THE H-MAN (1959)
Tagline: Molecular Man Terrorizes the World!
(Sci-Fi, Horror, The Japanese Blob) [PG-13]
Note – This movie did not originally have an MPAA rating, but I am pretty sure it would have been a PG-13. This movie was also once called “Beauty And The Liquidman”.
If man perishes from the face of the Earth, due to the effects of hydrogen bombing, it is possible that the next ruler of our planet may be The H-Man.
In this one, a drug deal goes south and one of the suspects turns into goo. Tokyo police at first think his wife could be involved, but after a “ghost ship” shows up in the harbor having turned its occupants into radioactive creatures that dissolve everything they touch, the investigation takes a turn. Can the H-Men be stopped?
First off, seemingly if you get affected by atomic radiation in this film, in some cases your clothes will be mostly fine. Nothing else will remain of you though except a ghostlike atomic creature that has no real purpose in life.
Director Ishirô Honda is by far most famous for movies like GODZILLA and VARAN*, but he also directed a good amount of nutty stuff aside from those films. This is one of them. So it’s needless to say that this movie is actually handled pretty well. We get a good sense of dread, a good sense of seriousness, mixed in with a bit of seduction and of course over the top effects. They actually shot inflatable human-shaped balloons being deflated really fast, then slowed the speed to normal to create the melting effects. It’s all eerily effective.
Acting-wise with the dubs, it’s hard to tell how the original actors did, but the dubs work and we don’t get any really annoying characters like in some of the GODZILLA films. We do get Akihiko Hirata who appeared in several GODZILLA films including the original and TERROR OF MECHAGODZILLA to name a few. Kenji Sahara also shows up. Kenji continued acting all the way up until 2011. He was in several GODZILLA films as well including KING KONG VS GODZILLA and GODZILLA VS SPACE GODZILLA.
The score is pretty intense and also pretty goofy at times. I think the nightclub scenes probably got some dudes excited, but I felt it just threw off the rest of the movie which moves along at a pretty decent pace and feels almost interrupted by scantly clad dance numbers. It’s not the end of the world, of course, it just feels out of place in this thing.
Overall this is a pretty interesting film, but I hesitate to say it’s good. For me, it was just okay, nothing that I would put up there with Honda’s other films or a long list of the better 1950s sci-fi flicks, but it’s worth at least one watch if you can handle a bit of gore with your sci-fi.
For me, this is a 2 out of 7 that I don’t think I will be re-watching.
* = I realize my review of this is from the American version.
GRAPHICS ARE THE PROPERTY OF TOHO COMPANY AND ARE USED FOR REVIEW PURPOSES ONLY.
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