Shōzō Nanbu

The first Japanese science fiction film to be made in colour, Koji Shima's Warning From Space features eye-popping special effects from the same team at Daiei Studios that would bring Gamera to life a decade later. As Japan is rocked by mysterious sightings of UFOs over Tokyo and large one-eyed aliens attempting contact, scientists collaborate to investigate the unexpected rise in extraterrestrial activity. Unbeknownst to them, one of the aliens has already assumed human form and is about to deliver a very important message... that could be humanity's last hope for survival. With a witty script by Hideo Oguni (screenwriter of several Akira Kurosawa classics including Seven Samurai) and iconic starfish-like aliens designed by avant-garde artist Taro Okamoto, the original Japanese version of Warning From Space finally makes its official English-language video debut.

Finally released outside Japan for the very first time, these unique riffs on H.G. Wells' classic character (though undoubtedly also indebted to Universal's iconic film series) are two of the earliest examples of tokusatsu (special effects) cinema from Daiei Studios, later the home of Gamera. Eight years after The Invisible Man Appears, Mitsuo Murayama's exciting The Invisible Man vs. The Human Fly tells the story of a series of mysterious murders where the only clue is strange buzzing noise at the scene of the crime... could this be linked to secret wartime experiments in shrinking humans to the size of insects? And can a scientist who's just invented an invisibility ray be the one to stop it?