Latitude Zero DVD Review

I remember when I was a nine or ten year-old boy living in Aurora Colorado seeing both the newspaper and television ads for a movie called Latitude Zero. The movie was a US-Japanese co production from Toho Studios and Inoshiro Hondo, the man behind many of the best giant monster movies, including Godzilla. The ads featured such things a sleek flying submarine, a winged lion, giant rats and flying monkeys; stuff right up the alley of an imaginative ten year old. For some reason, I never got to see Latitude Zero, but the kid inside of me has never forgotten those extremely cool ads.

Well, it’s the DVD age now, and it seems like just about anything ever made is eventually seeing the light of home video. I must not be the only person in the world interested in seeing this movie after thirty –five years, because the good folks at Tokyo Shock have just released the movie in a wonderful two-disc edition featuring pristine widescreen prints of both the US version and the shorter Japanese version of the film. My internal ten year old is the happiest he’s been in years.

The movie concerns an oceanographic research team caught in the eruption of an underwater volcano. The team is led by Akira Takarada as Dr. Ken Tashiro, and Masumi Okada as Dr. Jules Masson (a Japanese guy not too convincing as a Frenchman). The great character actor Richard Jaeckel, plays a newspaper reporter along for the ride. A futuristic submarine, commanded by Joseph Cotton, rescues them. Cotton looks more like Hugh Hefner than Captain Nemo, dressed in an open shirt and wearing gold chains across his chest. Dr. Masson is badly injured, and taken back to the submarine’s home base at Latitude Zero, a Utopian community dedicated to eradicating the world’s ills. To do so, the captain and his crew convince the world’s greatest scientific minds to “defect” to the community.

Looking to ruin Cotton’s utopian vision is Dr.Malic, played by Caesar Romero, who commands an equally powerful submarine called the Black Shark. Malic plans to kidnap a brilliant scientist on his way to Latitude Zero, to cause Cotton and cronies to come to the rescue, and giving Malic the opportunity to kill his rivals. The plans to do this with the help of a half-bird, half-lion creature, some evil flying monkeys and a pack of giant rats.

The whole movie operates on the level of an elaborate full-color widescreen Saturday movie serial like Flash Gordon. The pace is fast, lively, and tongue-in-cheek. The special effects are a wonderful mix of terrific miniatures, and cheesy men-in-suit monsters, giving the film a ratty, low-tech charm.

The performances of the veteran cast add to the fun. Jaeckel plays the wisecracking bulldog reporter as if he just stepped off the set of The Front Page, and Romero chews the scenery like his is still playing the Joker on Batman.

We get flying submarines, jet packs, gloves that shoot flames, goofy monsters, babes in backless miniskirts, brain transplants, and all sorts of G-rated mayhem. It all ends with a nod to The Wizard of Oz.

The Tokyo Shock DVD is a 2 disc set containing both the longer American version and the shorter Japanese cut. I have only seen the US cut so far, and it is presented in beautiful edition that makes you think the movie was made yesterday. I think it is an easy bet anyone who enjoys old Toho movies, serial style thrills and old actors slumming will love this wonderful, imaginative, slightly cracked film. Highly recommended. A.