ManiakJiggy This is How Movies Should Be Made

BroadcastChic Excellent, a Must See

Dotbankey A lot of fun.

Freeman This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Jeliosjelios Realized after "Star Wars" and with similarities, San Ku Kai is considered the "Japanese star wars". This film is not really effective with specials and technical effects like can be "star wars", we can feel and see too much the models and other special effects. But,nevertheless, the story is good. Except few sequences are particularly coarse (bad) in achieving (direction) and some actors. Note the good performance of some actors like, for example, Vic Morrow or like the famous Sonny Chiba.If you have seen the series and you appreciate it, it's nice and interesting to watch this movie. It is funny too to note that the technical faults, mentioned just before, are the same in the series and the movie.A good time despite his technical and some ridiculous sequences.jelios@hotmail.fr

yakadee I first saw this flick when it was released in 78 under the tile Message From Space. Everyone was hyped about Star Wars and all Sci Fi movies were attracting new audiences. Unfortunately this one attracted me. It turned out to not really be a Sci Fi movie but a piece of rip-off crap that was produced only to sucker people in wanting to quench their Star Wars thirst. Think bad "B" movie and multiply it about 10 times. I have only seen it once and that was 27 years ago so there are only a few things that stand out. The first is a big tall ship sailing through space. I don't mean some cool Han Solo giant Falcon type ship, I'm talking an actual wooden Tall Ship with oars, sails and everything, floating through space. My friend and I looked at each other in disbelief. This was the stupidest thing I had ever seen in a so called "legitimate" move. The second thing I remember is getting up half way through the film, and going to get my money back. Unfortunately I had to wait in a long line as a good portion of the audience was doing the same thing. This is something I had never witnessed before or since (although I'm sure it happened with Battlefield Earth but I didn't pay for that toilet tank before walking out). The third thing I remember is vowing to never watch a Vic Morrow movie again. Of course his career was cut short (pun intended) a few years later, perhaps deservedly so for this over-ripe piece of tripe.

zzz05 Reminded me a lot of Battle Beyond the Stars. Same Seven Samuraiish structure, where valiant warriors from all walks of life are thrown together by fate to defend the peaceful townsfolk from the marauding intruders. ('Liabe Gods pick robots too').Extra points for deadly serious Vic Morrow grimly stalking like Hamlet amidst the leftover Buck Rogers TV series robots, spacegoing sailing galleons with rows of oars, gauzy space princesses, green evil Space Vikings, bad grannies in space wheelchairs, dayglow plastic walnuts from the Liabe Gods, and comical Space Cop pursuing those crazy teenagers playing space chicken in their combination Thunderbirds and Transformers hot rod spaceship.

rosscinema This is one of those jaw dropping bad films that is absolutely hilarious! I had no idea what was happening for a lot of this film(!) but the main story has a planet being taken over by the Gavanas which are nothing more than Clingons. And they send out 8 plastic walnuts to locate the chosen ones that will come and save them. Somehow a good actor like Vic Morrow ended up in this film and the rest are unknowns. At least in America they're unknowns. What can you say? Its a blatant Japanese rip-off of "Star Wars". Why is it that Japan can produce some wonderful and intricate gadgets but just have no clue how to produce decent special effects for films? Vic Morrow has a little robot as a sidekick that says lines like "Hot Dog, Master"! and "Only hurt when laugh" and when Morrow discovers a plastic walnut in his glass of booze he mutters, "I've been selected as a chosen one" which makes his robot react with "Hooray"! There is bright colors used throughout the film and the color red is very prominent. One of the flying ships in the film is just a big boat with sails! In another silly scene Morrow shows up to talk to the head of the Gavanas wearing a Napolean like outfit and challenges one the warriors to a duel! The scene is pointless. The special effects are so cheap and low budget that the monster movies like "Mothra" look like Spielberg made them. These are so terrible that every wire can be seen and every type of ship is a bad plastic model. The sets look like it was made by third grade stage producers. Cheap paint looking very colorful is everywhere. The costumes are everything from Samurai outfits to spandex space outfits and one leading Japanese character looks like a geisha. If Sid and Marty Krofft took acid and got drunk at the same time this is what they might have produced. Peggy Lee Brennan is cute and spunky and I remember her episode of "MASH" and she was fun to watch in this film but when she is flying the space ship and sticks her tongue out of the corner of her mouth to interpret that its serious business, you have to laugh! And Laugh! One of those rare "So bad its good" movies that absolutely requires multiple viewings. Plastic walnuts???