Latitude Zero

source: Latitude Zero

This movie could have been a classic 60s sci fi if it wasn't for the ridiculous creature costumes. The miniatures of the submarines and the underwater city are really good, but the costumes for the creatures look they won them at a carnival fair. The movie is also really slow at points, like when they walk through the underwater land for five minutes! Other than that though the movie is decent, the acting is okay and the plot is interesting. I would say only watch this if you have no other Japanese sci fi movie to watch.

This delightful Soho science fiction/adventure is deliberately campy, a throwback to the "Flash Gordon" / "Buck Rogers" serials of the 1930's with a bit of "Batman" thrown in thanks to the presence of Caesar Romero as the main villain. He's the insane Dr. Malic who lives way under the sea, where giant foam rubber furry rats and macrame lions with condor wings are created by Him to destroy his enemies. Somewhere deep under the ocean is a waterless cave complete with volcanic rock and a compound where price has brought a bunch of people from various eras of the past couple hundred years of history to live in immortality. Along with the very jealous Patricia Medina, he rules this land, and has evil intentions that can only be described as more diabolical than anything you've ever seen in a film like this. With an all-star International cast including Joseph Cotten (Medina's real life husband) and Richard Jaeckel, plus veterans of the Japanese film 8ndystry, best film quads along slowly but has many interesting developments that explode once they get into the underground compound. Give me the anesthetic Romero has an infection for the Japanese scientist she refers to as "the little one" (whom Medina is insanely jealous of), and she literally ends up in a birdcage as a subject of some diabolical plot. You won't believe all the creatures that pop out of nowhere, some giant vampire bats, a bunch of large insect size baths that are just as dangerous (and obviously fake), and of course the lion before it gets its wings and the Condor that looked like a very phoney dodo bird. This is a delight for the kiddies, a fun bit of comedy for the adults, and a must for lovers of bizarre cinema. They did an impressive job in creating the sets and designing the special effects, and once it reaches it's halfway point, you'll be totally hooked longing to see how these creatures are gotten rid of and how the villains are dispatched. It's basically a James Bond film on acid.

Latitude Zero is all kinds of bad, weird, and awesome at the same time. It starts with a group, that includes 2 scientists and a journalist, engaged in an undersea investigation. While they are diving...an underwater volcano explodes. And, when they come to, they are on an advanced submarine belonging to the people from Mu (who are, in this case, benevolent). Their sub is called the Alpha, and they are being hunted by the Black Shark (from the other side of Mu). Apparently, it has been them who has been whisking away everyone- who has mysteriously disappeared at sea over the years- to their underwater Mutopia, where they help advance their peaceful race- who have allegiance to no nation; rather, all mankind. Again, much like UFOs (further evidence of the kaiju worldbuilder's obsession with the phenomenon), the people of Mu hold the best technology back from humanity, in lieu of them finding a more peaceful way of coexistence. Which acts as a form of social criticism about the nature of society and tenuous relationship between nation states. The plotline is driven by the kidnapping of a Japanese doctor and his daughter. The captain of the Black Shark has taken them in order to extort the recipe for the radiation immunity serum he has created, from the doctor. When he refuses...the madman threatens them with his Island of Doctor Moreau style bat creatures...and tells them they will be the next ones to become one of his experimental creatures- his freaks of science. To prove this, he turns his most trusted lieutenant into a chimera right in front of their eyes- in what is most hilarious fashion. Before moving onto the good doctor... All while the crew of the Alpha race through the dark side of Mu- evading giant kaiju rats...and battling the not-so-kaiju batmen...try to get to them...before it's too late. When all is said and done, only the journalist opts to return to the surface world...where everyone he was just with is, only in different forms. ...If only he could prove it to them... ...Was it all just a dream?! The special effects in this are of the so-bad-it's-great quality, and they seem to have damn near perfected the form- with the muppet lion, turned chimera, taking the cake. The weirdest of the Showa era Tohos for sure. Highly enjoyable. 8 out of 10.

And failed kind of miserably here. So they flew in an American Cast who was just looking for a paycheck, along with Japanese actors who had no idea what they were actually saying, because they learned their lines phonetically, and it shows. Some of the special effects are pretty good when it comes to miniatures, but the creature costumes were just awful. So it stars Joseph Cotton who is a long way from Citizen Kane, and Cesar Romero, who is just off of Batman, and doing his character in the same campy way.

This is one of the finest of the non-Godzilla epics by Ishiro Honda and Toho. It definitely has all the elements that make for a great film great story, great action and an interesting twist at the end. What really stands out is the fact that Honda pretty much took a near impossible situation in working with several American actors who didn't speak Japanese and was able to do a decent job in directing them. However, the thing that really was interesting about this film was the fact that this film marks what probably is the first and only time that Akira Takarada and the late, great Akihiko Hirata are heard speaking English with their own voices after years of being dubbed. This film is definitely one of the finest to come from Toho.

The print is zoomed in and squeezed to fit into the 16 x 9 ratio. Just look at any circular object, they look like eggs. Furthermore it looks like a drop frame transfer which gives a stuttery look due to decreased frames. It's very hard to relive and enjoy a nostalgic childhood favorite with two MAJOR distractions.

This is the final collaboration of Toho's iconic kaiju team of Ishiro Honda (director), Eiji Tsuburaya (effects), and Akira Ifukube (music), but is far from their best work. The film follows three men (two scientists and a reporter) rescued by Capt. McKenzie (Joseph Cotton) in his highly advanced submarine "The Alpha" only to find out that their saviour is 200 years old and lives in the titular deep-sea utopia 11000 fathoms beneath the eponymous coordinate (where the equator crosses the international date line). On the trip to Latitude Zero, the Alpha survives an attack by a heavily armed submarine, The Black Shark, which is, commanded by Captain Kuroiga (Hikaru Kuroki) in the service of evil Dr. Malic (Cesar Romero) who is also 200 years old. After touring the idyllic abyssal city, the three rescuees end up accompanying McKenzie on a mission to rescue an atomic physicist kidnapped by Malic. Adventure ensues as the heroes penetrate Malic's secret island fortress and battle his army of giant man-bats, monster rats, and a surgically-engineered griffin, with the clock ticking as Malic prepares to practice his fiendish vivisection skills on the helpless scientist and his pretty daughter. As forgiving (and loving) as I am of Toho's tokusatsu movies, this one is generally ridiculous. The story makes no sense (unless the cryptic final scene means that the whole thing is some alternate reality) and there is little to explain who these fantastically advanced icosagenarians are or how the titular underwater city came into being. LZ 'technology' ranges from the reasonable (the Alpha), to the unlikely (the elevation belts and flamethrower/gas/laser gloves), to the preposterous (the hot tub 'bath of immunity' that makes you bulletproof). Malic's specialty seems to be bioengineering, but the giant rats and the lion look more like evil stuffed toys than actual animals and the 'man-bats' are ludicrous (note how the connection between their 'hand' and their wing changes depending on what the creature is doing). Even the most tired kaiju gimmick, the ability to suddenly increase in size, makes an appearance as Malic uses his "amplification serum" to make the griffin of suitable proportions to threaten a submarine. On the plus side, the underwater scenes are quite good (notably the opening bathyscaph segment), as are some of the images in the underwater city (such as the docking of the Alpha). The cast has lots of familiar faces from both American and Japanese cinema but the star power doesn't help. Cesar Romero essentially plays his iconic Joker character with a less maniacal laugh, Cotton's smug McKenzie is tiresome, Linda Haynes is terrible as the usually underdressed 'surprise, I'm a doctor' eye-candy, and Patricia Medina plays Malic's moll Lucretia, the typical sidekick who serves no purpose other than to have things explained. I don't know what I would have thought of this film when it came out and I was eleven (and probably representative of the target audience) - maybe I would have been impressed, but I doubt that it would hold the attention of a 'modern' eleven-year old. As far as adult viewers go: fans of this kind of schlock or those, like me, focused on their tokusatsu life-lists will find it worth watching, others, likely not.

Scientists are descending in bathyspere when an underwater volcano erupts. They are saved by a submarine commander on his futuristic sub the Alpha who takes them to a mystical and wonderful place named Latitude Zero, where the adventure is this action packed Japanese film begins.

This is a bigger budgeted film than usual for genre director Honda (with more evidently elaborate sets) – though the special effects still have that distinctive cheesiness to them (witness the giant bats and rodents on display). It also utilizes a surprising number of American actors: Joseph Cotten playing the visionary scientist looks ill-at-ease and frail (but, then, his character is supposed to be 204 years old!), an innocuous Richard Jaeckel is the photographer hero while, as chief villains, we get Cesar Romero and Patricia Medina (both essentially campy). As I've often said, I grew up watching English-language films dubbed in Italian…but hearing Hollywood actors in Japanese is another thing entirely! LATITUDE ZERO feels like a juvenile version of a typical Jules Verne adventure, and is fairly entertaining on that level; indeed, it's preferable to Honda's low-brow variations on the monsters-on-the-rampage formula because of the inherent quaint charm of the set-up in this case. The plot involves the kidnapping of a famous scientist by Romero – he was intended to establish himself in the underwater, technologically advanced city devised by Cotten (to which the world's foremost minds are being recruited). We're treated to plenty of silly battles between the rival subs, but the most amusing scenes are certainly the raid on Romero's cave – in fact, Cotten doing somersaults and fending off men in rubber suits (via flames and laser emitted from his glove!) must surely count as the nadir of his acting career; the other elder in the cast, Romero, is more in his element – after all, he had been The Joker in the BATMAN TV series and movie of the 1960s! Cotten has a scantily-clad blonde physician on his team, and is assisted by a hulking Asian; Romero, on the other hand, is flanked by an Oriental femme fatale – who, however, ends up getting a raw deal for her efforts (the girl's brain is eventually transplanted into a hybrid of lion and condor…which is among the phoniest-looking creatures you ever saw!). Apparently, a 2-disc set of this one from Media Blasters streets on this very day!!