Ishirô Honda Irradiates Film Noir

Bijo to Ekitaininigen (THE H-MAN) (1958)
Directed by Ishirô Honda
Special Effects Director: Eiji Tsuburaya
Starring:
Akihiko Hirata as Inspector Tominaga
Yumi shirakawa as Chikako Arai
Kenji Sahara – Dr. Masada
Makoto Satô – Uchida

The great Japanese director, Ishirô Honda, made films constructed like Russian nesting dolls: The surface layer is always something grand and commercial, certainly, but once opened, layers of treasures come into the light.

Honda never saw things simply, or easily. Like the artist he was, he would see the core of any film he was assigned (he worked for Japan’s Toho Studios) through his own crystal prism. Thus, his 1956 masterpiece, Gojira (Godzilla), a film about a giant lizard destroying Tokyo (and magnificent on those simple terms), becomes a film about the horrors of nuclear war and the essential goodness of mankind. And no assigned project was given anything less than the full Honda vision. Thus, his 1969 Gojira Minira Gabara Ōru Kaijū Daishingeki (All Monsters Attack), while often thought of as the worst film in the Godzilla franchise, is actually a delicate and moving film about a child’s alienation in a harsh, urban world of crushing poverty.

Which brings us to The H-Man, which is a prime example of the kind of sci-fi thriller that Toho Studios loved to make all through the atomic age and beyond. In short, a number of humans have been mutated by radiation into a gelatinous, glowing liquid – driven to slither and ooze from Tokyo’s sewer system to cover and absorb more humans. It’s a wonderful premise and one guaranteed to put butts into movie seats (the well-known American film, The Blob, had a very similar monster but, as both films came out the same year, the similarity seems purely and wonderfully coincidental). Given the assignment, Honda instantly applied himself to making a gangster film, placing the film’s focus on the story of a tough cop, Inspector Tominaga (Akihiko Hirata), and his crack team of untouchables.

Tominaga is determined to crush the Tokyo underworld. Sure, some members of the drug and crime gangs have become blue radiated slush that goops under doors and down walls, but that is beside the point. For much of the film, they are criminal scum first, radiated monster ooze second. Honda has envisioned a direct and linear crime film with an undertone of effective, very creepy sci-fi – not the other way around. And Honda will have his way!

The movie opens, as do so many films from this era, with an atomic explosion. As the titles roll, we see the bomb dissolve into a shot of a ship, drifting on a night sea. The ship appears deserted and is shrouded in fog. Clearly, a mystery ship, somehow effected by the radiation of the atomic blast. Honda’s editing in this opening sequence is masterful, as he moves the camera over the wet decks of the ghost ship, supported nearly subconsciously by forlorn foghorn, dissolving into a shot of water sluicing along a gutter into a Tokyo sewer with the sound of hissing rain. We see a pair of feet running along a rain-spattered night street, and sooth as silk we have moved into a noir world of shadows and crime.

The camera pulls back, and we see a Tokyo night street slick with rain and streetlights. It is obvious that we are watching a crime in progress, as a getaway driver is nervously smoking and awaiting his partner. A man emerges from a nearby sewer, lifting the grate and replacing it, carrying a satchel of stolen goods. His partner at the wheel impatiently beeps the horn, as the thief races to the back of the car and begins to open it with a key. Suddenly his body stiffens and a look of horror and pain grip his wet face. He drops the satchel as if partially paralyzed. He struggles, barely managing to pull a small automatic from his inside coat pocket. Small gurgles of agony are forcing themselves through his clenched teeth. With a crazed expression he aims the pistol down, staring at something near the ground, just off camera; and his eyes have gone white-rimmed. He begins firing wildly, appearing to be shooting himself in the leg.

His driver behind the wheel, upon watching his partner firing his pistol wildly at his own foot and generally behaving like a lunatic for no apparent reason, decides very quickly to dissolve their partnership and tromps the gas pedal with all his might, speeding off down the street. Left alone now, the thief staggers around in the rain a moment before he is struck by a car. Everyone runs to the scene but finds nothing but a pile of wet clothes, a hat and shoes. The satchel of stolen goods is left on the street in the rain. Again Honda’s camera pauses for a moment on the fall of the rain, dancing over the vacant clothes and satchel, and again the camera moves smoothly, following the rush of water were it sluices through the grate of a nearby curb sewer.

The satchel is full of stolen drugs, a great deal of drugs worth a ton of yen. Police determine that was stolen from a local thug, who is brought in for questioning. Local thug quickly revels the seller, a drug dealer named Misake (who police suspect stole the drugs back in a double-cross). Detectives bring in Misake’s girlfriend, Chikako Arai (Yumi Shirakawa), who is a singer in a local nightclub, for questioning. She is plunked down across the interrogation table from Inspector Tominaga, who up to this point has only orchestrated his team of detectives in the investigation. This is the first time we see this ice cold son of a bitch in action, and it is immediately clear our little songbird is in a world of trouble.

We first see Chikako’s reaction to Tominaga’s voice as he interrogates her, see her reaction to the inspector’s questioning. Her face is pale, and she is having trouble maintaining eye contact. She swallows hard and nearly flinches at Tominaga’s voice, which isn’t loud at all – simply hard:
“You say you live with him, but don’t know what he’s been doing?”

We cut to Tominaga’s face. His face is flat, angular, eyes black and bright – a hawk spotting a field mouse in the grass far below. Chikako’s words come in a rush: “when I ask him he yells at me and tells me it’s none of my business.”

Tominaga’s face registers nothing. If she had hopes for a moment of sympathy, his reaction crushes them to ashes. He watches her a moment, then reaches into his jacket pocket for his lighter. “Television set,” her remarks casually, Three-mirror makeup stand.” He places a cigarette in his mouth. “You have a lot of nice things.” His detectives take their cues perfectly. If Misake is doing nothing wrong, how can he buy you nice things! barks one detective, who thrusts his face at her. Don’t be stupid! shouts another. You knew he was dealing drugs!

“I bought the TV!” she says urgently.

Instantly Tominaga strikes: “You sing at a night club, right?”

Chikako realizes her mistake but cannot change course now. The Russians have a saying: In lies, you may always go forward, but you cannot go back. Either she admits she knew her boyfriend was dealing drugs, or she admits making more a month than her “career” would allow. She lowers her eyes. “Yes,” she says. She will have great difficulty meeting the inspector’s eyes for the rest of the interrogation.

Tominaga speaks softly, gently applying the teeth of the trap: “How much do you earn a month?”

“Depends on the month,” says Chikako. Tominaga simply stares at her. “About 50 or 60 thousand yen,” she says finally, staring down. One of the detective smirks and crosses his arms. Tominaga simply smiles. He has forced her to admit that she is a prostitute.

“So that's how you can buy a TV,” he says, almost gently.

Eventually detectives show Chikako some of the personal items that were found in the vacated, soggy clothes at the crime scene, which she identifies as Misake’s. Tominaga thanks her for her time, allows her to leave. She bows deeply, still unable to raise her eyes, and exits. Letting her go? says one of the detectives. “She’s very pretty,” says Tominaga, his voice brutal in its casual tone. “Misake won’t leave her alone.” He has broken the girl and strapped her down like a lamb to bait wolves.

But Misake is no longer Misake, of course, having been absorbed by the H-Man (or H-Men, it is never clear how many there are). We are to quickly learn that the ghost ship, seen at the beginning of the film, is in fact the origin of the H-Monsters. The ship has passed through a radioactive fallout from a nuclear test, turning the crew into radioactive, hungry goo.* Once pulled into dock in a Tokyo harbor, the monsters slither and slurp off the decks and into the nearby city. The underworld is the first element of society to encounter the H-Men because, like the irradiated monsters, they use Tokyo’s sewer system as a base of operations – the gangers for it’s privacy, the monsters for it’s moisture.

In fact, the film stages it’s wonderful finale in beneath the city’s streets, in the dark, wet caverns of the sewers, as police storm through the tunnels with cleansing fire! But let’s flesh out a few of the details as we take care of The Good Stuff!

The Good Stuff, Part I: Eiji Tsuburaya and the horror of real time.

Yes, Ishirô Honda was intent on making a fine crime film, but that didn’t stop his oft-partner, special effects genius, Eiji Tsuburaya, from making a first-class sci-fi film full of horrors and nightmares.

To discuss Tsuburaya’s achievements in anything short of a book is impossible if not insulting. For those wishing a full and proper treatment, let me recommend August Ragone’s Eiji Tsuburaya! Master of Monsters; where those curious can discover the man behind the golden age of Japanese science fiction film (the photo I have included of Tsuburaya on the set of Mothra is scanned from Ragone’s book). Suffice to say here he was the man that built the Tokyo for Godzilla to stomp. Miniaturization was his specialty – his genius – and for the most part, all his effects were done in “real time,” meaning that nothing was ever done on a computer or with stop-motion animation. Men in rubber suits, mostly, fit the bill; smashing and crashing their way through entire cityscapes designed by this artist.

In The H-Man, the challenge was to simulate the effects of monster slime dissolving and liquefying a human host. Tsuburaya used life-sized latex dolls, dressed them, then let the air out while filming at a slightly increased speed - accompanied of course with appropriate strangled screams and slurps. The effect was so dramatic, many scenes were edited down for the American release to lessen the horrifying punch. To simulate the blob-like monsters flowing ooze, Tsuburaya constructed sets to roll on 60 degree slants so that the gelatinous slime could slide up legs and walls.

Even something as simple and easy to miss as the fist scene with the ghost ship, drifting on a foggy sea, was all done in miniature in the massive water tank on the grounds of Toho Studios. The ship here is astounding and quite typical of the work of Tsuburaya. The final burning of Tokyo (more on this later) is all miniatures as well. Simply amazing.

The Good Stuff, Part II: Akihiko Hirata – Cool at the Center.

I have been a fan of actor Akihiko Hirata since I watched his mad doctor save Tokyo in Honda’s 1954 Gojira. His tortured, moving performance was just so perfectly controlled, so reserved and – yes – just plain cool. There is something about a Hirata character that always seems unhurried and slightly remote from the frantic thrashings of his fellow humans, particularly when others are devoured by chaos and panic. He dwells always in the perfect eye of the hurricane.

His character here, Inspector Tominaga, never raises his voice or even looks angry. Yet men jump when he speaks, suspects wilt under his gaze; even friends approach with caution. His secret is this: when he speaks, it is the hard, blunt truth without any sugar for easy consumption. When he easily corners and breaks the nightclub singer, Chikako, slowly defining the way she actually makes her money; she crumples as if having to face this truth for the first time.

After Chikako identifies a few of her boyfriend’s personal belongings, and is on the point of tears, Tominaga stares straight into her eyes and says. “It would be best for Misake to turn himself in. His friends will kill him.” Chikako hears, and knows instantly that it is the truth, and any residual resistance she has – any last protective urge she may harbor for her drug-dealing boyfriend, is smashed. Her face is blank, terrified, and very pale as the cruel honesty of this bastard cop nests itself in her mind.

Every sci-fi movie must contain at least one slightly dreamy-eyed but hugely brilliant scientist who will come to the law or military with a pet theory of alien invasions or atomic mutation. No exception here, and before long we are given Dr. Asada (Kenji Sahara), an assistant professor specializing in biochemistry. He has a theory about atomic radiation and its ability to transform a human into liquid, and he has read about the strange disappearance of the criminal, Misake. This has led him to sniffing around Misake’s girlfriend, Chikako, which has gotten him arrested and brought before the desk of Inspector Tominaga.

But wait! Asada and Tominaga are old friends. Whew, what a relief! The professor visibly relaxes as Tominaga kids him about drinking in clubs when he should be working in the lab! Yuk, yuk – just two old friends kidding one another. Dr. Asada even gives one of the lowly detectives a smirk, as if putting him in his place. We caught him talking to Chikako Arai, says the lowly detective, giving his boss a note Asada had written to the girlfriend/singer.

Tominaga stares at the note a moment and sits down. He looks up at his friend, no longer smiling. “This is your handwriting?” he asks.

The professor nods yes, a simple statement of fact. Nothing to worry about at all.

The Inspector continues to stare at the professor. One senses a change. “How do you know Misake and Chikako?”

The professor hasn’t caught the shifting tide. He answers easily, “I read about them in the paper.”

Tominaga grins, displaying a smile that resembles the natural, joyless expression of a crocodile. “You normally go see people that are in the newspaper?” Suddenly we notice a tone that is not friendly. Not friendly at all. We also notice that the professor has not been invited to sit. He stands coat in hand, suddenly understanding that the floor has dropped out from under him. He blanches, "Well, I . . .“ He seems unsure of his footing. A uniform cop has mercy and slides a chair over to him. The professor drops into it. “What if I don’t tell you?” he asks.

“We’ll put you in jail,” answers Tominaga, still smiling.

The professor/friend suddenly is simply a suspect on the hot seat. “I guess I have no choice,” he says in a soft voice all full of humble.

That’s right, Mr. assistant professor with the nutty theory, you have no choice. Because this guy with the toothy, unhappy smile and pearl-black eyes isn’t your friend, he’s a cop. Before he is a mother’s son, before he is a husband or father, before he is even a man, he’s a cop. An officer of the law that will put your brainy ass in jail before you have time to piss your tweed trousers. So loosen that tie, Poindexter, and start talking.

The Good Stuff III: Honda and the Hottest Club in Tokyo.

At one point in the film, super cop Tominaga decides to take his crack team of detectives to the club where Chikako sings (and drug gangsters hang out) and start cracking some heads. He’s gotten real tired of the nutty professor and his crackpot theories of radioactive melting men. Where his egghead friend imagines Misake an atomic mutation, our crime-buster imagines a straight forward drug killing among double crossers. Much like his educated friend, though, Tominaga does have a little pet theory he’s eager to work out: He suspects the missing Misake will show up the club of his girlfriend or, at the least, his associates must know where he is. Tominaga strongly suspects if taken to a back room at police headquarters, and thereupon beaten badly with a rolled up newspaper or truncheon, many of Misake’s criminal associates will reveal Misake’s fate or whereabouts briskly and without further irritating delay. Eager to field test this hypothesis, team Tominaga head down to the Cabaret Homura, just in time for cocktail hour and Chikako’s floor show.

The following scene in the jazz-drenched nightclub is a beauty for several reasons. First, if I had to choose one nightclub in the history of movies for an evening’s entertainment, it would be this one. Ladies and gents, Club Homura swings! From the hot band all dressed in cream-colored suits to the gorgeous dancers, it looks like one fine time. The service looks absolutely top flight, and the singer (Chikako) can really give purr the sultry (on this evening, she sings in English – a little number called “How Deep is My Love”). I can’t think of another film where a club scene so perfectly captures the Atomic Age in all its splendor.

More importantly, this scene gives Honda a chance to use his camera, and he tells this short, one-act tale of cops vs. robbers with a keen, wordless efficiency that boggles the mind and treats the eye.

We watch as Inspector Tominaga sits at his table, entertaining his lovely date, while he sketches the club’s layout on a pad of paper; placing a circle at the tables where he can identify members of Tokyo’s criminal underworld (to his companion, it seems he is idly doodling). With a nod of his head, he positions two-man teams throughout club, some at the door, others at the bar. While this goes on, a waiter is scurrying around, telling the gangsters of Tominaga’s presence.

Then, when the club band breaks into their loudest number, Tominaga springs his trap. He begins smiling at each gangster, one by one, tipping his glass to them as if telling them of his plans for a back-room interrogation. “Who is that?” asks his foxy date, noticing him giving a table his frosty, rapacious grin. “Some friends,” he says, not breaking eye contact with the table of criminals.

And, one by one, they wilt under the weight of Tominaga’s steel-trap smile and decide to head for the exits – grabbing their girls by the upper arms and hastily snuffing out cigarettes. And, one by one, Tominaga gives his teams a signal whereupon they spring after the prey like packs of hunting dogs. The sound of the band wailing on hot jazz cover up the gunshots as thugs wrestle with cops at the doors. The beauty of the scene is that it is done with virtually no dialogue. We have nothing but Honda’s smooth camera work and direction to tell the tale, and it is more than enough.

While arrests are being made and arms are twisted harshly behind backs, we discover that Tominaga was correct, after a fashion. Misake does return to the club, only in the form of the sludgy, creeping, radioactive H-Man, intent on feasting on some old friends to stay alive, particularly an old friend named Uchida (Makoto Satô) who double-crossed Mistake on the original drug theft. The H-Man can’t catch up to his double-crossing ex-friend, but he does manage to liquefy several members of the club and one cop in particularly gruesome fashion for a night’s work. So, this scene serves also to get cop and scientist on the same page, working together. Tominaga has been a hard man to convince regarding theories of a radioactive slush killer, but watching one of his best cops turn to bubbling slime gets him on board in one hot hurry.


The Good Stuff Part IV: – All worlds meet in the bowels of Tokyo or Fire Solves Everything!

After escaping the slimy mitts of the H-Man, Uchida kidnaps the club singer, Chikako (whom he has always lusted after, even when she was Misake’s) and heads for the city’s sewers, where he has stashed his own cache of stolen drugs, for the movie’s rip-snorting finale.

The river of waste and decay that run along the concrete tubes beneath the city, like ribbons of a grotesque bowel under the city’s skin, is the dank, claustrophobic universe were all worlds meet. For while Uchida retreats to his awful sanctuary, trudging through the knee deep pollution with automatic in one hand and Chikako’s wrist in the other; the blue, glowing mutants have fled to their sanctum sanatorium as well, running in thick rivulets along the walls chasing after the fleeing pair.

Honda draws both words - the one of sci-fi horror and the one of gritty urban crime – patiently together, pulling all concerned toward the twilight world of Tokyo’s sewers with a watchmaker’s precision. He winds the tension in his watch, too, with a master’s stroke: He has the authorities declare a marshal law and has Tokyo evacuated. He clears the stage, then, for his grand finale. While Uchida drags a filth-drenched Chikako through the sewers’ tunnels (actress Yumi Shirakawa certainly earned her pay here), Inspector Tominaga plans his attack on the creatures beneath his city; and considering what Tominaga has in mind, the complete evaluation of the city of Tokyo is not an overreaction. No ifs, ands, or buts - Tominaga intends to put this case to rest in the first attempt.

In a packed boardroom, using his pointer like a epée, Tominaga bends over a grand map of the city’s sewer system and lays out his plans. His voice is so official, his commands so sharp, it takes a moment to grasp what he has in mind. “The gasoline attack will begin at 10:00 p.m.,” he says, indicating dozens of push pins stuck in the sewer map at various locations. “Once the public has evacuated, we will ignite the gas simultaneously."

Yes, Tominaga’s plan of attack is to dump thousands upon thousands of gallons of gasoline into the sewer system and light it. The push pins indicate the “fire ignition groups” that will set of this giant gas bomb “simultaneously.” Well, yep, that should do ‘er. The dozens of officials listening all nod their heads in approval once Tominaga has finished. Yes, yes. Fine plan. You guys sure you don’t see a potential problem with Tominaga’s tactical masterpiece? Anyone? No? Well, OK, then, light it up.


Does it work? You bet. H-Mann all gone. I’ll add this, though: Tominaga would use a sledgehammer to open a music box with a sticky clasp, and frankly, I love him for that. Also, I’ll tell you this much more. The skunk Uchida doesn’t get cleansed by fire. Nope, he doesn’t get off that light. He goes by goo in what I have learned in researching this movie gave lots of young movie watchers severe nightmares.

You really should see this film. It will make you feel smart to have seen it. It’s that good.

Now, let's go to the club and watch Tominaga in action! -- Radiation Cinema!


* The fate of the boat in the film is, sadly, based on fact. A Japanese fishing vessel, The Lucky Dragon No. 5, encountered the heavy fallout resulting from the Castle Bravo nuclear tests at Bikini Atoll. All 23 crewmembers suffered from acute radiation syndrome, the symptoms of which include, headaches, nausea, bleeding from gums, burns, etc. Within 6 months, the chief radio operator, Aikichi Kubouama, 40, was dead from injures. At the time of the test, the ship was operating well outside the danger zone, as given in US Government warnings, but the test was twice as powerful as expected.