User reviews

I saw this film when I was a child, and never forgot it. While somewhat similar to films such as 'The Blob' and 'Caltiki, The Immortal Monster' (a Spanish/Italian/Mexican rarity), 'The H-Man' is, as others note, a sort of film noir sci-fi/mystery film. Like most Japanese sci-fi & horror films of the 1950s and 60s, there are instances of unintentional humor, over-the-top acting and a fixation on the effects of radioactivity (not surprising). I had almost given up on finding this title, when fortuitously I ran into a really nice Japanese DVD with superb color and in a widescreen format; no English dubbing, but rather subtitles in the bottom black bar. It was as if I was seeing the film for the very first time! While I have no American version to compare it to, I have no doubt that this version has footage edited from the American release. Interestingly (for me, anyway), the title in Japanese is 'Beauty and the Liquid Human', an odd but actually more accurate title. The H-Man provides some very well-done special effects, creepy atmosphere and a decent amount of suspense. Along with 'Rodan' and 'The Mysterians' (and, I guess, Godzilla), this is among the best of early Japanese sci-fi films.

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.

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.

As a first grader at age 6, I felt underpriveledged. All my class mates would come to school on Mondays bragging about whatever Saturday movie experience they had. Most of the time it was a Hercules, or Sinbad or other epic tale and their comments were vivid. But when the conversation revolved around a horror movie their version turned out to be a tease. I could tell that the real deal with horror pictures was to experience it personally. Here was the conumdrum, I wasn't allowed to go the the show without an adult and I didn't want to be seen by my friends with a parent. Well finally an aunt stepped up and volunteered to take me. In that darkened theater, finally seeing a horror movie for the first time, my anticipation was peaking: that is until the H Bomb went off and the tale of this insidious monster began. Needless to say my horror fascination came full circle by the end of the first reel, and the experience left me anxious for many, many, months! Thinking back to that screenining I feel that the H man was a landmark movie and probably generated the same type emotional response as the radio broadcast of War of the Worlds had a generation earlier. A remake would be awesome with todays technology, looking forward to it, and even a peak back to the past with the original version would be nice.

I saw this when it was first released in 1958 in Sydney. The theatre was a very large and cold cinema. The atmosphere of the environs only added to the atmosphere of the film. I was six at the time but I can still remember it fairly vividly today - nearly forty years later. It gave me nightmares for weeks.

I always thought this was the movie that the Blob was based on although the release dates seem to be fairly close. This by far was the better movie of the two. I have seen this once again in my older years and it still resurrects memories of those childhood nightmares.

I would love to be able to obtain a copy of the film but it seems these days no-one seems to know of it.

Toho are known for dark gritty movies (Usually about Samurai or the struggles of Japanese life) and goofy giant monster films (Godzilla). That is why this came as so much of a surprise to me as it isn't either.

While the west the same year made The Blob (1958) Toho made their own liquid monster movie and truth be told it's not at all bad and makes me wish Toho had done more horror.

What struck me immediatly was how amazing everything looks, sure it doesn't have the usual incredible writing of Toho and lacks the direction of Kurosawa but it looks a couple of decades ahead of its time. Seriously, I'm blown away.

It tells the story of the police looking for a missing man and during the investigation coming across a mysterious liquid creature whose very touch dissolves its prey.

Though the movie isn't outstanding it makes up for it in enough areas to be more than watchable.

Genuinely creepy and unnerving in places, the H-Man is deserving of any horror fans time.

The Good:

Looks incredible for its time

The Bad:

Cast are pretty below par

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

Microphones are overrated

Before putting your jacket around a woman dip it in sewage first

Odd, moody crime-horror melodrama as a predatory radioactive liquid haunts the Tokyo waterfront. The films opens with a drug deal gone bad. The police investigation is complicated by a Dr. Masada (Kenji Sahara), a local scientist who suspects that there is a connection between the missing criminal and recent H-bomb tests. He has interviewed a sailor who told him about a drifting ship, where all that remained of the crew were their clothes and how almost all of the sailors investigating the derelict were attacked and dissolved by a blue ooze that could take on a vaguely humanoid form. When Masada finds a radioactive life-ring from the doomed ship, he becomes convinced that at least one of the "H-men" made it to Tokyo and, as more people disappear, the police realise that they have both a vicious drug dealer and a viscous killer to deal with. Directed by Ishiro Honda and with effects by Eiji Tsuburaya (both of Godzilla, 1954 fame), "The H-man" is an effective and entertaining thriller. While there are some weak moments (the car chase comes to mind), the film is overall a well done blend of Japanese-noir and horror. While somewhat similar to the contemporaneous "The Blob", "The H-man" is a more 'adult' film, with a gritty gangster subplot and some genuinely creepy sequences (especially those on the ship and in the sewers). Tsuburaya's effects are very good, with scenes of the sentient goo oozing up walls and along ceilings and of people dissolving into piles of clothing. Like Godzilla, the film is a cautionary tale of the dangers of radioactivity and both films feature scenes on a ship whose crew was exposed to radiation (inspired by the true story of the 'Lucky Dragon 5'). I watched an English-dubbed version of the film which differs somewhat from the original (there is less emphasis on the underworld background story) and opens and closes with the typical ominous voiceover warning of atomic danger. The dubbing itself was OK although a few of the heavies had cartoonish 'gangster' voices. All-in-all, a bit dated but worth watching.

There were a few films from my childhood that really left an impression, and this was one - creepy! It IS out on VHS at least, maybe DVD, but Netflix doesn't have it. One of five or six such films that still hold up both as documents of their times and as scary as they were to a kid. I'd also recommend Quatermass 2, aka Enemy from Space, and for nonscary monsters, try 20 Million Miles to Earth. It's an interesting project to go back and see what of the stuff from childhood is still effective, and in what ways it is not. This Island Earth totally creeped me out, as did the 1953 War of the Worlds, and the original Invaders from Mars, but the remakes of these last two mostly failed. The H Man however is great. Enough lines yet?

Ishiro Honda directed this unusual film, which combines plot elements from both the crime and science fiction genres. A wanted criminal mysteriously disappears from a crime scene, leaving behind only his clothes. Japanese police track him by following his wife, who does lead them to the criminal, who has somehow mutated into a hydrogen creature who can change into a blob-like creature at will, and who can be traced to a mysterious ghost-ship anchored in the harbor that was exposed to unknown radioactive fallout. Can this menace be stopped? Good F/X, but story drags, and differing genres clash unsuccessfully in forgettable film.

The H Man (1958) is a movie I recently streamed off The Daily Motion. The storyline follows a recent murder the police and the victim's family are investigating in a hopping local establishment. Little do they know a slime like creature has emerged from the ocean where everything it touches turns into a creature just like it...

This movie is directed by Ishirô Honda (Godzilla, 1954) and stars Kenji Sahara (Godzilla, 1954), Akihiko Hirata (Godzilla, 1954), Eitarô Ozawa (The Master Spearman), Makoto Satô (The Hidden Fortress), Yoshifumi Tajima (Hidden Fortress) and Hisaya Itô (Destroy All Monsters).

This movie has a good set-up and various circumstances. The segments discussing the science elements in a Ishirô Honda film are always far out there and fun. The special effects of the slime and green fog are excellent as are the decomposing animals and humans. There's some good humor in here also. The sequence the guy is hitting on the girl while walking in the sewers looking for The H Man was hilarious.

Overall this is an entertaining project from Ishirô Honda that isn't his best work but is worth a viewing. I'd score this a 6-6.5/10 and recommend seeing it once.

One of my favorite films from Toho, a story about the city of Tokyo being terrorized by a transparent, liquid, radiated being called the H-Man. One-by-one, people start to disappear and it's up to the policeman and scientists to crack the case. This movie combines pure sci-fi and film-noir, giving us tense and non-stop thrills. Just the plot of policemen investigating drug dealers and scientists investigating the H-Man effects, with a beautiful nightclub singer mixed in, are pure excitement. A good, dramatic, but hopeful story from Takeshi Kimura and good directing from Ishiro Honda. A strong message of the consequences of misusing the hydrogen bomb is delivered in this film. I've only seen the English-dubbed version so far, but the dubbing was very good. Even the nightclub songs sang by Yumi Shirakawa fit the English dubbing. The nightclub scenes are a real treat. This movie ranges as one of the best non-Godzilla films from Toho.

Grade A

The Japanese horror and sci-fi films from the 50's never really reached any sort of high level of artistic quality other than superficial curiosity. Almost always a notch below even the least of its American and UK cousins.

The movies did have a surreal quality although most of that seems to stem from the cultural and cinematic differences in style, approach, and mindset. The best of the line just didn't have that crisp, clean veneer that the domestic releases contained. It is probably this shortcoming that gives these films that other-worldly wonder that the kids of that era and film buffs today find so fascinating.

The H-Man has a few eerie scenes and some somewhat different looking, if not cheap imitations, of American nightclub gangsters and performers (a forced assimilation of their conquerors pop culture). But overall it is talkie and rather vapid. At least it is a mild diversion from the rubber suit, erector set extravaganzas.

When a narcotics deal goes sour and a suspect disappears, leaving only his clothes, police question his wife and stake out the nightclub where she works. His disappearance stumps the police until a young scientist appears who claims that H-Bomb tests in the Pacific have created "H-Men" who ooze like slime and dissolve anyone they touch.

A New York Herald Tribune film critic at the time called it, "A good-natured poke at atom-bomb tests... The picture is plainly making a case against the use of nuclear bombs. At the same time, there is a great deal of lively entertainment in the story involving police, dope smugglers, scientists and some very pretty Japanese girls."

Of course, this is a much-lighter look at nuclear radiation than the Japanese version of "Godzilla" is. The music, melting people and generally lighter tone make it quite a different approach. And within only a few years of the other film, showing there was more than one way to approach the subject in 1950s Japan.

This film is probably not well known, but probably should be: its excellent use of color, the cool and creepy melting effects... in some ways it parallels "The Blob" (which came out the same year), and is easily on par with some of the American International films of the next decade.

1958's "The H-Man" was not a kaiju eiga from Toho but a mixture of gangsters, science fiction and horror that shows how director Ishiro Honda could produce something unsettling and genuinely scary. An arresting rain drenched opening in which a thief is unable to escape an unseen menace that leaves only his empty clothes behind moves on to a police investigation into a narcotics ring using a popular nightclub as a front. The primary singer just happens to be the main squeeze of the missing thief, whose witness of a second gangster dissolving in the rain inspires a scientist (Kenji Sahara) to confirm a story about a ghost ship that passed through radioactive fallout from the H bomb, producing a liquid creature that devours human beings to survive (the original Japanese title translated as "Beauty and the Liquid People"). Whether aboard the ship's shadowy corridors or underneath the streets of Tokyo there's much to admire, as Eiji Tsuburaya delighted in the horrifying deaths, simply using human shaped balloons properly deflated to show the victim dissolving on screen, more effective than "The Blob," where we never actually saw anyone swallowed by the monster. A special compound was used for the liquid monster, tilted sets built so that technicians could just pour it down a wall for the desired effect. Another notable sequence shows how a frog can melt into a liquid creature, bubbling up in disquieting fashion, the stuff of childhood nightmares for those who saw it at the time. Toho would do more items of a similar nature, "Secret of the Telegian," "The Human Vapor," and "Dagora the Space Monster," all mixing gangsters and monsters, but Honda's horror masterpiece would be 1963's "Matango."

In the midst of a drug heist, criminal Misaki somehow disappears; his girlfriend, the nightclub singer Chikako, is thought to know something of his whereabouts and so she is pursued by both police and gangsters (the latter having owned the drugs Misaki stole). But what if Misaki really *had* disappeared, had, as it were, *dissolved* leaving only his clothes behind? Scientist Dr. Masada has a theory about the cause of such a horror: the effects of radiation from H-bombs have created a liquid monster, the terrible H-Man, and now that monster is coming to Tokyo…. Director Ishiro Honda is best known in the West as the director of the first "Godzilla" movie, but he has a lengthy and varied body of work that is soon to get its due in the form of a biography co- written by Steve Rylfe and Ed Godziszewski; the latter presented a screening of "The H-Man" at Montreal's FantAsia Festival 2017 and preceded it with a talk about the man, his life, recurring themes in his films and more. Really interesting information, and it made this film, similar in ways to many such radiation cautionary tales of the 1950s, resonate that much more deeply. I look forward to discovering more of Mr. Honda's films!

Even though it is not, in totality, a great film, Ishiro Honda's "The H-Man" (or "Beauty and the Liquid People" as it was named in its own country) has some remarkable things in it. The cast is a harvest of reliable acting talents; the movie features some tremendously effective special effects; and the photography is luscious and rich with color. What is most remarkable about "The H-Man," however, is the way it combines two radically different genres, and yet gives each genre its due and moments to shine. If the movie were just a horror story or just a yakuza melodrama, it still would have been an interesting picture. And once combined, they form one of Toho's most intriguing, if uneven, efforts to date.

We also get Honda's usual symbolism, once again on the atomic bomb. And once again, as in "Mothra," it is applied in a rather subtle manner. Honda opens the movie with an eye-popping, wholly unexpected nuclear explosion and then shies away from talking about his message for quite a spell. The eponymous H-Men, a race of liquid organisms that can take the shape of humans and dissolve any living thing they come into contact with, are supposedly an aftereffect from nuclear testing in the South Pacific. When they disintegrate a person, leaving nothing but their clothes behind, the area is teeming with radiation. But Honda does not take the cheap shot; he does not drag out his story with chatter and contemplation about man messing with the balance of the world. His only lapse is at the end, when he allows Takashi Kimura's screenplay to blabber, via an unimportant supporting character, about how man should stop tinkering with nuclear energy, else let the H-Men take over in the future. Here, the allegory comes on a bit thick, and the end monologue does not come across as hauntingly fresh as it was in "Godzilla," but instead, on the pretentious side.

For the most part, however, both Honda and Kimura allow the double-edged plot to take center-stage. It's a combination I very much enjoyed, particularly the half about the Japanese gangsters and the police department's attempts to drag them into the gutter. There are some terrific character actors in the film's police force, including Akihiko Hirata, Yoshio Tsuchiya and Eitaro Ozawa. Now granted, the policemen are not developed as really anything but policemen – straight-shooters who seldom smile and scoff at the suggestion that liquid-men are running amok in Tokyo – but the actors breathe such life into them, as to make them interesting. Take Yoshifumi Tajima, for instance. He plays the most skeptic cop you could ask for – no real depth of character – and yet when he winds up being killed by one of the monsters, I actually felt a bit down. I liked that character, or at least Tajima's interpretation of that character.

If only there was more life put into the love story. And this is what I think disqualifies "The H-Man" from being a truly great film. The movie would like us to care about the couple (a yakuza's moll and a daring young scientist trying to warn the cops of the impending danger), but the emotional involvements adds up to zero. This is not a reflection on the two performers. Kenji Sahara and Yumi Shirakawa are superb talents and even proved two years before, in Honda's better film "Rodan," that they can effectively play lovers on film. But "Rodan" gave them things to do together, moments to shine in each other's company. The screenplay of "The H-Man" asks us to believe in their chemistry after they meet very briefly, pass a few insignificant words, and when Shirakawa sobs into Sahara's shoulder. I really wanted more meaningful scenes between them.

Shirakawa, on the other hand, does run away with the show, and she does have the best-rounded character. From the get-go, we like this soft-eyed, confused girl, and we sympathize with her when both rival gangsters and skeptical detectives refuse to quit hounding her. And at the end, when a snarling gangster starts dragging her through the sewers of Tokyo, all the while getting themselves surrounded by liquid-men, I felt myself really worrying about what would become of her, and really hoping her captor would get his comeuppance.

But the horror story works well, too. Most of all, because how Kimura's screenplay depicts the H-Men as mostly a predatory substance, maintaining very little of what made them human to begin with. It's not at all like the cartoonish demeanor of the organism from "Space Amoeba." The H-Men attack like parasites ensuring their own survival. When one of them takes the form of a man, in which case they glow with a tremendous neon aura, they are dazzling. But I really like how most of the time, they melt down into a moving sludge that crawls up and down the walls. There are some laughable moments (such as a freeze-frame shot of a victim while animated sludge consumes her body, mercifully cut from the U.S. print of the picture), but the good moments far outnumber the bad ones. Part of the fun of these special effects is just wondering how, given 1950s technology, the staff could pull it off. Especially when sludge starts crawling out of a pool of water and we cannot see any signs of a reverse-speed shot. Aided by Masaru Sato's gentle yet ominous music, the monsters do have a presence of their own.

It is such a relief to finally have Ishiro Honda's "The H-Man" widely available in the United States. For the picture really is a delightful little experience. Even its U.S. print maintains the fun, making a few small edits for pacing and completely honoring the original premise. With some reservations, I would even go so far as to call this one of my more favorite Toho movies of the 50s.

This review is about the original unedited Japanese version. There is an edited dubbed English version which is not discussed here.

This movie comes in right behind Ad Astra in the list of The Most Boring Movies I Ever Saw. Endless scenes of police procedure, looking for a gangster who was killed by the blob in the first scene. Also we get two very long night club songs. Long, long stretches which have nothing to do with being scary.

There are a very few actually creepy scenes but it's not worth sitting through the rest to get to those. And the ending is spectacularly anti-climactic.

Alien is suppose to now be the most terrifying Sci-Fi/Horror put out, but for those of us who saw The H-Man as young baby-boomers this one should get first prize.

The comments by others who were in elementary school at the time, pretty much says it all about being almost terrorized for weeks by nightmares and parents trying to sooth you before you could fall asleep at night. I still have an occasional dream about being tracked by one of these "liquid creatures". I would hope to see the movie again sometime to "embrace my fear" as an adult. Somethings in the psyche of a young child can hang around for decades, and for movies... this is one of them.

If Sony decides to buy up the rights on this one from Toho Productions for a Region 1 DVD release, they would do well to bundle it with the other early and under-rated classics like Rodan and The Mysterians. Unfortunately, as classic as Godzilla releases have been (more than my mind can count), it is time for something more unique and rare which has been passed over. I hope it happens.

This is one of the legendary Toho sci-fi films that is remembered more then actually seen. A number of friends fondly recall this film as one of the best that Honda directed even with the less than stellar English dubbing.

The film is very well done but with some weak points that detract from the overall effect of the production. One aspect that is very good is the excellent special effect work by Eji Tsuburaya. The scenes of liquid humans going up walls works and the scenes where the victims are liquefied are still effective. Towards the end we are treated to some great miniatures of the Tokyo waterfront and sewer system that are almost indistinguishable from the life-size sets. The film is filled with shadows and creepy sets.

The story moves along quite well until the times we get to the nightclub were everything stops for dance numbers with bikini clad women and two songs (one in English!). The film would be a good fifteen minutes shorter without them and they contribute nothing to the story. Of course you might enjoy these for their own qualities.

The ending is a little screwy and there seems to be some budgetary constraints as a promised H-Man destruction event never occurs.

Overall, a very good horror film that stands up to anything that came out of the US or Britain at the same time.