A Japanese Star Wars knock-off almost as weird as the original

Every day, Watch This offers staff recommendations inspired by a new movie coming out that week. This week: Because it’s Star Wars Week here at The A.V. Club, we’ve singled out some of the more interesting movies inspired or influenced by George Lucas’ beloved space opera.
Message From Space (1978)
There’s so much Japan in Star Wars (see: Vader’s constructivist samurai get-up, faux-Japanese names like Kenobi and Yoda, story elements borrowed from The Hidden Fortress, etc.) that it makes sense that some of the most interesting movies of the Star Wars knock-off gold rush should come from the Japanese industry. George Lucas designed Star Wars as a pastiche of Western and Eastern genres—World War II flicks, Republic serials, Edo-era samurai stories (commonly called jidaigeki, hence the Jedi)—and Message From Space, produced by Japan’s Toei studio, is one of the few A New Hope clones to really pick up on the original’s grab-bag appeal.
Considering Japanese sci-fi’s long-standing love affair with World War II iconography (see: Space Battleship Yamato, Mamoru Oshii’s Kerberos franchise, etc.), it seems significant that this is the most important part of the Star Wars formula jettisoned by Message From Space. Instead, in trying to make a story about space rogues and princesses fighting an evil empire its own, the movie brings in elements of pseudo-medieval high fantasy and tokasatsu serials, imagery from Europe’s Age Of Sail, and a whole lot of stuff taken from American hot-rod and trucker movies, complete with white-helmeted space patrolmen with mustaches and aviator shades.