Japan Synopsis
妖星ゴラス
“The crisis of the colliding mystery star is imminent! Can the Earth break free of its orbit?”
In 1976, a drifting star named Gorath is discovered to be on a collision course with Earth. Although it is smaller than Earth, its enormous mass is enough to destroy the planet totally. A mission sent to observe Gorath is destroyed after the ship is drawn into the star, with a later mission barely escaping the same fate. However, Astronaut Tatsuma Kanai is left in a catatonic state due to his near death experience. Unable to destroy the invading star, Earth's scientists undertake a desperate plan to build giant rockets at the South Pole to move the planet out of Gorath's path before it is too late.
Titles With Overlapping Themes
Films and series that share thematic tags with Gorath. Number on each card indicates how many keywords overlap.
Other Titles From TOHO
Science Fiction + Action in Japan
324 Japan titles in our catalog blend the Science Fiction and Action genres. Below: the top-rated of them (excluding Gorath itself).
The 1961–1963 Japan Window
Gorath holds position #21 of 44 Japan films in the 1961–1963 window, below highlighted by audience rating.
The 1960s Japan Landscape
Catalog density by release year across the 1960s in Japan, 202 titles in total. Highlighted year (yellow) is when Gorath premiered alongside 18 others.
Position in Catalog
Released alongside 18 other Japan films in 1962.
The 154th Japan title from Japan we index (earliest catalogued entry: 1899).
Our Japan catalog contains 4,579 titles in total (2,908 films).
Audience Engagement
13 audience reviews — more than 20% of Japan films in our index.
Popularity sits at the 20th percentile among Japan films.
Thematic Fingerprint
Tags on Gorath, grouped by how common each theme is across the full Asian catalog. Rare tags are more distinctive signals.
- flood · 5
- disaster movie · 5
- panic · 3
- antarctica · 2
- tidal wave · 2
- saturn · 1
- walrus · 1
- planet · 1
- south pole · 1
- disaster · 23
- tokusatsu · 21
- spacecraft · 13
- japan · 454
- monster · 91
- kaiju · 77
- giant monster · 64
- space · 32
Reception Benchmarks
Ranked #2,263 of 4,579 Japan films indexed here (51st percentile by TMDB audience score).
Among Japan Science Fiction productions specifically: #178 of 566 (top 31%).
Production Details
| Primary Country | Japan |
|---|---|
| Original Language | Japanese |
| Spoken Languages | Mandarin, English, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Russian |
| Production Companies | TOHO |
| Runtime | 1h 28m |
| Release Date | March 21, 1962 |
| IMDb | tt0056709 |