The Last War

The Last War (1961)

世界大戦争

Learn what will happen if another global war breaks out!

A Japanese family is torn apart by the tensions of an avoidable nuclear world war between the superpowers.

Date of release
1961-10-08
TMDB
6.8 / 10 (13)
Runtime
1h 50m
Genres
Drama, Science Fiction
Director
Shūe Matsubayashi

Casting

Interesting facts

The Last War is a 1961 Japanese epic tokusatsu war disaster film directed by Shūe Matsubayashi, with special effects by Eiji Tsuburaya. It stars Frankie Sakai, Akira Takarada, Yuriko Hoshi, Nobuko Otowa, Chishū Ryū and Yumi Shirakawa. The film portrays a fictional thermonuclear World War III. Produced and distributed by Toho, it was the studio's second highest-grossing film in Japan that year.

Production

The film had been a goal of Toho producer Tomoyuki Tanaka's for some time, using a script by screenwriter Shinobu Hashimoto, featuring the Cold War escalating to World War III from the perspective of an every-man and his family.

City destruction scenes were created using a variety of techniques. Nuclear attacks on Tokyo, New York, Paris, Moscow and London were done by blowing compressed air upwards at an upside-down miniature. These scenes were reused in films such as Prophecies of Nostradamus. Miniature structures such as the Kremlin and Tower Bridge were made of wafers.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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