Prophecies of Nostradamus 1974

[Malchik]

This is a film I've been wanting to check out for years.

[Orichalcum]

I don’t know where to begin, this movie is weird!

I definitely agree with what others have said already, it’s not a perfect film, and its message is very hamfisted and repeated over and over but the doomsday skits are so bizarre and usually well shot it’s easy to overlook the subpar story and just roll the sequences, and that score is very fitting-wow lol. It's really dated but best to watch while high, crazy it came out in 74' because it feels nothing like a Showa Godzilla movie at all.

Worth checking out of you can find it online, but nothing you need to pay to see.

I can understand why Toho would want to distance themselves, it's really nothing more than a expoitation film with Toku effects, and that Fukashima scene wouldn't be in good taste with the tragedy just a few years back.

I give it two mutants fighting over a snake out of five.

Added in 15 hours 22 minutes 25 seconds:
You know, it's a tad bit excessive but I kinda wish they used more from the traffic jam explosion scene for G84', the shots of people on fire would have worked very well for its tone.

[LSD Jellyfish]

Added in 15 hours 22 minutes 25 seconds:
You know, it's a tad bit excessive but I kinda wish they used more from the traffic jam explosion scene for G84', the shots of people on fire would have worked very well for its tone.

Yeah. It's surprising how I never even realized it was stock footage, and I don't think anyone would notice.

Also, the scene is weirdly believable believe it or not. Sometimes, depending on how I feel I take a bus to Tokyo instead of a train. One time there was severe traffic, and it was basically bumper to bumper for miles and miles. Japanese expressways really aren't expressways lol.

[TylerPreston20]

On the topic of this movie, I spotted this listing of an Italian 2 Disc DVD set which has the international English cut and the Japanese cut on Amazon Italy:

https://www.amazon.it/Catastrofe-Specia ... 279&sr=8-1

[Terasawa]

^Bootleg which recycles the same versions that have been circulating online for 15 years or more.

[LSD Jellyfish]

Not to scare anyone here, or be dramatic, but does anyone else feel that the events of the film are coming to pass? I don’t mean literally, but let’s say post 2011.

Even within the last year we’ve had:
-Australian Wildfires
-Amazon fires
-Continual nuclear threats (Iran, North Korean, and to an extent, the United States).
-Coronavirus

Not saying any of this is predicted, or that the film is correct.

[Godzilla21]

Not to scare anyone here, or be dramatic, but does anyone else feel that the events of the film are coming to pass? I don’t mean literally, but let’s say post 2011.

Even within the last year we’ve had:
-Australian Wildfires
-Amazon fires
-Continual nuclear threats (Iran, North Korean, and to an extent, the United States).
-Coronavirus

Not saying any of this is predicted, or that the film is correct.

No. Until hippies are doing suicide bike rides over cliffs and giant slugs attack we are safe

[Terasawa]

LSD, did you ever get a chance to view Submersion? I think that's one you'd have a unique perspective of since it's basically about Japanese identity.

[LSD Jellyfish]

LSD, did you ever get a chance to view Submersion? I think that's one you'd have a unique perspective of since it's basically about Japanese identity.

I liked it, a lot. However, I watched an unsubbed Japanese DVD and while I understood most of it, there's probably a few things I didn't understand.

I thought the destruction sequences were really well done. The Earthquake Scene was fantastic and horrifying. I think the brief shots of the helicopter flying around are some of the best I've ever seen, it really looks real.


And I do like the drama between the lead:


I'm not Japanese so I wouldn't know, and I've lived a life of luxury often being able to ignore and chose my customs. I think the film pinpoints a fear that Japan is on a very geographically dangerous spot, and because of it physically being an island, they can't really evacuate or allow everyone to escape. It's certainly a problem unique to Japan. I'll admit, the film made sort of scared about living here. I also think the way that the government lived in denial of the first big earthquake, is something that rings true throughout the Toho lexicon into even Shin Godzilla.

I think the biggest part of the film is where the Japanese minister requests Australia and other countries take in roughly 5 million refugees. The people flat out refuse, saying that the Japanese people will cause issues, and eventually create their "own countries". I think this issue, is something relevant not just to Japan, but basically everywhere around the world, and the arguments presented by it are stuff you hear constantly in media against anti-immigration/refugees. People would rather people die, than be inconvenienced or accept maybe mild changes to their culture. I also felt that this showed a certain irony, in that Japan historically has been very isolationist, and compared to other countries has a very low rate of actual immigration.

The one thing that I was sort of iffy on, was at the end, the female character is told to marry a Japanese person to preserve culture. While I have an obvious bias against this, being a white dude dating a Japanese woman, I disagree with the fact that culture is contingent on some sort of homogeneous identity, and it's something that really annoys me about Japanese culture and society. I'm also of the belief that beyond obvious genuine cultural appropriation, culture is supposed to morph and change through generations, and life. But again, this comes from a place of me not really having my deeply routed cultural connections and the film is basically about a fictional event when 100 million people are suddenly wiped out.

Nostradamus is interesting, because unlike Submersion (I wish more people watched it so we could discuss the differences), is very similar but places it was a world problem, not just Japan's and admits guilt of developed countries, such as Japan itself, being part of the problem. And whereas Japan Sinks has a major downer ending, that cannot be stopped, Nostradamus has a more optimistic view where people, young people particularly, can save and prevent these events. These films are two sides of the same coin, and despite being being similar on the surface are pretty different.

[Terasawa]

More than anything else I think Submersion of Japan is about the fear of losing what it means to be Japanese in an increasingly westernized world. I think Komatsu and the filmmakers posit that the Japanese identity owes as much to cultural upbringing as it does genetic identity and even location. I suppose it feels a bit xenophobic, both from the perspectives of the Japanese and the foreign nations represented, but I don’t think there were any ulterior motives. Komatsu is asking the question “will the Japanese still be Japanese without Japan?” I’ve never read the novel but I think the film leaves that question pretty much unanswered.

Shin Godzilla parallels Submersion in a lot of ways.

[Kaijuzone]

I'm glad to own this film now after a week ago purchase and i can't wait to dive in.

[Terasawa]

You think so? You really think that Doomsday is near?

[LSD Jellyfish]

You think so? You really think that Doomsday is near?

It's a shame that the film has been preserved so poorly (not blaming the bootleggers, just the fact that we have to resort to poor quality bootlegs just to even see the damn film), because it's evident that the film has a lot of memorable cinematography and shots.

[Terasawa]

It's a shame that the film has been preserved so poorly (not blaming the bootleggers, just the fact that we have to resort to poor quality bootlegs just to even see the damn film), because it's evident that the film has a lot of memorable cinematography and shots.

Even from a duplicated VHS source it's clear that the photography is especially good. It's just a shame that so much care wasn't put into the structure and narrative.

I watched the international version (~89 minutes) on a lark last week and I enjoyed it more than I expected. It may not be a good movie but it's entertaining if you can get beyond how tasteless most of it is. (In Sci-Fi on Tape, James O'Neill describes the plot as "little more than a series of nasty vignettes." So true.) That said, I intend to revisit the 114-minute version some time soon.

[AllosaurHell]

I really want this movie to be out on Blu-Ray already, shame how it's only available via bootleg copies.

[Terasawa]

I really want this movie to be out on Blu-Ray already

Never gonna happen.

shame how it's only available via bootleg copies.

I know you’re talking about DVD, but the two Paramount releases (VHS and LaserDisc) were official, non-bootlegged copies.

[AllosaurHell]

I really want this movie to be out on Blu-Ray already

Never gonna happen.

shame how it's only available via bootleg copies.

I know you’re talking about DVD, but the two Paramount releases (VHS and LaserDisc) were official, non-bootlegged copies.

Oh well, here's hoping someone somehow remasters the LaserDisc similar to how that one person did the "demastered editions" of the original Star Wars trilogy.

[Terasawa]

That said, I intend to revisit the 114-minute version some time soon.

292 days later:

This was, I think, the third time I've looked at the full-length cut of this film and I still don't care for it. It had been probably a decade since I last watched it and I'd forgotten nearly everything about the scenes exclusive to the Japanese version.

For example, I had forgotten that Nishiyama's associate, Kida (Jun Hamamura), is the grandfather of one of the children born with fatal genetic abnormalities. Although this is one of many self-isolated & quickly forgotten vignettes that make up the movie, it gives us the film's only truly emotionally powerful moment as Kida, hysterical from grief, can't bear his emotions anymore and explodes at Nishiyama.

Something else I didn't recall was that Nishiyama's family is harassed by yakuza, which is also momentarily important but then totally forgotten. Nothing of this "subplot" is carried over into Toho's export cut (and therefore not to the U.S. version, either), so at first I suspected that the yakuza were responsible for Mrs. Nishiyama's vague illness and that this detail was omitted from the English versions. But no, they're totally unrelated incidents -- the yakuza make two threatening calls (one off screen) and Nobuo instead gets sick solely to provide a faux emotional element in the second act.

[Crazy Jim Films]

Oh well, here's hoping someone somehow remasters the LaserDisc similar to how that one person did the "demastered editions" of the original Star Wars trilogy.

They had existing film prints to work with, which sadly I don't think would be as easy to track down for an obscure Japanese film as it was for one of the most popular films in cinema history.

[Terasawa]

Oh well, here's hoping someone somehow remasters the LaserDisc similar to how that one person did the "demastered editions" of the original Star Wars trilogy.

They had existing film prints to work with, which sadly I don't think would be as easy to track down for an obscure Japanese film as it was for one of the most popular films in cinema history.

And the Paramount/Pioneer LaserDisc was a significantly re-edited version of the film presented in a 1.33:1 aspect ratio. It's pretty much useless for the purpose of restoring the full length Japanese version in its original aspect ratio.