The H-Man (1958)

 

The H-Man (1958)

 

1.           Introduction

 

This was a deadly-serious SF/Horror when first released, holding up a mirror to a Nation and a World shattered, rebuilt, and deeply uncertain about the future. Time has made it campy but hasn't dimmed the pleasures of it consummate craftmanship.

 

It comes from Japan and a Director who had, even-then, become that Nations most recognizable cinema talent on the International, maybe the only Japanese Director recognized outside Art House circles. Like his other International successes, but not like the bulk of his actual output, it was rooted in the language of the Pulpiest styles of cinema of the USA and Europe. Though Gerne and tone distinct with the bulk of his output, all his cinema reflected the anxieties of the mutations his Nation had underwent in so few generations, especially within his own generation, and how the surprising wealth a prosperity of his time was wholly disorienting and completely untrustworthy.

 

2.           From the decline of Universal Monsters (1941) and rebirth of Fear and Monsters (1950-1953)

 

In the USA from 1923 through 1941, and this was a hugely influential Internationally, cinema Monsters were defined by the Universal Monsters. As Universal refused to give contracts to their biggest Horror-related stars, and then Universal itself went into rapid decline after 1941, Actors like Lon Chany Jr, Boris Karloff, and Bela Lugosi, struggled to find work and often landed up in Gangster films. This created an odd-little sub-Genre emerged in the ‘30s but more so in the 40s, Gangster or Crime films that were also SF/Horror and usually featuring Mad Scientists, but the sub-Genre produced little that was at all memorable. The approaching and then realization of WWII was clearly driving this trend, though how and why is obscure to me.

 

When that War ended and Patriotic Fever was replaced with the grieving and the counting of the dead, the emergence of the Cold War, the weight of new reality of Nuclear Weapons, and the promise of the Space Age, both SF and Horror Genres re-emerged in USA cinema and soon around the world.  

 

1950 brought us a great tale of optimism and Scientific triumph, the USA film “Destination Moon.” Other than Children’s Serials, it was the first SF film of any significance in more than a decade, but there was more to the story than that. “Destination Moon” was a much-touted George Pal and Walter Lantz Production and that promotion inspired Lippert Pictures to rush a low-budget film, “Rocketship X-M,” and they got their movie into the theaters first. “Rocketship X-M” deliberately dampened “Destination Moon’s” optimism.

 

As the Astronauts explore the Planet Mars, they find the ruins of a Civilization that had destroyed itself. One character intones, "From Atomic Age to Stone Age." So, in what could rightly be called the first significant SF release for grownups in 13-years, there was warning of the dangers of the Nuclear Weapons.

 

SF is, foundationally, an optimistic Genre, but in its realization, its heart proves to be Fear of the Future. Its first prose masterpiece, English novelist Mary Shelly’s “Frankenstein: or The Modern Prometheus” (1818) has become the great metaphor of the dangers of Modernity and meddling with the Natural Order. Ever since its publication, Mad Scientists have been more popular in our media than Noble ones.

 

If Shelly was the Mother of SF, then English Author H.G. Wells was the Father. Wells was, generally, a Utopian thinker, but of the hundreds of books he published during his life-time only his first five novels still have a significant contemporary readership. They feature Monsters, World-Wide Destruction by Super Weapons, the End of Man, and two memorable Mad Scientists.

 

After SF reappearing in cinemas in 1950, it exploded onto the screens in 1951. Of the fifteen SF releases that year that I’m aware of four concerned fears of Super Weapons and/or Nuclear Annihilation, two featured non-Nuclear End of the World scenarios, and another, though lacking those themes, still managed to work in Fears of a Russian Nuclear Attack and a Radioactive Monster (that one was “The Thing from Another World”). Almost all of these films were made in the USA, so the Fears of Nukes and Radiation were most strongly articulated by the only Nation to unleash the Nuclear Inferno in anger.

 

This new-born SF craze has never really abated. By 1953 it was increasingly International, but one of the USA films is of special note here: “The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms.” It concerned an impossibly large, previously unknown, Dinosaur that was accidently released from a glacier by Nuclear Testing and then proceeds to Stomp New York City. One character, early in the film, says, "What the cumulative effects of all these atomic explosions and tests will be, only time will tell."

 

That, of course, is exactly the plot of 1955s “Gojira” (known in the USA as “Godzilla”), very likely only the second Japanese SF movie ever made and it would become that Country’s biggest-ever International hit. “Gojira” has special bearing on this story, and I will return to it.

 

3.            One Hundred Years of Japanese History in a few paragraphs

 

The Industrialization and Modernization of Japan was blindingly fast. Japan was something we in the West could rightly call a Medieval and Hermetic Kingdom until 1853 when she, not entirely voluntarily, opened her ports to ships from the USA.  But by 1904 she was already a Military and Imperialistic Super Power. Soon after that she was rewarded for her bold ambition and innovation with the 1932 Assassination the Prime Minister Inukai Tsuyoshi, essentially a Fascist Coup D'état, that changed the course of World history.

 

At the time, Japan had already occupied much of China (that was triggered by the 1931 Mukden incident, a False Flag operation by Japanese Fascists vying for great power back home) and after the Fascists secured power back home, that Nation’s Imperialism became far crueler than the government that proceeded it. Though the official beginning of WWII was Germany’s Invasion of Poland in 1938 (also precipitated by a False Flag operation by the German Fascists), the War was, of course, already raging in both the East and West by then. Personally, I’d pick this Assassination as the real beginning, because it was the start the era of Military Adventurism by specifically Fascist Governments.

 

The end of WWII has a less controversial end date, the dropping of the Atom Bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 by the USA.

 

Japan, so recently a proud Empire, was then Occupied by Foreigners, buried in the rubble of blasted cities, and filled with a Starving Civilians. The USA Occupation lasted from 1945 to 1951. By the time it was over, its Cities were mostly rebuilt, the threat of Starvation had retreated, and it was on the cusp of another mind-blowing economic expansion into the International Economic arena. Japan’s rebuilt Media Industries struggled mightily with how to represent its uncomfortable relationship with its recent WWII history. The Japanese were mostly enthusiastic about their Westernization but also generally viewed themselves as the Victims, not the aggressors, in WWII. They didn’t seriously, collectively, accept their War-Guilt until sometime in the 1980s.

 

The USA handled the Occupation differently than the later USA Occupations of Nations like Afghanistan and Iraq. It was more bullying but also better executed in terms of the needs of the People under USA’s Authority. The new Constitutions of Afghanistan and Iraq were Authored by Afghanis and Iraqis, while the USA wrote Japan’s new Constitution and handed it to them in 1947:

 

"The Japanese Government shall remove all obstacles to the revival and strengthening of democratic tendencies among the Japanese people. Freedom of speech, of religion, and of thought, as well as respect for the fundamental human rights shall be established …  The occupying forces of the Allies shall be withdrawn from Japan as soon as these objectives have been accomplished and there has been established in accordance with the freely expressed will of the Japanese people a peacefully inclined and responsible government."

 

We dumped de-Militarization, Democracy, Women’s Rights on the Japanese heads with little input from the people themselves.

 

The consequences were also different from Afghanistan and Iraq, both of which occupations eventually proved failures. The Japanese ended up liking the document, it now stands as the oldest, un-amended, Constitution in the World, and they ended up liking USA in general. Apparently, the Japanese, though resistant to collective War-Guilt, were already totally fed up with the previous Fascist Regime by the time the USA (for the second time in their history) transform-ably anchored its ships in their harbors uninvited.

 

Still, the Atom Bombings remained a sore point. Japanese History Textbooks continue to insist that the USA lies about the motives behind those Bombings, that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were really, mostly, about ending WWII more quickly but meant as a warning to our unreliable ally Russia.

 

4.            The A-Bomb as Evil Magic

 

Since 1955 no two Nations have publicly fretted about the Atomic Age more than the Nation the dropped the Bomb and the Nation it was dropped on. That year’s “Gojira” was Japan’s landmark expression of those fears. It was Produced by Toho Studios, the film company the lifted that Nation’s shattered Cinema from the rubble, was Directed by Ishirō Honda with FX by Eiji Tsuburaya. Though essentially an uncredited remake of a USA film “The Beast from …” and deliberately sculpted to appeal to a USA audience. Still it was, at heart, a Metaphor for Japanese sense of Victimization. The Japanese in that film did nothing to deserve the Kaijū’s (Giant Monster’s) wrath any more than they deserved their too-frequent Earthquakes and Tsunamis. Moreover, the Kaijū was released by an Atomic Bomb test, therefore a personification of Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

 

In 1958, Toho, Honda, and Tsuburava, were back with a new story of the Mythical Terrors of Nuclear Testing, “The H-Man.” Again, borrowing models from the USA, it echoed the poverty-row Gangster/Horror/SF films of the ‘30s and ‘40s but it borrowed from the UK as well; this Monster was clearly influenced by “X the Unknown” (1956). And both film’s Monsters had a more than passing resemblance to USA’s “The Blob” (released the same year as “The H-Man”) but, by far, “The H-Man” is the most beautiful and scary of the three. This kind of Monster was given a Genre nickname, “Green-Goo” even this in these three films it was (respectively) black, aqua-marine, and red.

 

5.            Monsters v Gangsters, or the Plot Part I

 

One of the things of greatest interest in the film’s style is that Honda seems to be making two films simultaneously. It’s a common enough Plot-device for a Monster movie to start with a Police Investigation, then fifteen or thirty minutes in, the Police realize that the conventional Crime is really Uncanny, and from then on, it’s Monsters all the way. Here, that is taken to narrative and stylistic extremes, with Gangster plot is primary almost to the very end (this is true in the original Japanese and more recent and restored English-dubbed version, but in the original USA release, six-minutes of the Gangster story was cut out). The balance between the two narratives is demonstrated with contrasting story-telling mannerisms.

 

On the Gangster end, it features a complexly executed scene at a Night-Club where the Police are trying to arrest an entire Gang in a crowd of Civilians without raising alarm, so well-crafted that Director Martin Scorsese would admire it. Generally, when the Gangsters and Police are center-stage, the story is told with the “Just the facts ma’am” stoic-ness of Police Procedurals like “The Naked City” or “He Walks by Night” (both USA, both 1948).

 

Contrasting to this, the Night-Club’s Dance Performances and the increasingly frequent appearances on the Monster are bolder in color and surreal in image, the Fantastical overtaking Procedural with more Expressionistic Cinematography and Editing (Hajime Koizumi and Kazuji Taira, respectively, and both frequent Honda collaborators). Director Honda and, even more so, FX man Tsuburava are clearly having a ball, being far more visually inventive than even “Gojira,” from which several of this film’s plot points were taken and there are even a couple similar scenes.

 

And oh H-Man, did Honda love color, the favorite new toy in Japanese cinema. Feature-length color film first had appeared in Japanese Productions only seven years before with “Karumen kokyō ni kaeru” (1951, translated “Carmen Comes Home”). Honda’s first crack at in was only two years earlier with “Sora no Daikaijū Radon” (1956, known in the USA as “Rodan” and part of the “Godzilla” franchise).

 

This film’s title sequence wordlessly introduced the ideas of Nuclear Testing and Mutant Monsters with a throbbing Psychedelia that would make an Acid Rock Band proud.

 

The first scene introduces the Gangster-plot and featured exceptional low-light photography (often a challenge in low- to medium-budgeted films at the time). In a darkened alley on a rainy night Misaki (Hisaya Ito) has just burgled illegal narcotics from a locker and is running to a getaway car driven by Uchida (Makoto Satō). The Monster, which we can’t really see yet, attacks and kills Misaki, but leaves no corpse.

 

Two competing Criminal Gangs and the Police all think Misaki is still alive and are hunting him. Caught in between is Misaki’s girlfriend, Night Club Singer Chikako Arai (Yumi Shirakawa), who also thinks he’s still alive and is constantly threatened by all three forces. Only the audience knows that all the Characters are on a hopeless quest and what really awaits them. One of the Japanese titles for the film is “Bijo to Ekitai-ningen” or “Beauty and the Liquid People” which sounds silly but nicely explains the story.

 

“The H-Man” is the more common title, maybe even in Japan. The “H” referring not only to the testing of the Hydrogen Bomb which created the Mutants, but also the Japanese word “Hikabusha,” referring to the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and their children who, even today, are discriminated against in marriage arrangements because of the irrational fear that the Medical Conditions caused by Radiation are potentially contagious and/or heritable. The idea that Radiation is a kind of Evil Magic suffuses this film. The USA tag-line was “You’ll be Gripped By Unholy Horror When You Realize What H Really Means!” but the film never directly addresses the Hikabusha part of the “H.”

 

6.            Honda, Part I

 

It should already be apparent that Director Honda relies on a stable of talent he uses over and over. His films released in the USA are all Genre films, always rich in style, but he wasn’t known as a Master Visual Stylist in Japan and Genre films were not what he was primarily known for yet.

 

Before WWII he had trained for a career in cinema intensely, but was pulled away before that career really stated to fight in China. His close friend, Director Akira Kurosawa, wasn’t sent to war and he’d became Japan’s greatest cinema Artist while Honda saw his youth slip away under constant threat of death.

 

Honda was 40-years-old before he was able to direct his first feature, “Aoi Shinju” (1951), a tragic Love Story, and he was mostly better known for Comedies and Sentimental Dramas with Feminist themes (you’ll find none of that in either “Gojira” or “The H-Man”). He didn’t focus near-exclusively on SF,F&H until 1960.

 

As Toho was Japan’s only cinema giant, all the quality people knew each other from working there. Japanese cinema had improved dramatically in the early ‘30s, right before it got blown to smithereens in the 40s, and most of the best were about the same age and had went to school together. Honda established himself, not as a temperamental Artist, but as an easy-to-work-for Ringmaster who knew what he wanted and had people in arms-reach could deliver it for him. He relied heavily on the stylistics of his Production Designer (here it was Takeo Kita), Cinematographer, Editor, Composer, Actors’ own instincts, and of course, Tsuburaya’s FX, as well as his frequent Producer Tomoyuki Tanaka.

 

Tanaka once said, “I am responsible for tying Ishiro Honda to special-effects movies. If I hadn’t, he might have become a director just like Naruse.” He’s referring to Director Mikio Naruse, who made strongly Humanistic, films focused on female Characters, and with whom Honda briefly apprenticed. Naruse is considered an equal to Kurosawa in the eyes of Japanese Critics.

 

Both “Gojira” and “H-Man” explicitly reference the same Real-World incident. In 1954, earlier the same year that “Gojira” was released, a Japanese fishing boat, the Daigo Fukuryū Maru (translated Lucky Dragon No. 5), with a crew of 23 men, was contaminated by Radioactive Fallout from the USA’s Nuclear Weapons Testing at the Bikini Atoll. The whole crew suffered Acute Radiation Syndrome (ARS) and one of them died. That man, Kuboyama Aikichi, is considered the first victim of a Hydrogen Bomb.

 

“Gojira” showed a Japan of 1954 that was heavily (and improbably) Militarized, rivaling its Fascist years, but their Army proved puny before Anarchistic force that the USA’s Nuclear Testing unleashed. “The H-Man” more reflects Japan’s de-Militarized realties: The Army is small, lacking heavy weapons, and the First Responders from the Civil Service (Police, Fire Department, and EMTs) are a more significant during the Crisis.

 

In the end, the Green Goo Monsters are vanquished but the Shinano River of Tokyo is an inferno, evoking Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the collectively even more devastating Fire Bombings of virtually every other major City. The last line of dialogue is a warning that there are more Monsters to come.

 

Both “Gojira” and “H-Man” were made within five-years of the end of the USA Occupation of Japan and it shows. The Japanese embrace of Science, Industry, and USA culture was, by that point, already a century-long process, but that radically accelerated with the Occupation. Every aspect of this film reflects the Nation’s increasing Westernization, from the clothing, urban settings (there is no pre-WWII architecture because Tokyo had burned to the ground a decade earlier) and especially the Jazz score by Masaru Satô, a prolific Composer mostly associated with Director Kurosawa. The music of “The H-Man” music is not only more explicitly Western than in “Gojira” (composed by Akira Ifukube) but there’s more of it, with four significant Musical numbers, so one can add one more Genre to the film’s equipoise.

 

7.            More About Radical Westernization and Silly Science

 

The film clocks in at barely more than 1¼-hours, and it is ¼ of an hour before the Scientist, in this case not a Mad one, appears. The brilliant Dr. Masada (Kenji Sahara) proves to be our main Hero even though we’d already been convinced Inspector Tominaga (Akihiko Hirata) was taking that role. Though one can’t call this a subtle film, there’re a lot of unusual and subtle elements to Masada’s Character: He’s the youngest-looking member of the cast (younger-looking than even the Damsel in Distress) but will raise to some Authority quickly. I believe that was deliberate choice.

 

Also, despite being brilliant and heroic, he’s also written as the least-mature person in the film. He explains to the Police the risks the Radioactive Green-Goo represent if you make physical contact with them, but unlike the Police, he never dons any protective clothing (I guess brilliance and stupidity are not mutually exclusive). He’s repeatedly mocked for his puppy-dog crush on Chikako which he repeatedly, and unconvincingly, denies. He enters the film by almost being arrested because he’s playing Armature Detective, he explains the Monster to them with a wholly outlandish story for which he has no proof, but it is later demonstrated he does have proof, he’s just playing coy because that’ll keep him in the center of an action which is really somebody else’s business.

 

 

Extending the idea that the film was a reflection of Westernization, and more radically Westernized than “Gojira,” I’ll quote from Jonathan Clements, Peter Nicholls, and Takumi Shibano’s article on Japan from the “Encyclopedia of Science Fiction” (2021): 

 

“The post-World War Two generation as a whole, reared on translations of foreign texts, exposed to foreign media, and hence more Americanized in its attitude, has been characterized in the Japanese media as the shinjinrui ["new breed"]: a race apart, taller, more demanding and more outspoken than its forebears. The discourse of this generation gap seems to have been a major contributor to a Young Adult subgenre …”

 

As the decades unfolded, the primary theme of Japanese SF seems to have become the management of the gift of power, and the media is dominated by younger and younger Super Heroes, their immaturity being their central attribute as they struggle to be good and make their way through the world.

 

The Science in the film is silly, though somewhat less-so than in “Gojira.” In trying to convince audience that the absurdities of the Monster could be grounded in the Realistic World in which the Drama is played out, a significant amount of time is devoted to demonstrating that Science is an Experimental enterprise. This is true of a lot of SF films of the 1950s, they were notoriously heavy on Exposition in ways that earlier and later SF films were not. This was addressed by Critic David Kalat in his book “A Critical History and Filmography of Toho's Godzilla Series” (1997), explaining that it was a decade where an information-hungry public was unfamiliar with the basic Science they needed the mass-media to step in and guide them through this Afraid New World. This translated into greater representation of more Noble Scientists, though not necessarily fewer Mad ones.

 

It must be added though that Script Writers who were doing the explaining (this screenplay was by Hideo Kaijo) generally didn’t understand the Science they were explaining any better that the audience did. A later trend in later SF films (and my example here is specifically USA) that could manage to be both more mature than a Children’s Serial like “Flash Gordon” (1936) and less reliant of Exposition (example: “Charly” (1968)) was largely because of then-President of the USA, Dwight D. Eisenhower who, reacting to Cold and Nuclear War fears, invested generously in improving the Education of our children in Math and the Sciences.

 

But that trend hadn’t been fully realized by 1958. Radiation was still akin to a Philosopher’s Stone or a Magic Caldron. “The H-Man” ends promising a sequel and “Gojira/Godzilla” was already an expanding Franchise. Imaginative Honda and Tsuburava were still pitching their Fantasies as serious films for grownups, but already showing that they were struggling mightily against repetition.

 

An H-Man franchise was never fully realized though two, somewhat related films, followed, and its serious tone hasn’t aged well before a more Science-literate audience. Gojira/Godzilla franchise triumphed across the ‘60s and ‘70s by embracing a Child Audience and allowing its Fantasy to become increasingly unfettered by Rationalities.

 

Though the first three Green-Goo films (“X the Unknown,” “The H-Man,” and “The Blob”) were serious in tone, that Monster would thereafter almost only be used for Comic effect. “The Blob” had a sequel, “Beware the Blob” (1972) and a remake “The Blob” (1988), both of which are quite funny.

 

8. Coming to America

 

 

The English/Japanese language barrier was a big challenge to Toho delivering anything but Art-House fare to the International Cinema (Kurasawa’s films were never dubbed, sub-titles were used). Japanese is just harder to dub in English than German. The USA distributors did a brilliant thing with “Gojira” that contributed almost much to its success as the FX. In the “Godzilla” version, they barely dubbed it at all but also avoided sub-titles.

 

Many scenes in the USA version were re-shot using Canadian Actor Raymond Burr who partially or completely replaced other Characters. Burr Character was a reporter covering the Crisis, so he was effectively a translator of the still-in-Japanese dialogue. It was an effective devise, grounding the reality of the absurd story, and the only measure where in our heavily-sanitized “Godzilla” rivals the original “Gojira.” But “Godzilla” still had a few dubbed scenes, and that dubbing atrocious.

 

In “The H-Man” the dubbing is mostly excellent, a benefit to the three talented leads, Shirakawa, Sahara, and Hirala (all previous collaborators with Honda), because poor dubbing habitually ruined terrific performances by the Actors in other Japanese films of the same era. As this was more than a decade after beginning of the USA Occupation and five years into USA/Japanese collaboration, there was a growing stable of Japanese Actors fluent in English. It is not impossible these three Actors dubbed themselves.

 

Unfortunately, not all dubbings were done by Japanese Actors. Many Characters, including Uchida in the largest supporting role, were dubbed by USA Voice Actor Paul Frees. Despite all of the great work on Frees resume, his Japanese accent is completely unconvincing. Another wrong-headed voice-choice, this one likely made on the Japanese end, was using Martha Miyake for Chikako, but only when she was singing. Miyaka was Chinese-born but I suspect of Japanese descent, and at the time a favorite in Japanese Jazz circles. She was known for singing in English with a flawless American accent, which was not how Chikako sounded in the dialogue scenes. 

 

Another cast member, Haruo Nakajima, as one of the ill-fated Sailors, was yet another frequent Honda collaborator. He was the guy most often in the Monster suits in the Gojira/Godzilla films.

 

Though not as popular in the USA as “Gojira” it received much more positive reviews, with almost all aspects of the production singled out for praise by one Critic or another. Variety wrote that “well made and seemingly more thoughtful than the company’s two other U.S. summer releases.”

 

The two other Toho films referenced were “The Mysterians” and “Gigantis: The Fire Monster,” both had languished for years to get USA release because of incompetent and ever-changing Distributors. Both featured bad dubbing and were butchered in re-editing. “The Mysterians” was another Honda and Tsuburava collaboration, a Space War Epic that had been a blockbuster hit in Japan. “Gigantis: The Fire Monster” featured FX by Tsuburava but Directed by Motoyoshi Oda, it another entry in the Gojira/Godzilla Franchise, the “Gigantis” of the title being a misnamed Godzilla. “The H-Man” was the only of the three distributed by Columbia and treated far better than the other two films.

 

 

2.  FX and Plot Part II

 

This is a FX extravaganza, but restrained itself regarding that until till the half-hour mark. Finally, Masada takes the Police to a Hospital to interview Witnesses, commercial Sailors suffering from ARS and this leads to an extended flashback of the Sailors encountering with a Ghost Ship that’s seemingly was literately Haunted by Ghosts. It’s an eerie and claustrophobic scene as its discovered that our Green-Goo Monster killed the Ghost-Ship’s Crew and are now going after the would-be Rescuers. Here they appear in both Goo and glowing Humanoid form.

 

This scene also begins to introduce an idea that the film explores without Exposition, that when the Monster absorbs your body, it seems to also take some of your identify. This is the only explanation to why, having safely hidden themselves in Tokyo’s sewers, the Green-Goo continually attack only a small geographical area – that would be Misaki’s spirit, returning again and again to his Gangster friends and enemies, and threatening Chikako because he/it wants not only feed on her, but reunite with her.

 

The film is also gruesomely violent, far more so than the emerging Hammer House of Horror in the UK. It most likely evaded censorship because the gruesomeness was Surreal. Tsuburaya’s Green-Goo and dissolving Victims FX are what really stand out. Though a couple of scenes utilize Chroma-key effects, Tsuburaya clearly preferred In-Camera and Practical Effects in his Productions.

 

(Chroma-Key, in one form or other, goes back to the Silent-Era but the process was unreliable until 1964, when Petro Vlahos won an Oscar for refining the Blue Screen process for “Mary Poppins.” Before then, on a low- to modest-budget films, it risked either costly re-shoots or bad product.)

 

The dissolving scenes, and there a lot of them, anticipate the pleasures of FX men Rob Bottin and Rick Baker’s far more gruesome Practical Effects in the 1980s. Tsuburaya’s Biographer, August Ragone, detailed these FX, “The ingenious effect was accomplished using life-size latex balloon versions of the victims and filming at high speed while the air ran out of them, creating the illusion of a human being withering away. Other effects included special sets constructed to roll 60 degrees to allow the deadly ooze to threaten the cast members”

 

Varity magazine called these FX, “skillfully and terrifyingly adept.”

 

Also striking was the climax in Tokyo’s sewers. It’s a complex sequence wherein the Police and Military simultaneously running two operations, trying to round up the Gangsters in the Night Club on the ground and exterminate the Green-Goo beneath their feet. As the Body-Count mounts, Misaki’s former friend, Uchida, proves to have been sexually obsessed with Chikako and Kidnaps her. One-by-one every avenue of escape closes around him because he now has two three adversaries, the Authorities, the Green-Goo, and Masada taking on the armed Villian alone and unarmed. The scene clearly borrows from the USA’s Radioactive Monster movie “Them” (1954) but staged more similarly to “The Third Man” (1949). This was where Tsuburaya’s miniature work, what he’s most famous for, best comes into play.

 

3.  Epilogue: Honda Part II

 

 

There’s an article by Steve Ryfle with the perceptive titled Godzilla’s Conscience: The Monstrous Humanism of Ishiro Honda.” Honda, in fact, self-described as a “Humanist.”

 

Honda was a self-described humanist, his expressed resentment towards USA conduct regarding the Bombings and Tests, but none (in the films I’ve seen) towards the conduct during the Occupation. I see no evidence of a backwards-looking Conservativism, but instead a forward-looking Liberalism and an embrace of International Cooperation. This is especially evident after Japan joined the United Nations in 1956 and soon he was casting more and more USA Actors (though that last part was also driven by a Financing and Distribution deal with USA’s AIP studio). He’s films were always Socially Conscious, even the Comedies and Dramas we never saw in the USA, and continued to be so after he shifted the Gojira/Godzilla series into the Children’s market. 

 

In 1975 Honda tired of the Kaijū rut he was placed in and retired. But a Director who proved to be of boundless energy when he made his first feature at age 40-years wasn’t going to stay home while he was only 64-years.

 

He encountered his old friend, Director Kurosawa, on a Golf-Course and was convinced to return to Filmmaking. He was Kurosawa’s right-hand man on the more honored Director’s last five films, filling the (not always credited) roles of Directorial Advisor, Production Coordinator, Creative Consultant and co-Screen Writer. Both men’s last film was “Madadayo” (1993) and Honda died shortly after. He was then-81-years.