Summaries

Synopsis

Air Japan flight JA307 is enroute from Tokyo's Haneda airport southto Itami Airport in Osaka. As stewardess Kuzumi Asakura [Tomomi Sato] announces theflight plan, which will take them over the island of Oshima and the cityof Suzuka, the pilot notices an unusual blood red color to the sky aroundthem. That's when the trouble starts.

One by one, the passengers begin seeing bloody birds flapping theirwings against the windows as though in fear. The pilot [Hiroyuki Nishimoto] receives a radiomessage to the fact that there may be a bomb aboard and is ordered toreturn immediately to Haneda. Co-pilot Sugisaka [Teruo Yoshida] is ordered to check thebags of each of the passengers, giving the excuse that a bag containingconfidential documents may have mistakenly been loaded on this flight. Allbags are clean and only one man [Hideo Ko] has no bag, but Kuzumi notices anunaccompanied suitcase under a bench. Sugisaka opens it and finds not abomb but a rifle. The man without a suitcase suddenly pulls a gun onSugisaka and then orders the pilot to change course to Okinawa. To showthat he means business, he fires through the cabin a shot that knocks overa transistor radio breaking the news that a UFO has just been spotted overJapan and that Japanese and US Air Force fighters are in pursuit. Suddenlya large luminous object is spotted directly in front of the airplane. Itpasses overhead but knocks out the airplane's gauges, sparking a fire inthe engines. Air Japan flight JA307 goes down on what looks like anuncharted desert isle.

Sugisaka is the first to awaken but the pilot is dead as well as thehijacker. Kuzumi is next to recover. Together, Sugisaka and Kuzumi checkfor more survivors. There is Mrs Neal [Kathy Horan], an American Vietnam War widow;Senator Mano [ Eizo Kitamura] of the Constitutional Democratic Party; weapons exporter Tokiyasu [Nobuo Kaneko] and his wife Noriko [Yuko Kusunoki], who flies into Mr Mano's arms when she findsthat she has survived the crash; Psychiatrist Momotake [Kazuo Kato]; space biologistProfessor Sagai [Masaya Takhashi]; and the young man who called in the bomb threat (whomthey lock in the cockpit). Taking stock of the airplane, they find thatthey are out of water, have no food nor any idea of where they are. What'sworse is that a radio announcement says that a search has not uncoveredany trace of the downed airplane, so the search has been discontined.

As Sugisaka worries about surviving, and Mano worries about hisupcoming election, and Tokiyasu worries about himself, and Sagai offersscifi explanations, and Dr Momotake studies survival instincts clashingwith egos, the hijacker suddenly revives, grabs Kuzumi as a hostage, andruns out into the night where they come upon a luminous spaceship. Kuzumicrouches behind a rock, but the hijacker steps into a clearing to get abetter look. Suddenly, his face goes blank and he begins walking towardthe spaceship. A dark blob crawls along the ground towards the hijacker.When she sees the hijacker's forehead split open from nose to hairline,Kuzumi screams and passes out.

Sugisaka finds Kizumi passed out behind the rock and carries her backto the airplane. In order to get Kuzumi to tell what she saw, Dr Momotakehypnotizes her. Kuzumi tells how the dark blob crawled into the hijacker'sskull through the split in his forehead. Tokiyasu doesn't believe her, butDr Momotake assures him that Kuzumi is telling the truth. Sagai points outthat it could be a flying saucer and backs up his suspicion with the factthat reports of UFOs have increased ever since the bombing of Hiroshima,giving extraterrestrials ample opportunity to invade the Earth while weare preoccupied with senseless wars. While everyone bemoans the horrors ofwar, the kid who called in the fake bomb threat goes berserk, not wantingto believe Kuzumi's story. He attacks Dr Momotake, who falls off thecliff. Waiting at the bottom is the hijacker. He latches on to Momotake,bites his neck, and sucks out all his blood, turning Momotake a brightshade of blue.

A few hours pass as the survivors discuss the need to find water inthe morning. Suddenly, there comes a knock on the door. Mano and Tokiyasudon't want to open it, but Sugisaka does anyway. As he descends thestairs, he sees the hijacker lying on the ground and notices the big scaron his forehead. Mrs Neal, whose husband was killed by a napalm blast tothe face, rushes to the hijacker and begs for the others to help him.Against their better judgement, they carry the hijacker inside and dresshis wound.

Mano is becoming extremely thirsty, thanks to the bottle of whiskeythat Tokiyasu gave him. Now, when Mano wants a drink of water fromTokiyasu's canteen, Tokiyasu refuses. It seems that Mano and Tokiyasu havebeen greasing each others' palms, Tokiyasu funding Mano's campaign andMano promising to pressure the committee to accept Tokiyasu's weapons bid,a promise that Tokiyasu had no intention of keeping. In revenge, Tokiyasupicks up a rifle and forces everyone out into the night then locks himselfin the safety of the airplane. But he forgot one person...the hijacker.

Tokiyasu's screams can be heard outside the airplane. Suddenly, thescreams stop and the locked door swings open. Everyone rushes inside tofind Tokiyasu dead on the floor, all the blood drained from his body.Noriko begins to laugh, exclaiming that she is now free from herehusband's abuse, but her laughter soon turns to tears when she thinksabout the way he died. When no one is looking, the hijacker comes out ofhiding and carries Noriko off to the spaceship. When the others noticethat Noriko is missing, they go in search of her.

The sun is rising, and Noriko can be seen standing on a ridge. Sheraises her hand to speak, but it is not her voice. It is the Gokemidorospeaking through her. They have come to invade the earth, says the voice,and to exterminate the human race. That said, the Gokemidoro have no moreneed for Noriko's body, so she plunges off the cliff. By the time herfellow passengers get to her broken body, she has disintegrated into ashriveled old cadaver.

Once again, the passengers get into an argument about whether or notthere are such things as extraterrestrials who would evade the earth.Professor Sagai theorizes that the Gokemidoro have taken over thehijacker's body and turned him into a vampire. Mano thinks that isbalderdash and challenges them to show him a vampire. Sagai agrees that hewould like to see one, too. The only way to do that is to sacrifice one ofthem to the Goke. But who will it be? Mano suggests Mrs Neal, because aforeigner will be less problems later. Mrs Neal screams that she doesn'twant to die. Sugisaka is against the entire idea. A knocking on thecockpit door and a cry for water remind them of the kid who made the bombthreat, so they let him out. Mrs Neal grabs a rifle and locks Sugisaka andKuzumi into the cockpit. Mano and Saiga shove the kid outside. Then theyline up in the windows to watch the hijacker slowly advance. The kid pullsout the bomb he's been hiding and vows to blow up the plane unless theylet him back in. They don't, the hijacker continues to advance, and thebomb goes off, killing the kid and blowing a large opening in the side ofthe airplane.

It's now evident that the plane can no longer provide cover, sothey'll have to get moving. But the bomb blast has wounded ProfessorSagai. Mano could care less and runs off. Mrs Neal follows him. When thehijacker catches up with them, Mano pushes Mrs Neal towards the hijackerin order to save himself. Mrs Neal shoots at the hijacker a number oftimes but keeps missing. Finally, the hijacker grabs her, fastens his lipsto her neck, and sucks her dry.

Back in the airplane, Sugisaka and Kuzumi are packing up supplieswhile Sagai bemoans his loss of faith in humanity. As Sugisaka assures himthat they must believe in human goodness, they hear a shout outside. It isMano, and the hijacker is not far behind him. Sugisaka and Kuzumi go outto help Mano, but he quickly runs inside the plane, locking the doorbehind him. The hijacker turns on Sugisaka and Kuzumi. While Mano watchesfrom inside the plane, Sugisaka tosses a bucket of airplane fuel at thehijacker, then sets him on fire.

The Gokemidoro crawls out of the burning hijacker, creeps into theairplane through the bomb hole, and makes its way into Professor Saiga'sforehead. Saiga drinks his fill on Mano, then turns to Sugisaka andKuzumi, who try to run. Saiga follows until they are stopped by alandslide that knocks Saiga from the hill they are climbing. Sugisaka andKuzumi keep running, while Saiga makes his way back to the spaceship. OnceSaiga is there, the Gokemidoro crawls out of his skull, reducing Saiga toa pile of dust.

Sugisaka and Kuzumi keep running until they come out on a highwaywhere they see cars lined up at a tollbooth. Everyone in the cars is dead.Everyone in the city is dead, too. The voice of the Gokemidoro can beheard, giving the same message it spoke through Noriko...that they havecome to invade the earth and to exterminate the human race. Cut to footageof mushroom clouds.

Epilogue: Sugisaka and Kuzumi are wandering on rocky terrain. Sugisakawonders why this had to happen. Pan from the earth to outerspace where awhole fleet of Gokemidoro spaceships are headed towards us. [Original Synopsis by bj_kuehl.]