Trailer
Plot summary
Astronauts Fuji and Glenn are ordered to look into Planet X, a body newly detected beyond Jupiter that has been sending radio waves toward Earth. There the pair meet the Xiliens, human-like beings who live in caverns below the surface and answer to a leader called the Controller. A monster the Xiliens name Monster Zero attacks, and the astronauts know it as King Ghidorah. The Controller asks to borrow Godzilla and Rodan to defend the planet, offering the cure for cancer in exchange.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Invasion of Astro-Monster (1965)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- To shoot a low-angle shot of the 3-meter P1 rocket rising from the Planet X base, special effects art director Yasuyuki Inoue broke through the sound stage floor against company policy and dug a hole. He got in trouble when the hole was found, and reused the trick in Destroy All Monsters.
- The film had a lower budget than earlier entries in the series, so its effects scenes used less elaborate model cities and footage recycled from Rodan, Mothra and Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster. Ishirō Honda called it "a vicious cycle of time and budget."
- Yoshio Tsuchiya improvised the Planet X Controller's hand gestures and, at Ishirō Honda's request, built the alien dialect out of French, German and Ryunosuke Akutagawa's Kappa language.
- American producer Henry G. Saperstein proposed adding an American actor to help sell the film in the United States, and the role went to Nick Adams, who had previously starred in Frankenstein Conquers the World.
- Effects animator Sadao Iizuka created the film's transport tractor beam and designed it after a neon club sign he saw in Shibuya ward.
- The smoke in the Lake Myojin scenes was made by filling thermos bottles with liquid nitrogen and destroying them underwater to create a chemical reaction.
