Bijo to ekitai ningen

THE H-MAN is a fine, and most rare, blend of film noir and 1950s Japanese science fiction. The film is filled with startling visuals from start to finish. It grabs your attention and rarely lets up. Favorite scenes involve the events inside the derelict ghost ship and all the scenes in the nightclub which abound with the right atmosphere. Stylistic and often startling visually, this is a lot of fun to watch and get into. It does require one to suspend their disbelief quite a bit though.

Be sure to watch for the really creepy flashback sequence wherein the title creature is first discovered by sailors exploring an abandoned ship. The film's photography and special effects deserve a nod also. Those with a soft spot for blob movies are urged to also check out the Steve McQueen film of that name (released the same year), as well as Hammer Films' "X the Unknown" (1956).

Like many other posters, I saw this film as a young boy and it gave me nightmares for weeks (maybe even months)! Luckily, my older brother finally convinced me that the "liquid creature" would not survive a swim from Japan to the United States and I was able to sleep again.

I suspect that the modern age's Freddies, Jasons and Leatherfaces would not hold a candle to the effect that this film had on an impressionable youth back then. Perhaps the very fact that the monster had no tangible qualities and could theoretically be any puddle of water you came across was what gave it its fright value.

It would certainly be interesting to see how a remake of this would play today.

Although THE H MAN doesn't feature any city stomping monsters, this is one of the best sci fi's from Japan's Toho studios. THE H MAN is an eerie thriller about a mutant blob creature lurking around Tokyo's sewer system and devouring people, leaving only their clothes behind.The blob creature, apparently a mutated human, seems to be out for revenge against a group of Japanese gangsters. It seems to always be lurking around a seedy gangster owned Tokyo strip club and devouring the mobsters. I have heard that the in Japanese version, the H MAN was a gangster exposed to an atomic bomb blast and returns as an H man to get revenge, but this is unclear in the English language version. I also found the films subplot involving Tokyo gangsters interesting in that it shows to westerners the seedier side of Tokyo's night life scene.

The film has one scene that I found pretty rough when I first saw this film as a kid. A scientist explains his theory that atomic radiation can mutate people in H men. In his lab he exposes a frog to radiation and the frog turns into a blob and then proceeds to devour another frog. The process is shown in a clinical and matter-of-fact fashion that I still find disturbing today.

Note: When this film was first released in the USA by Columbia, it was paired with the mostly dull British import THE WOMAN EATER, a film about a woman eating tree. Since both films deal with people being devoured in a rather gross manner, I wonder what effect the films had on the theaters/drive-ins concession stands.

The early Toho Japanese imports took themselves seriously and so did American kids, who flocked to see THE H-MAN, RODAN, THE MYSTERIANS, and BATTLE IN OUTER SPACE (despite the dubbed dialogue) during this period.

In my town, the first 50 customers at the box office received an "H-Man" premium -- to this day I don't know what that item was -- green Silly Putty?

An action figure?

The H-Man "himself" was a green (in some cases blue -- the Eastmancolor prints I've seen to date leave some doubt, but he looked green in the "previews" in 1958) blob that ran under its own power through sewer grates, up walls, and under doors to attack people by running up their bodies and melting them down inside their clothes, leaving nothing but a mystery. In fact, the plot is superficially a mystery/crime drama with some silly and cursory science behind the H-Man, but as these films go, THE H-MAN was a minor sensation -- the movie was not too long, dark and moody, with plenty of reasonably convincing effects to recommend it. This was "The Blob" without the teenagers, and the scenes of people dissolving were fairly sensational and pretty scary for its day -- folks being deflated like balloons and melted into puddles of suds.

The theater in my town announced the coming attraction in the lobby by featuring an "actual H-Man victim" on display -- which was a toupee lying on top of a crumpled man's suit, with a pair of shoes underneath. Crude, but effective...