EDITOR’S NOTE: The X From Outer Space was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, November 30, 1968 at 11:20 p.m., Saturday, December 13, 1969 at 1:00 a.m., Saturday, August 22, 1970 at 1:00 a.m., Saturday, August 21 1971 at 1:00 a.m. and Saturday, August 18, 1973 at 1:00 a.m.
Thanks to American International Television (AITV), The X from Outer Space became a fixture of 1970s and 80s creature-feature late-night television in the US, terrifying and delighting generations of insomniac kids.
Known in Japan as Uchū Daikaijū Girara (Giant Space Monster Guilala), this film is Shochiku’s first monster movie and very well may be the first Japanese film to feature a woman—Peggy Neal—with blonde hair. It’s also the first appearance of Guilala, one of the wackiest-looking kaiju you’ve ever seen, a chicken-headed, bulbous-antennaed, red-eyed masterpiece of absurdity that looks like it was designed during a fever dream at a late-night diner.
The spaceship AAB Gamma is on its way to Mars to check out UFO sightings when it gets sprayed with alien spores that stick to the hull. One spore gets sneaked back to Earth, breaks containment, and mutates into the giant lizard known as Guilala. The monster spits fireballs, hungrily devours nuclear reactors like appetizers, can turn into a floating, burning ball of light to travel across Japan and can only be defeated by the brilliantly named substance Guilalalium, which shrinks it back into a harmless spore that gets promptly launched right back into orbit around the sun.
Since Shochiku was primarily known for delicate family dramas and romance films rather than miniature destruction, they had to build their special effects department from scratch. To do it right, they hired former Toho visual effects crew members who used heavy-duty plaster for the miniature cities, giving Guilala’s rampage a strangely dense, unique crunch compared to Godzilla’s stomping grounds. Costume designer and legendary suit-maker Eizo Kaimai—who worked on the original 1954 Godzilla suit—helped craft the Guilala suit. The bright red eyes were made from translucent fiberglass and lit from the inside with small car headlight bulbs.
The swinging, brass-heavy jazz score was composed by Toshiaki Tsushima, who would go on to score some of the goriest, coolest yakuza and pinky violence films for Toei, including the iconic Battles Without Honor and Humanity series.
In the 1990s, after Nikkatsu Co.—which made Gappa, the Triphibian Monster—went out of business, Shochiku announced Gappa vs. Guilala, which sadly never happened. Can you imagine the rubber-suit chaos we missed? Guilala finally got his revenge on cinema in Monster X Strikes Back: Attack the G8 Summit, directed by Minoru Kawasaki (The Calamari Wrestler). The movie features world leaders trying to defeat Guilala with national stereotypes, Takeshi Kitano playing a mystical warrior deity and a Kim Jong-il lookalike attempting to launch nuclear missiles!
