A group of benign aliens warn the earth's leaders about a runaway planet that's on collision course with our world. Scientists work with the aliens to avert this impending catastrophe before it's too late. Unfortunately, a bunch of no-count mobsters kidnap one prominent scientist who has a formula the aliens need to succeed with their mission. Director Koji Shima relates the compelling story at a steady pace and maintains a serious tone that becomes progressively bleaker in the last third with severe heat and natural disasters ravaging the earth. Hideo Oguni's clever and inspired script combines crime, alien and apocalyptic end-of-the-world elements together in a fresh and engaging manner. The cast all contribute sound performances, with especially commendable work by Bontaro Miyake as the wise Dr. Kamura, Isao Yamagata as the equally sage Dr. Matsuda, Shozo Nanbu as the eager young Dr. Toro Isobe, and Keizo Kawasaki as the excitable Toru. The wonderfully bizarre one-eyed starfish-shaped extraterrestrials look really neat and distinctive. Seitaro Omori's rousing score, Kimio Watanabe's sharp, vibrant cinematography, and the funky special effects are all up to speed as well. Moreover, there's a pleasant central message about not judging other creatures solely on the basis of their physical appearance and an interesting point made about nuclear weapons having the potential to be put to good use. Offbeat, intriguing and well worth a watch.

WARNING FROM SPACE is a rather cheesy and laughable science fiction effort from Japan, in which Earth is attacked by aliens which look like giant starfish (the cheap costumes have to be seen to be believed). In order to cut down on budget, one of the aliens disguises itself as a female singer and it turns out that the aliens aren't bad at all, but rather wishing to help mankind by warning them of an impending meteor strike. The action is made up of the usual disaster set-pieces achieved with miniature effects and guys in suits arguing in official rooms in a bid to make things right. Sadly, the only version I managed to find was a dubbed version with poor picture quality, which lessened my enjoyment somewhat.

Giving us the Warning From Space are benevolent creatures from a planet on our sun's far side called Paira. The dominant creatures of that planet are these large human size creatures that walk upright and look like starfish with a big eye in the middle of the body. What they're warning us about is a rogue planet loose in space and about to collide with the earth. The starfish civilization has developed the technology to blow up the planet.

The cheap special effects and the fact that no one could take these funny looking aliens seriously flattens out a sincere message about universal brotherhood of humankind that Warning From Space delivers. It was nice to see that all Japanese science fiction doesn't revolve around giant prehistoric creatures destroying Tokyo.

If you can get past the funny looking aliens this is not too bad a film.