H-Man Movie Review

Police are stumped when a gangster disappears in the middle of a busy Tokyo street, leaving only his clothes. While they investigate, more people disappear in the same fashion. A young scientist doing research into the effects of radioactivity comes forth with an incredible theory: the victims are being dissolved by formerly human creatures who have been turned into protoplasmic monsters by exposure to H-bomb radiation. His theory turns out to be true, and the sewers beneath the city are infested with the oozing, ghostly monsters. Genuinely creepy f/x highlight this mixture of two commonly underrated genres of Japanese cinema – science fiction and gangster drama. Though Inoshiro Honda was famous for his giant monster sagas (Godzilla, War of the Gargantuas, and many others), he was also adept at these less-epic chillers. AKA: Bijo to Ekitai Nigen.

1959 79m/C JP Koreya Senda, Kenji Sahara, Yumi Shirakawa, Akihiko Hirata, Mitsuru Sato; D: Inoshiro Honda; W: Takeshi Kimura; C: Hajime Koizumi. VHS, Beta COL