could be put to good use. Still others noted the film used another common theme of cosmic collisions in the style of earlier films such as the 1931 film End of the World, which depicted a comet on a collision course with the Earth. The Pairan aliens were designed by the prominent avant-garde artist Tarō Okamoto, which used a single eye that is common among science fiction aliens. Although official film posters showed the Pairan aliens towering over buildings, the actual cinematic version of the aliens were on the scale of humans, at about two meters. Walt Lee reports that Gentaro Nakajima's novel, on which this film was based, was in turn based on the Japanese folktale Kaguya-hime. The film was one of fourteen Japanese color pictures produced in early 1956, but the first color Japanese science-fiction film. Release Warning from Space was released in Japan on 29 January 1956. Daiei also hoped to find a foreign market for Warning from Space, though the company found difficulty in selling it. Nevertheless, the film played at both King Cinema in Rangoon, Burma and Tai Khoon Theatre in Sandakan, Malaysia, in 1958. The film did help Daiei achieve some success in the genre. It was passed for release, anglicized as Warning from Space, by the BBFC in the United Kingdom in 1957, and later in the United States in 1963. The film was also released as The Mysterious Satellite in some areas. It was shown in the U.S. by American International Television later in the 1960s as Warning from Space. The film was released in Spain as Asalto a la Tierra, and in France as Le Satellite Mystérieux. Arrow Video released the film on Blu-ray in 2020. Reception In a contemporary review, "Neal." of Variety stated that the film was done with "candor and simplicity which makes it a good entry of its type" with "good special effects plus a fine use of color during the near approach of the flaming planet which nearly destroys the earth." From retrospective reviews, a review included in the book A Guide to Apocalyptic Cinema, author Charles P. Mitchell called the film "bizarre" and gave it two stars. Similarly, in a 1978 issue of the magazine Cue, viewers were warned "don't watch it." In the 1986 Encyclopedia of Science Fiction Movies by Phil Hardy and Denis Gifford, the film is accused of using the science fiction