50's Ishirō Honda Horror Part Two

RODAN

(1956)

Overall: MEH

 

After briefly stepping away from the kaiju genre on Toho's first Godzilla sequel the previous year, director Ishirō Honda returned with Rodan, (Sora no Daikaijū Radon, Giant Monster of the Sky Rodan, Rodan! The Flying Monster!), which essentially beats the same dead horse that would continue to get beaten for decades still to come.  Another atom bomb/elementary cautionary tale in the guise of an awoken, ancient monster that is big enough to level untold amounts of Japanese housing properties, the differentiating gimmicks here are that not one but two giant behemoths emerge, both of them can fly, and the whole thing was shot in color, (making this the first ever kaiju film to do so).  Otherwise, it still has military guys doing military things like shooting missiles at the winged dinosaurs over and over and goddamn over again to no avail, sitting in conference rooms trying to formulate a plan, and two characters whose names are hardly important that are in love.  Significant portions of the running time are a slog with such derivative nonsense, but the more lively moments of rubber monsters on strings destroying miniature sets in a fury of firepower and hurricane level winds are amusing enough to appease the intended demographic.

 

THE MYSTERIANS

(1957)

Overall: MEH

 

Though a personal favorite of director Ishirō Honda, The Mysterians, (Chikyū Bōeigun, Earth Defense Force), plays out interchangeably from he and Toho's usual giant monster spectacles.  A story treatment was originally commissioned for Jojiro Okami, after which two other screenwriters, (including Godzilla author Shigaru Kayama), elaborated on the material by throwing in an Earth-conquering, alien threat as well as a towering robot to stand-in for the Atom-bomb-juiced, prehistoric reptiles usually utilized in such movies.  While there is a more deliberate, humanitarian angle here with Japan's military complex cooperating with that of other nations, (all in an attempt to put Cold War era squabbles in a more insignificant context when faced against an extraterrestrial threat), the production still cannot think of anything else to do except mercilessly throw explosions at the bad guys for eighty-nine minutes.  All of the characters are cardboard cut-outs with absolutely no personality and it is truly amazing how these films endlessly recycled the same routine of miniature destruction by way of missile bombardment that does absolutely no good until thirty seconds before "The End" flashes on the screen.  Throw in a more sinister element of the aliens wanting to mate with Earth women while wearing utterly ridiculous costumes and it is maybe a couple of notches more interesting than just another monster smash-em-up, but that is about all that it deserves.

THE H-MAN

(1958)

Overall: MEH

 

Despite its elaborate, crime mystery structure fused with a hydrogen radiation monster, Toho's The H-Man, (Bijo to Ekitai-ningen, Beauty and the Liquid People), still manages to be a sluggish affair.  As was all too often the case with contemporary-set, Japanese genre cinema of the day, it suffers from an abundance of uninteresting characters and pedestrian drama.  Considering that sequences showcasing the actual title character in his neon-green, glowing, blob-like glory are few and far between, this leaves the movie to meander with its weakest narrative attributes.  The story was initially conceived of by actor Hideo Unagami who wrote a treatment called "The Liquid Man Appears" while starring in The Mysterians.  After Unagami's untimely death, the project was handed over to Takeshi Kimura, a frequent collaborator of both director Ishirō Honda and producer Tomoyuki Tanaka.  The results are heavily padded with gangster shenanigans, police procedural investigations, and musical nightclub numbers featuring scantily clad ladies.  Things really only pick up when the Liquid Man indeed appears, oozing around while people, (of course), shoot useless bullets at him, followed by him dissolving his victims by grisly yet non-gory means.