User reviews

The Japanese have always had incredible ambitions in their fantasy movies. They have always been ready to destroy cities by huge plastic monsters coming from outer space and elsewhere. The problem is they have never had the money to succeed in making convincing special effects. This film, released in France under the title Les envahisseurs de l'espace, is no exception. Its ambition is to show three creatures from the giant octopus to the giant lobster trying to have the upper hand on the humans. It's extremely awkward and laughable, but well quite enjoyable too. After all, we do like these creatures and these films after all, don't we?

Alien plague is spread onto a pacific island by a space capsule that crashes and creates monsters out of normal creatures. Gezora, a giant squid; Gamine, a humungous crab; and Kameba, a huge turtle; all attack the island, fight each other, and sure trample alot of huts. Goofy, with silly special effects and more bad dubbing.

This is certainly not one of Ishiro Honda's better efforts; but it does kind of work. Some would-be alien invaders hitch a ride on a probe returning to the Earth that lands on a Pacific atoll. They set about creating supersized monsters bent on humanity's destruction so they can take over the world. Nothing new so far, nor indeed anywhere really, as a team of human hoteliers and local islanders try to fight off this threat. The visual effects are OK - the monsters; explosions and acting are low budget, but together keep this fun yarn moving along fine. The dubbing actors are way over the top and the music grates but it's still just about worth watching - for some reason really bad Japanese films of this genre are not as bad as anyone else's!

The enjoyment that you derive out of this movie is directly proportional to what your expectations are. I'm a big fan of Honda's work, he's made some of the very best giant monster (not just limited to Japanese kaiju) movies ever made - this is not one of them. It's really pretty bad - not Jun Fukuda bad, mind you, but in the world of Ishiro Honda's works it's quite the stinker.

And yet... It's somehow great. What makes it truly great can essentially be summed up in one word. Gezora. Gezora is a giant squid, or an octopus, or perhaps a cuttlefish, or... It really doesn't matter what Gezora is supposed to be, just know that (unlike the giant octopus from "King Kong vs. Godzilla") Gezora is not a slimy creature that flutters and unfurls itself along the ground like an octopus probably would if it could actually move outside of the water. No, my friends, Gezora is rubbery looking and he walks. Let's say that again so that the utter ridiculousness of it can sink in:

Gezora WALKS. On tentacles.

You see, they didn't have access to high-tech animatronics and kaiju films have always had an aversion to stop-motion animation, so, as was custom - it's a guy in a suit. But how does a guy in a suit impersonate the flowing movement of an octopus/squid/cuttlefish on land, you ask?

He doesn't. He walks around, dragging and swinging tentacles with reckless abandon. That, if for no other reason, is why this movie must be seen to be appreciated. Gezora is, by far, my favorite bad kaiju. Yes, even better and far more ridiculous than King Seesar. This may be difficult to believe, but he's even sillier (and more lovable) than Guiron - knife-headed foe of Gamera. You, too, will love Gezora if you just give him a chance - and that chance has arrived as of today, for "Space Amoeba" has been released on DVD.

Huzzah!

Also known as "Yog: The Space Amoeba" which sounds mor Japanese.

The director is Ishirô Honda of home we all know and love.

Samuel Z. Arkoff as producer (US version)

Salvatore Billitteri as producer (US version)

Fumio Tanaka as executive producer

Tomoyuki Tanaka as executive producer

The standard formula "stay out of the water" film. Well, maybe not formulas as we get to cross over stories of the greedy developer, burnt-out photographer, scientist, female interest, Japanese style monsters, and even space Amoebas.

Everyone's agenda conflicts with each other's agenda. I was rooting for the amoeba. However, they may use bats for sound trouncing.

When the movie begins, space probe Helio VII is sent into space and it soon vanishes. However, inexplicably, the probe later returns to Earth and crashes in the sea near an island inhabited with primitive folks. In addition, some Japanese scientist and his friends are there and they investigate. Soon, a giant squid the size of Godzilla arrives and 'Gezora' is NOT a friendly squid. Miraculously, they are able to defeat the squid....but then some glowy stuff comes out of the dying monster and soon it creates a gigantic crab. Once again, the folks somehow manage to defeat it....but the glowy stuff remains. In fact, later the glowy stuff inhabits one of the humans and you learn that invaders from space are controlling the animals and plan to rule the Earth. What creatures are coming next? And, will they manage to stop them as well?

This is a pretty bad film, though I cannot blame all of it on the Japanese production company who made the film. Much of the problem is bad dubbing--with the Japanese folks OFTEN laughing for no apparent reason and sometimes at the most inappropriate moments. Also, some of the women's voices are ear-piercingly bad.

Overall, this is a film you either like because you think gigantic Japanese monsters are cool or you'll think it's all pretty much nonsense. I find myself in the latter group.

A sparkly-blue blob of light from outer space with the ability to take over and mutate/enlarge a host arrives on Earth. Soon, denizens of a tropical island are threatened by a stupendous squid, a colossal crab, and a titanic turtle. Eventually, the space creature takes over a human, allowing it to gloatingly communicate its nefarious plans of world conquest. An aversion to porpoises and bats yields a clue to the invader's weakness, and plans are made to fight back. Diakaiju-sized plot inconsistencies aside, this is a pretty good Toho monster opus. The tentacled monster ('Gezora') is a nicely done example of suit-mation - yes, we all know that there is an actor within, but the creature still looks good and, for an '60's film, is well integrated into the live footage. The turtle ('Kamoebas') is a little weaker in execution but the giant mutant crab ('Ganimes') is excellent - better (IMO) than the shrimp-based kaiju "Ebirah" ("Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster" 1966). I watched an adequately dubbed English version of the film, so can't comment on the acting or original script, but generally liked the portrayal of the characters (especially the 'natives', who, unlike most stereotypical peaceful islanders, were the ones who kept showing up with more and bigger guns). Directed by Toho's best known kaiju wrangler (Ishiro Honda) and with music by Akira Ifukube, the film has the look and sound of a Showa-era Godzilla outing and is an entertaining time-passer for anyone willing to suspend their disbelief long enough to fear for the lives of the intrepid islanders, who are all that stand between us and extinction. A must see for people concerned with their 'kaiju-life lists', as the three featured monsters are essentially one-offs in the Toho corral: ('Kamoebas' has a bit part as a washed-ashore corpse in "Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S." (2003), 'Gezora' is briefly glimpsed in the opening montage of "Godzilla: Final Wars" (2004), and 'Ganimes' never again surfaces (despite being a nicely executed giant crab outfit)).

Yog is essentially a bizarre ripoff of HG Wells' Empire of the Ants, but with amoebas from space...or something like that...

Like in EOTA, a group of investors head to a remote island to investigate a development opportunity...not knowing that the place has been overrun by kaiju beasts.

They aren't welcome by the natives, who are suffering from attacks, they believe, are due to the unwelcome presence of these foreign interlopers.

First, they're attacked by a kaiju squid...so they burn it.

Then they're attacked by Ebirah...so they blow it up.

Eventually, it becomes evident that space amoeba are responsible for both the gigantism of the kaiju beasts...as well as their aggression.

Though how they discern that is beyond me...because it's never explained.

Either way, the amoeba are in the one man: "the first man of space".

And he is to do their bidding.

Fortunately, the group gets suspicious when he miraculously survives a kaiju snapping turtle attack.

They try pleading to his humanity, hoping he will be able to overcome the control of the space amoebas, and snap out of it...for the sake of humanity.

That is, if it's not already too late...

One of the weirdest of the weird Toho kaijus.

5 out of 10.

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

A rare non-GODZILLA kaiju movie set on another monster island. This time around, the titular space amoeba hitches a ride on a Jupiter-bound space probe and lands in the vicinity, transforming three creatures into giant-sized evil monsters. It's a fun little flick that lacks in decent monster action, although the giant squid looks fantastic. But the human characters are quite likeable, played by experienced stars, and there's a wealth of incident and action to keep you entertained.

I found this to be a average Kaiju movie for the most part. There's not that much to the story other than characters going to a island with giant monsters on it. It interesting with how the animals turn into mutant monsters due do an space alien. The movie is entertaining with the giant monster attacking people and the characters trying to fight back against them. I found the characters to be mostly forgettable since none of them are that interesting or memorable to remember about.

Gezora, Ganimes, and Kamoebas are giant monster who are a octopus, crab, and turtle. They have pretty good design to them and great costumes. But they aren't that memorable compared to other Kaiju out there.

Space Amoeba (1970) is a Japanese monster gem that I recently watched on a random streaming service. The storyline follows an asteroid filled with alien life forms that lands on a Pacific Ocean island. As the aliens come in contact with the local wildlife the wildlife becomes huge and menacing. When some investors land on the island and plan to build a resort they're in for a rude awakening.

This movie is directed by Ishirô Honda (Godzilla, 1954) and stars Akira Kubo (Throne of Blood), Yukiko Kobayashi (Destroy All Monsters), Kenji Sahara (Godzilla, 1954), Yoshio Tsuchiya (Seven Samurai) and Chôtarô Tôgin (Ebirah, Horror of the Deep).

There's so much to like about this movie. The sets and models the monsters destroy are very cool. The Amoeba costume is rediculous but the lobster and lizard were awesome. The creature special effects and how they use their hands is hilarious. I will say that I enjoyed the monster battles, which were more fun than good.

Overall, this is another classic Hondo monster picture that's not as good as Godzilla but still worth a viewing. I would score this a 6.5/10 and strongly recommend it.

This is a pretty typical and forgettable seventies kaiju movie with very little to talk about. I only just watched it and I remember almost nothing of this! The kaiju action is too bright like most of the earlier colour Godzilla films and the style is quite comic rather than realistic. The human story is relatively interesting and the kaiju action is entertaining enough to get you to the end although it is probably not worth watching even for Godzilla completionists. They stay on the island so there isn't any city smashing. It's fine, just not worth the effort to find and watch. Shame but what can you do?

Toho's final special effects science fiction film under its old studio system of contract players and Ishiro Honda's final feature film for several years until Toho brought him back for the final Godzilla film of the Showa Era, Space Amoeba is an entertaining sendoff for the era, bringing together the basic narrative building blocks of this kind of film in the right amounts to work in combination with its interesting approach to the special effects behemoths that go stompy-stomp.

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REPORT THIS AD An unmanned space probe has been sent to Jupiter to study its moons when it loses contact with Earth, gets captured by some kind of amorphous extraterrestrial thing (oh...space amoeba...I get it), and turns around. Its splash down is witnessed by photojournalist Tara Kudo (Akira Kubo) on a trans-Pacific flight back home to Japan (amazing coincidence that honestly didn't need to happen, but whatever). He's then approached by a company to photograph a remote island where they are planning to build a resort, publicity photos that he has no interest in taking until Dr. Miya (Yoshio Tsuchiya) walks into the meeting and Kudo figures out that the island and the splash down are the same place. So, they all go on a cruise to the island, joined by Obata (Kenji Sahara) who says that he's an anthropologist looking to investigate the local population.

The problem is that a giant squid-like creature has risen from the sea and killed one of the company's workers on the island leaving the other one shaken and the natives antagonistic to the outsiders. There's a really interesting line (that never gets followed up, by the way) as the new denizens of the island show up where Dr. Miya mentions how it's remarkable that the natives remained friendly even through the Japanese presence through the war. Honda's references to WWII had mostly fallen off after Godzilla, only really coming back at any explicit level in Atragon, so I'm always interested to see how this could reflect his changing attitudes towards Japanese behavior during the conflict. There's an implication that Japan actually did do things wrong back in the day, which is both in alignment with his idealistic treatments in Eagle of the Pacific and Farewell Rabaul but also against the implication in Godzilla.

Anyway, the meat of the film is the monster stuff, and the first iteration of the space amoeba's physical form is the best. The walking squid lumbers around unnaturally (though, to be honest, you can tell which tentacles are actually legs), and it does great damage, only letting Kudo and Miya go when they go underwater to confront it when porpoises come near. The second form, after the squid is defeated by fire, is a giant crab, and there's some great action as Kudo shoots out its eyes.

In a surprise move, the central pathos of the finale ends up revolving around Obata who was lying about being an anthropologist and is actually there for a bit of corporate espionage to steal the plans to the resort for a competitor. He, however, gets possessed by the amoeba and becomes humanity's best hope to fight the extraterrestrial threat, needing to fight the possession while the amoeba gives him great strength to fight against puny humanity's efforts to stop the amoeba's quest for world domination.

You see, it's super basic monster movie stuff, but it's helped by a few things. The first is that the monsters themselves are not the real threat. It's the amoeba. Fighting off giant monsters with a handful of bullets and half a tank of gasoline is one thing, but finding the amoeba's key weakness is something else. It keeps the monsters as a physical threat but directs the characters' energies towards something more manageable. The second big thing is that we get a few new monsters (though the crab does look a fair bit like Ebirah), so there's variation. The third is the final act focus on Obata. It'd be better if he were more of an anti-hero and focus from the beginning, but the turn he gets in the finale to help fight the evil within him is surprisingly well done in the limited screentime he gets. I felt something in the end.

And that really is what pushed this film up a notch for me. That ending has a shocking sadness that's absent from most of Honda's other science-fiction/kaiju work. Things must be sacrificed to win, and it's not something to forget as the victory takes shape.

Really, I think this is underappreciated. It's really quite a good example of the kaiju genre that does its job efficiently and well.

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!!!

The theme ingredients are octopus and kitsch.

This is a great movie for an evening of friends, microwave popcorn, fizzy drinks (your choice), and a kitschy romp that'll make you laugh 'til you cry. If the "Iron Chef" voice-overs make you laugh, these will make you scream for mercy.

Make it a double-feature: complete your evening of low-budget deadpan kitsch with a screening of "Avenging Disco Godfather."

Allez Cuisine!

PS: IMDb says, "Sorry, you must provide at least 10 lines in your comment. Please return to the edit window (or use the BACK option if this isn't a new window)." There! I've made my quota!

A Japanese team of explorers wants to take a closer look at a lonely island for possible use by a tourism company. Little do they know what they'll find: a grumpy giant octopus walking over land to kill and wave its tentacles a lot. When they find a way to fight the beast, promptly there are more dangerous creatures succeeding it, enlarged mysteriously by aliens who, of course, want to conquer Earth.

Ishiro Honda, director of the original 1956 'Godzilla' as well as many sequels ('King Kong vs. Godzilla', 'Mothra vs. Godzilla' etc.), created an entertaining monster flick here. "Nankai no daikaijû" is not outstanding in story, design or acting, but certainly not disappointing either if you like the genre. I watched it back in the 1990s and it was fun to watch it a second time now.