User Reviews

Four or five episodes of Johnnie Socko and his Flying Robot edited together. Amusing giant robot battling giant monsters tale aimed squarely at kids. Parents of course will go crazy since the action is violent with the robot/monster battles resembling professional wrestling and the human on human violence the sort of stuff you'd find in the Al Capone St. Valentine's Day School and Gangster Training Academy. I liked it, but then again I grew up on the series. If there is any problems, other than the "men in suits" effects variety is that the movie plays like a series of episodes stitched together, with a climax coming every 20 minutes. Recommended for those who've run out of Ultraman or Godzilla

With a hairstyle that influenced Twiki on "Buck Rogers", the giant robot certainly had his work cut out for him with the monsters set to destroy it on orders of a world domination obsessed gang called the Gargoyles. Only a cute Japanese kid (with help from the sardonic adult member of a world peace agency) can control the robot, giving proof to the biblical adage, "The meek will inherit the earth."

I rank this appropriately for the quality of the film, not helped by poor dubbing, but the special effects, while cheap, are fun, and the creatures delightfully corny. The film, made as an afternoon TV movie for kids, is typical for the type of program it was originally (six episodes edited together for feature length), and is not going to get awards. The evil are dealt with and good overcomes all the obstacles, and that's a great moral lesson for kids.

I remember this movie when I was a kid and I am not the only one. And the thing that I really like is that most of the people who have made any comments on this movie remembers seeing it on channel 5 ktla out of LA. I remember that they would show this movie on that weekend show, family film festival. I would love to see this movie in in its entirety. I have seen individual episodes on Netflix, but it is still fun to see this day. Watching them and remembering the Giant Robot with the missiles coming out of the tips of his fingers and how he would fight. Great stuff from a by gone age of film making. I would not like to see a remake of this today. I believe that they would mess it up with CGI and it would lose all that charm the first show and film had. It would be a sad day for Voyage into Space fans everywhere.

Voyage Into Space is my Vietnam.

It takes 4 episodes of the 26 episode series Giant Robo, or Johnny Sokko and his Flying Robot, and crams them into one movie. So why does it distress me so?

I saw it when I was probably 5 years old. I was obsessed with robots, like my Mazinger Z Shogun Warrior. I had never seen a movie where the robot dies at the end. Spoiler warning - the robot blows up real good at the end.

I cried for years. I might still be crying.

Earth has been invaded by an interstellar terrorist group known as the Gargoyle Gang, which is led by Emperor Guillotine, who spends all of his time hidden on the ocean floor in a UFO. Yes, that's just how awesome this is.

They've been capturing scientists to create an army of extraordinary magnitude, err monsters, to conquer the Earth.

A boy named Daisaku Kusama, or Johnny Sokko in America, where he was voiced by a woman named Bobbie Byers who also shows up in Savages from Hell and The Wild Rebels, and Juro Minami - nee Jerry Mano in the gaijin world - from the spy team Unicorn are all that stands between aliens owning this big blue rock. It gets better for them when they meet scientist Lucius Guardian, who gives a small child the power to control a robot - great logic - before he gets killed and drops a nuke on the aliens.

Man, this Gargoyle Gang - they dress like the United Nations of bad guys, donning German, Soviet and Central American military gear all at once, topping it off with designer sunglasses - are bad guys. They have all manner of horrific beasts ready to destroy Earth. In this cut down movie, which is basically episodes 1, 2, 10, 17 and 26 of the show, you get 100 minutes of pure madness.

There's Draculon the Sea Monster, who was known as Dakolar in Japan. Nucleon the Magic Globe - also known as Globar in Tokyo. Lygon, who swallows a train. The Gargoyle Vine, which has the much cooler name in Japan of the Satan Rose. And all manner of evil henchmen like Spider and Doctor Over. The full series even has an alien mummy and a peg-legged snakeman.

Unlike most anime and Japanese movies that were sent to the U.S. at this time, nobody thought that they should edit the violence out of this. So in one episode, a kid almost gets killed by a firing squad. And yeah - the ending - where the pharaoh robot dies saving the Earth? I remember going outside and staring into the sky, punching my fist into the ground, screaming at God. No, really. I did. For days. It was so bad that my mother had to write an entirely new ending for me so that I could get on with grade school.