Re: 6 miles



Terrell Miller wrote:

"During another visit to the detective, a packaged inscribed "MU" arrives for the Admiral. Contained within is a film depicting the thriving undersea continent (with its own geothermal "sun") and demanding that the surface world capitulate"



What makes that funny is the wild Zen attack Japan could have made on Mu.
Instead of running the film up and asking themselves "what the *** is an 'Atragon'?" they could have simply stamped the package "Return to sender - no such person at this address" and then waited to see where the Japanese postal service delivered it to.
Once they had tracked the postal worker deep into the Pacific where he threw the package over the side of the ship, the location of the secret underwater Mu base would be revealed.


Wow, the Japanese really had this big "imagine WW2 turned out differently" vengeance fantasy thing going during the '60s. Same basic premise as Godzilla: grotesque monsters invade the Home Islands, wreak havoc and destruction...and then we kill them with zap guns, we're so clever.



This movie is probably the most obvious example of that. The Atragon is built by a Japanese submarine commander who wants to use it to return Japan to its imperial glory. The whole thing is pretty edgy in regards to its concept, and about the time the camera first shows the old imperial battle flag at Atragon's secret base and then lingers on it, you can just feel the audience getting uncomfortable.
Hilarious review of the movie here: http://icydeath.www.50megs.com/reviews/atragon.htm
This is my number 2 favorite Japanese sci-fi film, bested only by the near-holy "The Mysterians".
They sort of redid it as a anime film (the sequel to the anime one is out, but I've never seen it), but the original is one of those things that you can study for years just trying to figure out what was going through the minds of the people who made it. It's like a platypus- odd, charming, inexplicable, and possessing a poisonous claw on its rear feet. :-)

Pat
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