My family and I always watched this wacked out- one-of-a-kind treat when it came on WPIX SCI-FI THEATRE. There are these aliens, thier costumes are big baggy starfish outfits with a big cardboard eye duct-taped to the center. They waddle around a minimalist spacecraft and twiddle their thumbs. They need to comminicate with earth scientists about a planet on a runaway coarse about to collide with Earth. The film is silly, completely without logic.

What I sincerely love about this gem is the atmosphere. Night skies alive with darting flying saucers are quite beautiful, the sort of postcard-look of the advancing burning planet is rather neat, and the staggering heatwave that hits a seemingly doomed Earth gets rather discomforting. You'll giggle AT the film, but will be in awe WITH the film.

• The enormous popularity of Toho's giant monster films led Daiei to issue publicity stills showing the Pairans as gigantic creatures that towered over buildings. In the film, the Pairans are human sized.
• This film wasn't released in the United States until 1967.
• This was the first color tokusatsu science fiction film produced in Japan. It beat Toho's science fiction spectacle, Ishirô Honda's Chikyû Bôeigun (1957) (the first tokusatsu film in widescreen), into theaters by a year.