I was in sixth grade when I first saw the film reviewed herein, and it scared the hell out of me.

For weeks thence my mind was tormented by absurd visages of weeds pummeling their way through concrete subway tunnels and of mammoth bats swooping out of the skies - drug addled teenagers, volcanic disturbances, and nuclear disaster all followed suit. It was a strange time and the first, I'll admit, that I began taking environmental concerns seriously.

Even at that age I had realized, perhaps better than most adults viewing the same film today would, that THE LAST DAYS OF PLANET EARTH was a "message" picture. That message was scrawled in bold across its 88 minutes, using scenes of disaster on a global scale as ink, and I read it well. "All of this is your fault," it said, and I believed it.

THE LAST DAYS OF PLANET EARTH had quite a long and troubled journey to my sixth grade eyes. It began as Toho Studios' answer to the overwhelming popularity of the superior disaster effort, SUBMERSION OF JAPAN, in 1973. Always quick to make a buck on the next big craze, Toho rushed into production a sequel in theme only - this time the world would be their playground. Taking the resurgance in popularity of supposed-seer Nostradamus into account and bankrolling the talent of GODZILLA VS. THE SMOG MONSTER director Yoshimitsu Banno as writer and assistant director ensured that the resulting film would be original at the very least.

Directed by Toshio Masuda with special effects direction by Teroyushi Nakano and featuring a moody score from electronic mastermind Isao Tomita, THE PROPHECIES OF NOSTRADAMUS (NOSUTORADAMASU NO DAIYOGEN) proved to be a blessing and a curse for the studio. It shot to the top of the Japanese box office, grossing more than any other domestic feature film released in 1974 and paving the way for more disaster efforts (TOKYO BAY BURNS and DEATHQUAKE, for instance) to come. But not all of the attention was good.

The Erin board, under the influence of lobbyists for nuclear survivors, was soon on the film's case, citing several scenes from it as examples of nuclear survivors being shown in an unfavorable light. Being the only country in the world ever to come under a nuclear attack, the Japanese now have a deep-rooted stigma against the discussion of the physical effects of such in anything but the most sensitive of terms (this could, quite possibly, date back to the American occupation from 1945 to 1952, in which such discourse was banned all together). It was not the first film to receive such a reaction, as Teruo Ishii's 1969 opus THE HORRORS OF MALFORMED MEN was put under a studio-issued ban as a result of similar opposition.

Toho was quick to remove the offending material from domestic release prints of the film, leaving a compromised 90 minute edit (down from 114) to finish out its theatrical run. After leaving theaters the film was locked away, with only a few scant television broadcasts of the original uncut version to show that it existed at all. The home video boom of the late 1980's led to a near release of it on VHS and Laserdisc, something that sadly never came to pass.

Throughout the rest of the world, another 90 minute edit of the film (different from that which ran in Japan and some art-house theatres in the US in 1974) made rounds. This international cut was under the title of PROPHECIES OF NOSTRADAMUS: CATASTROPHE 1999 - it contained all of the material the Erin board deemed offensive but trimmed or removed from the film, all together, a number of character driven scenes. This cut was modified still further for release in Germany, France, and elsewhere (the French cut was odd, in particular, with certain scenes moved further ahead or further back in the film's timeline).

In 1981 another cut of the film began making rounds. UPA head Henry Saperstein purchased the American television rights to THE PROPHECIES OF NOSTRADAMUS and, from what appears to be the uncut version of the film (certain shots are present in the resulting print that cannot be found in the International cut of the film) the 88 minute bastardization THE LAST DAYS OF PLANET EARTH was born. Panned and scanned, cut until unintelligible, and featuring the ever-present narration of Jack Ryland (filling in, quite poorly, for the Japanese version's narrator Kyoko Kishida), this is by far the least succesful of the altered cuts. Sadly, it is still the most widely seen.

To that version's credit, however, the message still came through loud and clear when it was seen by this reviewer's younger eyes.

The original Japanese version of the film begins in the 1850's - there, a teacher by the name of Nishiyama is killed by his students for heresy. His belief in the validity of the predictions of Nostradamus (and the foreward-thinking views associated with them by the film - in this case, that Japan will cease to be a closed nation) is deemed dangerous enough to warrant death. His wife and child escape, however, and the book of prophecies is handed down to the younger generation. Nishiyama was right, it seems, as shortly thereafter admiral Matthew Perry opens Japan to the rest of the world with the Convention of Kanagawa.

In 1945, however, things are looking bad for Nishiyama's son. Now a general in the Imperial Army, he is accused of the same crimes as his father. This time his predictions show the inevitable defeat of the Japanese - a dangerous thing to be espousing in a time of war. The scene ends with a brilliant explosion - the detonation of the atom bomb over Hiroshima - and the title bursts onto the screen.

The opening credits are simply brilliant - blood red lettering scrolls horizontally across black and white images of the many events that take place between 1945 and the time of the film. The moon landing, the Vietnam War, Nixon meeting with the Chinese and Russians, and the invention of supersonic flight are all catalogued here. The conclusion is on a bit more somber note, however, and the last black and white shot is of a sea bird, drenched in oil, being picked up off the beach.

The remainder of the film takes place in 197x (similar to the time period of SUBMERSION OF JAPAN and contrary to those who believe it takes place in the year 1999. The only reference to the year 1999 comes towards the end of the film, and involves one of Nostradamus' prophecies being used in to illustrate a nuclear war in the future) and centers around the third generation of Nishiyama's - professor and pediatrition Ryogen Nishiyama. We are introduced to him as he lectures his colleagues on the potential dangers of a new miracle hormone meant to increase plant growth and possibly end world hunger in the process.

The film never makes clear how Nishiyama became such an important man and why he, a child doctor, is involved in such high level projects - he seems to spend most of his time engaging in public debates on urban blight and buzzing local factories with small planes to check their emissions. He's not a terribly believable character, in any realistic sense, but it is through him that the film's "don't fuck up the world" message is conveyed.

With such oddities as giant slugs, mutant plants, and contaminated children giving the Japanese government worries, Nishiyama is called in as a consultant. He brings to them the obvious answers to all of their questions - that man is responsible for the strange goings ons. What's more, it's all predicted in, you guessed it, the prophecies of Nostradamus. The first half of the film plays as a character driven lead-up to the balls-out second act, with Nishiyama ultimately following a former research party's lead in New Guinea, only to find them (and several of his former colleagues) graphically suffering from the late stages of radiation poisoning.

Nishiyama's party puts them out of their misery in one of the scenes that earned the film its notoriety with the Erin board, and the men are layed to rest. At this point the second act begins, and every disaster imaginable can and does happen.

To start things off, SST's begin exploding at random in the stratosphere - the nitrous oxide released in the explosions eats holes in the ozone layer that allows intense ultraviolet radiation to pummel the earth. Massive fires, skin cancer, and exploding oil refineries are the end result. But the increased ultraviolet radiation also affects the poles, leading to drastic changes in climate and an untimely monsoon in the middle of Tokyo. A worldwide food shortage causes widespread riots and the evacuation of major metropolitan centers. The highways are packed with hot perturbed individuals, one of whom attempts to ram his way through, leading to the film's infamous exploding traffic jam.

With people going nuts and strange mirages (Tokyo is reflected in the sky in one still-chilling segment) occurring worldwide, the Japanese government (an allegorical substitute for the governments of the world at large) meets in emergency session to find out how to deal with the catastrophes plaguing their nation and the world. Nishiyama is, predictably, called in, and the vision he presents for the future is a grim one. If future seismic disturbances don't kill us then an all-out nuclear war spurned on by the rampant food shortages will. In the end, humans are reduced to cancer-covered humanoids, fighting over the worms in a wasteland once called Earth . . .

PROPHECIES OF NOSTRADAMUS is one of the most charged of the eco-horror films of the 1970's (other notable examples include the underwhelming FROGS [1972] John Frankenheimer's under-appreciated PROPHECY [1979]), with scenes directly referencing such things as the Minamata disaster, in which mercury-tainted waste was dumped into Minamata bay with catastrophic results, and the environmental degredation of Japan itself (culminating in the founding of the Environmental Agency in 1971). The film's massive scope covered such issues as global warming and cooling, the destruction of the ozone layer, and the implications of factory emissions (both real and imagined). The latter forms the basis for one of the film's most effective early scenes, in which a happy group of ballet students is juxstaposed with a waiting room full of coughing children in face masks.

One major issue with the film is that its focus on the disasters is almost entirely exclusive, particularly once the second act is reached. Though characters are established towards the beginning of the film, they seem largely forgotten by the end of it with the plot only dredging them up when it becomes absolutely necessary (and nevermind how photographer Akira, betrothed to Nishiyama's daughter, manages to seemingly teleport from location to location). Still, the film manages at least three entirley succesful dramatic moments:

The first involves Nishiyama's assistant Kita - a character excised entirely from every other version of the film. Having just witnessed his daughter giving birth to a deformed and lifeless baby, Kita has an intensely emotional monologue, at once full of sadness and fear, in which he laments seeing the birth of the "thing that was supposed to be a child". This brief scene is difficult to describe without going into its full context, but suffice to say its exclusion from the international versions is near criminal. The second scene involves Nishiyama and his wife, the latter of whom dies over the course of the scene. Present only in a truncated form in the international versions, the full scene is a showcase for the talent of star Testruo Tanba and co-star Yoko Tsukasa (both of which are largely overshadowed by the larger-than-life disasters that dominate the film's latter half). A third scene, showing Akira's father attempting to end his life in the polluted ocean - wishing to die as the sea dies - is also quite poignant.

It is these few scenes that tend to keep the less sucessful aspects of the film - including the obviously studio-bound impromptu attack by giant carnivorous fruit-bats and a love scene almost entirely devoid of that most important element, amongst other things - from being as detracting as they could have been. Much like in Yoshimitsu Banno's earlier project, GODZILLA VS. THE SMOG MONSTER, a constant focus on human destruction keeps the multitude of often-ludicrous disaster set-ups from falling into the same category as many similar setups in the bloated effects vehicles of today. The disasters in PROPHECIES OF NOSTRADAMUS aren't about the effects work or maintaining any sort of filmic reality - they're about showing the audience in the most brutal of ways that by destroying the world around us we are, ultimately, destroying ourselves.

It's the intense devotion to that message by the film's creators that keeps PROPHECIES OF NOSTRADAMUS from being just another 70's disaster film - even when the action does slide from the somber to the silly. For those WTFFilm-o-philes out there wishing to celebrate this Earth Day, 2008, in your own unique way, a viewing of this obscure epic should prove more than suitable.

Highly recommended.

This review is part of the REDUCE, REUSE, RECY-KILL Earth Day roundtable: