「美女と液体人間」THE H-MAN (1958)

Shirakawa's Beauty is threatened by Tsuburaya's Beast.

THE H-MAN

Bijo to Ekitai Ningen, Toho, 1958, 87 minutes
Director ISHIRO HONDA • Visual Effects Director EIJI TSUBURAYA



Often woefully mistaken for a rip-off of Irving S. Yeaworth Jr.’s THE BLOB (1958), "The Beauty and the Liquefied Man" (the film’s Japanese title) was in production long before the infamous creature feature ever hit American screens. According to official records, a former Shochiku Studios actor who was hired by Toho, under his new stage name, Hideo Unagami, submitted the story treatment that became THE H-MAN (the film’s U.S. title). His story caught the eye of producer Tomoyuki Tanaka, and was pushed through for development under the supervision of genre specialists, Ishiro Honda and Eiji Tsuburaya — thus launching Toho's "Mutant Series," incorporating Honda's THE HUMAN VAPOR (1960) and MATANGO (1963).

As with the original GODZILLA (1954), the premise of THE H-MAN was based on the real-life "Lucky Dragon" incident, where a Japanese fishing trawler wandered into the waters of the H-Bomb test site at Bikini Atoll. The crew and their catch became radioactive, and death came to several of the crewmembers as a result of poisoning from radioactive fallout. In November 1957, Tanaka, Honda and Tsuburaya finalized the story with writer Takeshi Kimura, who penned the screenplays for RODAN (1956) and THE MYSTERIANS (1957). The pessimistic Kimura was put in charge of fleshing out Unagami’s treatment, and created a world where the law is only a thin veil that differentiates the police from organized crime.

This mixture of detective story and science fiction was not new to the Japanese; "Tantei Shosetsu Henkaku" (or Irregular Detective Fiction) took root in the 1920s with the rise in popularity of such pulp magazines such as Shinseinen (New Youth) and Kagaku Gaho (Science Pictorial), where this sub-genre originated. The first movies in this vein were Daiei Studio's THE RAINBOW MAN and ENTER THE INVISIBLE MAN (both 1949), the latter with inspired effects work created by Tsuburaya. While Toei made Rampo Edogawa’s juvenile stories, Boys Detective Gang, into a series of films between 1954-1958, THE H-MAN was far more adult; with its mixture of seedy nightclubs, lurid characters and drug smuggling — akin to similar "Anokokugai" (Underworld) pictures pouring out of post-war Japanese studios, such as Seijun Suzuki's UNDERWORLD BEAUTY (1958).

Honda paired Kenji Sahara and Yumi Shirakawa for the third, and last, time in THE H-MAN. Playing the young theoretical scientist, Sahara would continue to appear in many films for Honda, as well as star in Tsuburaya's classic television series ULTRA Q (1966). Shirakawa plays a Cabaret Chanteuse, and shortly thereafter was cast in such films as Yasujiro Ozu's EARLY AUTUMN (1961). She only made a handful of fantasy films after THE H-MAN, Jun Fukuda’s THE SECRET OF THE TELEGIAN (1960), Shuei Matsubayashi’s THE LAST WAR (1961) and Honda’s GORATH (1962), and then married Nikkatsu Studios star Hideaki Nitani (TOKYO DRIFTER). Cutting an imposing figure as the vile "Uchida," Makoto Sato was launched into a long career as heavies and heroes alike, despite his brutish features, and recently appeared in Takayoshi Watanabe’s DEAR HINAGON (2005).

Although there are no colossal beasts in THE H-MAN, Tsuburaya managed to conjure up some very special effects for this picture; especially eerie is the hydrogen ooze that dissolves the human victims — and when the shapeless mutants manifest into humanoid forms (most notably, during the flashback set aboard the "haunted" fishing trawler). Another remarkable visual effect is the death of Detective Sakata (Yoshifumi Tajima), when the liquefied creatures dissolve him in the cabaret. While these effects were considered somewhat shocking in 1958, even more shocking were the scantily-clad cabaret dancers, who were a little racier than allowed in mainstream American cinemas at the time. (While Columbia Pictures' trims for the U.S. release resulted in more than five minutes of footage hitting the cutting room floor, most was comprised of police exposition, the aforementioned saucy bits, and some of the shots in the sewers featuring Shirakawa in nothing more than a slip.)

To achieve the effect of the dissolving human beings, Tsuburaya had life-sized latex dummies of the actors made, and dressed them up as their flesh-and-blood counterparts. Shooting with high speed cameras, Tsuburaya’s crew literally let the air out of these dummies, and when combined with optical effects in post-production, they appear to be dissolved by the gelatinous monsters. Then, there’s the creeping ooze itself (cooked up from a special silicon compound), which was manipulated on special sets constructed to roll 60%, thus allowing the deadly miasma to threaten the cast. Tsuburaya also created some atmospheric miniature photography of the ghost ship for the title sequence and the creepy flashback, as well as the spooky lattice of sewers under Tokyo — transformed into a raging inferno, as they are engulfed in the conflagration created to incinerate the H-Men in the fiery climax.

Executive Producer TOMOYUKI TANAKA Screenplay TAKESHI KIMURA Original Story HIDEO UNAGAMI Production Design TAKEO KITA Cinematography HAJIME KOIZUMI Lighting TSURUZO NISHIKAWA Film Editor KAZUJI TAIRA Sound Recording CHOSHICHIRO MIKAMI and MASANOBU MIYAZAKI Music MASARU SATO Visual Effects Production Design AKIRA WATANABE Visual Effects Photography HIDESABURO ARAKI and SADAMASA ARIKAWA

Starring KENJI SAHARA (Dr. Masada) AKIHIKO HIRATA (Detective Tominaga) YUMI SHIRAKAWA (Chikako Arai) EITARO OZAWA (Chief Detective Miyashita) MAKOTO SATO (Uchida) YOSHIO TSUCHIYA (Detective Taguchi) YOSHIFUMI TAJIMA (Detective Sakata) TETSU NAKAMURA (Chen) NIDAO KIRINO (Shimazaki) AYUMI SONODA (Emi) NAOMI SHIRAISHI (Mineko) MACHIKO KITAGAWA (Hanae) TADAO NAKAMARU (Detective Seki) HISAYA ITO (Masaki) and KOREYA SENDA (Professor Maki)