Latitud cero (Donde el mundo acaba) (1969)

Curiosidades

• Presupuesto: 360 M JPY

Latitude Zero is a 1969 tokusatsu science fiction film directed by Ishirō Honda, with special effects by Eiji Tsuburaya. An international co-production of Japan and the United States, it stars Joseph Cotten, Cesar Romero, Akira Takarada, Masumi Okada, Richard Jaeckel, Patricia Medina, Akihiko Hirata and Linda Haynes. The film was written by Ted Sherdeman, based on his 1941 radio serial of the same name; the Japanese version also credits Shinichi Sekizawa as co-screenwriter.

Production

In 1967, Toho was struggling to get two ambitious projects off the ground. One was an adaption of Sakyo Komatsu’s manga ESPY and the other was The Flying Battleship, a spiritual sequel to Atragon. That same year, Toho executive Masami Fujimoto went to America where he met with Don Sharpe, head of Ambassador Productions, about doing a series of co-produced special effects films.

Ted Sherdeman's radio serial with the same title, also known as Tales of Latitude Zero, was broadcast in 1941 by NBC. The first episode of Latitude Zero concerned three crew members of the old vessel “Hope,” who discover a futuristic submarine after surviving a storm in the Bering Sea near the Arctic Circle. The submarine, called the Omega, was launched in 1805 and Captain Craig MacKenzie is incredibly old despite his appearance.

Unlike other 1960's Toho productions starring American actors, Latitude Zero was filmed entirely in English. The Japanese actors, including Akira Takarada and Akihiko Hirata, deliver all of their lines in English.

During the start of production, there were plans to film the movie in 70mm Panavision but the equipment was not available to Toho, so the format was switched back to CinemaScope.

In his autobiography Vanity Will Get You Somewhere, actor Joseph Cotten stated that the American producer Don Sharp sent the American cast to Japan just as his company was about to go bankrupt. Cotten noted that Toho picked up most, if not all the film's production budget.

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