanned Helios 7 rocket, en route to Jupiter, is comparatively teeny, but still capable of causing major-league mishegas nonetheless. This space hive causes the Earth rocket to crashland in the Pacific and proceeds to transform a squid, a crab and a turtle into some giant monsters, respectively Gezora, Ganime and Kamoeba. Good thing that a Japanese biologist, a photographer, an industrial spy AND the obligatory pretty girl all happen to be convening on nearby Selgio Island to explore a future resort area.... Anyway, this Honda monster bash is a mixed blessing at best. While Gezora looks pretty cool lumbering about on his tentacles, his fellow monstrosities are fairly lame, and the seemingly inevitable dukeout between two of them may be the dullest in the history of the kaiju eiga. The film grows increasingly loopy as it proceeds, and the final 1/3, conflating bats, a native marriage ceremony and a deus-ex-machina volcano, is quite bizarre. Fortunately, the photography of the island looks great, longtime Honda collaborator Akira Ifukube provides another rousing score, and FX man Sadamasa Arikawa dishes out some interesting visuals, especially his outer space shots and the "amoeba" itself. (Sadly, his giant monsters are not equal to those of an earlier Honda colleague, Eiji Tsuburaya.) All in all, the film is an undeniably fun mixed bag that should just manage to please fans of the genre. Oh...a great-looking DVD here, thanks to the fine folks at Media Blasters' Tokyo Shock unit.

drmality-1 For some reason, I remembered this flick more than many other kaiju eiga (giant monster movies) from the same period. In fact, I even have an original "Yog" poster on my wall right next to one for "The Green Slime".The film is set on a remote tropical island that is being looked at as the possible home of a luxury tourist resort. Funky photographer Kudo (wearing a floppy hat) and his adorable female companion are there to take pictures and check in with some other company personnel on the island. Dr. Mida is there to study marine evolution. And then there is the suspicious acting Obata, who claims to be an anthropologist but is actually an industrial spy.There is another visitor to the island and this one came from a lot farther than Tokyo. The misty blue space creature Yog (an "astro-quasar" he is called) has fallen to Earth on a space capsule and is now busy turning harmless animals into giant monsters. First of these fearsome freaks is the weird octo-squid Gezora, a plastic-eyed giant that uses its tentacles to walk (stagger is a better word) on land! Gezora sets about killing people and destroying the native huts, but Kudo and pals find a way to defeat the beast.The only problem is, Yog just jumps to another giant monster. Ganime, a giant crab, is next and then comes Kameba, a titanic tortoise who could give Gamera a run for his money. Not only that, but Yog also takes control of Obata and uses him to sabotage the human's plans.It's a sticky pickle but the Earthmen find a secret weakness of Yog's that they can use to attack the space monster. Another key to Yog's defeat is Obata...can his mind be turned against the Monster from Space?The movie is fun and exciting if you're not too demanding. You see plenty of the monsters and even a nasty battle between Ganime and Kameba. Call me nuts, but I thought dialog and acting were a lot better here than other period kaiju films. The characters had more personality...especially Kudo, played by Akira Kubo...and I kind of liked the way every tied together.Some may be disappointed that no cities get destroyed, but if you're looking for a Japanese monster mash with a bit of a difference, "Yog" will satisfy your craving!!!

OllieSuave-007 This is another alien-invasion movie from Toho studios. It features space alien (s) that invaded a tropical island, where it mutates a squid, crab, and turtle to the size of Godzilla. The aliens' main purpose: to conquer Earth. We have a group of explorers visiting an island to investigate the whereabouts of a lost space probe. There, they encounter the alien monsters, and try to stop them, with the help of some very courageous island natives. The hero of the film is portrayed by Akira Kubo. He has been portraying so many heroic roles by the time he filmed this movie that him being type-casted started to get annoying. Aside from that, we have monsters that were surprisingly very campy and rubber-ish looking.Overall, an OK kaiju film that should have featured more monsters, providing that the aliens mentioned that they were trying to mutate a lot of animals to attack Earth. The film contains a pretty exciting "rescue-the-earth" mission, nonetheless.Grade B

Akiosan "Kessen! Nankai no Dakaiju" (or on Brazilian TV, "Monstruos nos consoles pacíficos". I have seen both Portuguese dub and original Japanese version) has to be one crazy Kaiju eiga opis! It starts with a Space blob from Jupeter coming down to earth and crashing on Guam, mutating anything it gets near to, including A Cuttelfish, Crabs and a Turtles. These creatures go ape $#^#^ and start damaging the vacation resorts (Oh no!)One scene I remember is where Gezora (the Cuttelfish monster) starts braking into some huts, tossing some hapless vacationers around like, well, action figurines! A must see indeed *laughs*