Voyage Into Space — Voyage Into Space(Blu Ray)
Voyage into Space is a 1970 action/adventure movie from Japan directed by Minoru Yamada, best known for a succession of similar TV series including Kamen Rider, Captain Ultra and Johnny Soko and His Flying Robot, Yamada’s work is a genre-mixing tour de force that is part atomic age spy thriller, part giant sci-fi robot sci-fi thriller, part kaiju, and is quite obviously the basis for the creation of The Power Rangers.
Whilst this was released as a feature-length movie in the west, it was actually a compilation movie cobbled together from episodes of Yamada’s successful TV series Johnny Soko and His Flying Robot. The film stars Japanese child star Mitsunobu Kaneko as Johnny Soko (voiced by American actress Bobbie Byers, The Savages from Hell, The Wild Rebels and The Doctors). Along with his adult sidekick, Jerry Mano, a secret agent working for Unicorn (Akio Itô) voiced by Ted Russoff (Passion of the Christ, Rome and Absurd) Soko steals the prototype of a giant robot from terrorist organisation The Gargoyle Gang. The scientist who built the robot has a sudden crisis of conscience and in order to keep it from the hands of The Gargoyle Gang gives Johnny a voice-activated wristwatch that controls said robot. The rest of the film consists of the Gargoyle Gang’s various attempts to cause havoc and retrieve the robot from Johnny Soko through the use of some of the freakiest giant kaiju I’ve ever seen, the nucleon (a giant bowling ball replete with finger holes) the papier mâché headed Cthulhu-esque Emperor Guillotine, a man in silver body paint and another with a prosthetic forehead. The movie is made up of five episodes from the series, the first two deal with setting up the story, Johnny’s acquisition of the robot, and his joining forces with Unicorn, the anti-terrorism agency that Jerry Mano works for. The next episode deals with the Gargoyle Gang’s attempts to steal important documents through the capture and transformation of head of the Kyoto branch of Unicorn, Suzuki into a Gargoyle Gang agent, whilst the final episode featured is the season finale featuring the giant robots final battle with Emperor Guillotine.
Voyage into Space represents about as much fun as you can have watching TV. Who doesn’t love a movie with giant flying robots, weird-looking kaiju monsters and laughable villains who constantly fail with elaborate plots. The movie is presented here in all its English dubbed glory with some unintentionally hilarious fight sequences and pretty much nonstop action. If you are looking for something to help unleash the inner child, this is about as good as it gets. I don’t remember this from my childhood but I remember loving many similar things. If you were to imagine a combination of late 60s early 70s James Bond, Toho style tokusatsu franchises (live actions TV or film that makes heavy use of practical effects) like Godzilla, Ultraman, Gamera and Kamen Rider, then you’d have a good idea of what we have here.
The print is drawn from a 2019 HD master that looks fine for the most part but could do with a bit of extra work here and there. The disc is lacking in bonus material other than some cool sci-fi trailers and subtitles but the fact we have this Blu-ray at all is enough to make me very happy. If you love giant kaiju movies, classic Bond movies or cheap science fiction movies you will love this. I know I do.