An Air Japan aeroplane is flying above the country and the pilots have noted the blood red colour of the sky ahead with concern, having never seen anything like it. The passengers meanwhile chat, as a politician, Mr Mano (Eizô Kitamura) is aboard and wanting to relax, but the businessman across the aisle, Tokuyasu (Nobuo Kaneko), is determined to engage him in conversation, especially about the way Japan is growing more like the United States what with the assassination of a British diplomat in the headlines. As they chat, one woman is startled by a bird hitting one of the side windows, making a gory mess and flapping in panic. Could all this be an omen?
Not helping is the news the Captain receives that there's a bomb on the plane, which in many another movie could be the trigger for a crisis drama where we had to guess the identity of the suicide bomber before it all went horribly wrong. Yet this took a different path, preferring to spring a glowing, orange flying saucer on the cast not unlike the sort UFO contactee George Adamski claimed to have photographed. In that case, the snap was identified as that of a chicken feeder, but the folks in this plane are not so lucky, and soon a near miss with the craft has thrown the flight into calamity as they crash in a barren, rocky region far from civilisation then to make matters worse, the saucer isn't done with them.
First director Hajime Satô established just how bad things were with such details as the foreigner (Kathy Horan) who uses up all the drinking water to wash her face and hands, though we can't let the Japanese off scot free as there's still that bomber around, who reveals his motives to be simply because life was boring and he wanted excitement, nothing political whatsoever. It's people like him who tend to spoil life for the rest of us, but there is a more dire threat to come as once everyone has woken up from their post-crash daze and worked out who survived (the Captain was not fortunate) a couple venture outside the fuselage and can't help but notice the saucer has alighted nearby, and we can't help but notice Mr Saga the scientist, who is investigating, has a big split in his head now.
Not an injury thanks to the collision, but the cause of an alien invading his brain, an alien which takes the form of a small blob of grey goo. Not the most intimidating of movie monsters, but looks aren't everything, and we're not even sure if it's the actual extraterrestrial menace or merely a minion doing its bidding. Goke is that menace, and tells us so in creepy, distorted voiceover as a very bleak view of humanity begins to dominate, with the survivors unable to sort themselves out and manage a plan to tackle the forefront of this apparent invasion - the politician even prefers to seduce the businessman's wife than to face up to his responsibilities, and she's no better, going along with his advances to spite her hated husband. But there has to be a hero, right?
The closest we get is the co-pilot Sugisaka (Teruo Yoshida), who is able enough to try and rally everyone into fighting back, but the message was more that there may have been those among us who can lead the way in dreadful circumstances, yet it simply will not be enough, which results in one of the most ill humoured of the Japanese science fiction boom of the fifties and sixties. Although the special effects have a goofy, quaint quality, with nobody going to be convinced by the plane crash - the saucers are pretty nifty, though - it doesn't really matter when the mood is so sullen and despairing. Plus it doesn't cop out as the sci-fi of many another country might have introduced at least a degree of hope to alleviate any depressing feelings watching this self-serving lot represent us at our worst, yet here the aliens make no bones about wanting to destroy the population of Planet Earth, and we have no doubt that they can carry off their scheme, without so much as an explanation so we may understand. It's a very strange mix of the wacky and the grim. Music by Shunsuke Kikuchi.
