Editor’s Note: Freeline Media’s movie critic, Mike Fried, explores some of the great films to come out of Toho Studios — which made one of the greatest monster movies, Godzilla. Hear Mike roar!

By MIKE FRIED

Toho Studios has a long and varied career, not only known as the studio that produced and distributed Godzilla (1954) and all of its progeny but also the studio that produced many of the world’s legendary films by the world’s greatest director, Akira Kurosawa. But between 1958 and 1960, Toho released three films that would become an unofficial trilogy called the “Transforming Human” series. That is a Kaiju (monster) spawned by some experiment gone wrong.  These films were very appealing to the Japanese public at the time of their release because — similar to the American sci-fi B pictures of the 1950s — they preyed upon the viewer’s ultimate fears of the unknown borne from technology and science gone way too wild …. a feeling that many of us experience to this day.

Let’s take a look, shall we.

THE H-MAN (1958)

**** 1/2

An H-Bomb goes off. A ghost ship sails into Tokyo Harbor. A couple walks home in the rain. A bad guy sits in a car. A cop walks by on his rounds. A man emerges from the sewers and screams in pain, shooting at something he sees but we don’t. He falls down. All that is left of him is his suit and rainwater running into the sewer grate. 

One of Ishiro Honda’s most effective films, this cop story with horror and sci-fi elements doesn’t let up until the end. It’s a really neat blend of film noir and Japanese radiation science fiction.  

Based on the same true story as Godzilla (I’m not joking: google “Lucky Dragon No. 5 incident”), this one features radioactive gelatinous creatures that feed on humans rather than a large monster attacking a city. 

Kenji Sahara, Akihito Harata and Yoshifumi Tajima lead an excellent cast of Honda regulars. The three of them sort of act with a wink and a nod at each other but they take Takeshi Kimura’s script very seriously, even considering how preposterousness the premise is. Kimura was a guy who believed that science fiction films should be taken seriously, and by treating this one as a film noir sci-fi crossover, he really gets mileage out of his story. 

But there are still neat Ishiro Honda touches. I love the scene where the police enter the apartment of a suspect and take their shoes off before they enter. The special effects of Eiji Tsuburaya are particularly striking considering this was made in 1958. The melting of the humans was very well done with the sheer brilliance of simply using inflatables filmed in reverse. The radioactive melting frog is a highlight. In addition, the cinematography by Hajime Koizumi is excellent and he gets a lot of mileage out of the TohoScope 2.35:1 aspect ratio.  

Watch the Japanese version — the American cut version is a hash. A skimpy bikini clad dancer is cut out because of the Hays Office and even worse when she is melted by the radioactive creature and only her G-string remains, that is cut out as well, ruining a perfect joke. 

Stuffed to the gills with Honda regulars, this is a fun film. 

WATCH IT!

THE SECRET OF THE TELEGIAN

*** 1/2

In an amusement park’s house of horrors, a man is killed by an unknown figure.  A reporter and his childhood friend, a detective, along with the police captain, investigate the case. They find dog tags and in the course of their investigation, they discover that the victim was part of a group of four that worked to protect a scientist; however, they used the technology to steal gold.  They seemingly killed two people who uncovered their plot and buried the bodies with the gold.  When they went back for the gold, they found both the gold and the bodies missing.  Unknown to the men, the scientist created a teleportation machine and one of the “murdered” men decided to use it to track down and kill his would be assassins.

The second film in the Transforming Human series – and the only film not directed by Toho heavyweight Ishiro Honda – is the slightest film in the trilogy, although it’s not bad.  Directed by Jun Fukuda and written by Shinichi Sekizawa, it is more of a talkie film than its partners.  By that I mean, instead of action there’s a lot of discussions between the characters. And it’s a lot drier and less humorous than Sekizawa’s other screenplays.

However, since the film is a goofy sci-fi story, it succeeds on those merits – assuming you don’t take it too seriously.  Like The H-Man before it, it is also a fairly straightforward police procedural – although it’s no High and Low.

There’s a terrific restored HD version on Internet Archive but unfortunately it is an English dub.  Nevertheless, the cinematography is outstanding and Fukuda’s direction is good, albeit lesser than what Honda could have accomplished with the material.  In all fairness, this was Fukuda’s second directorial effort and his first science fiction film, so that could be the issue.  Nevertheless, I guess that in 1960 the concept of teleportation was enough to impress an audience; but 65 years later, this movie comes across as kind of pedestrian.  However, this is several years before Star Trek and the concept of teleportation was not widely discussed so from that perspective the movie has a bit of a cutting edge to it.

And, for a Toho film, the use of many Dutch Angle shots is quite out of the ordinary and effective.

If you like Toho films, you’ll like this one so definitely…

…WATCH IT!

THE HUMAN VAPOR

****

A series of mysterious bank robberies occur in which the perpetrator always escapes and survives gunfire. It turns out that a librarian named Mizuno has the ability to turn into gaseous form after an experiment goes awry. He exploits his newfound powers to commit bank robberies, using the proceeds to finance the dancing career of his lover, Fujichiyo, while evading Detective Okamoto and facing the obvious human downsides to his powers.

The third installment in Toho’s “Transforming Human” series following The H-Man and The Secret of the Telegian is an excellent outing by Ishiro Honda and a film that is rarely discussed, owing to the fact that it’s not widely available compared to other Toho/Honda films.  

Yoshio Tsuchiya has a rare starring role as the librarian Mizuno and he takes full advantage of it.  His Mizuno is truly a tragic character.  Like the Hunchback of Notre Dame, his deformity enables him to help the object of his affection. But at what cost?  And his ability has driven him mad as well.  “I am no longer a human being so I am not bound by human laws,” he intones.

The movie is driven by terrific special effects by Toho wizard Eiji Tsuburaya, whose pairings with Honda have always proven to be excellent.  When Mizuno turns himself in to the police and says that he will show them how he committed the crime, his transformation to a gaseous state is truly remarkable and even as a gas he has the ability to kill.  His passage through prison bars is exceptionally well done. This is not the normal large scale effects productions that we normally see from Tsuburaya, but rather an intimate film with a lot of optical effects.

Producer Toriyuka Tanaka came across a story by John Meredyth Lucas, the adopted son of Michael Curtiz, and the writer of about 15 episodes of Star Trek, and had Takeshi Kimura, who wrote The H-Man as well as several other Toho/Honda films; it was a great choice.  Kimura’s serious instincts turn what could have been a pedantic, boring exercise into a fun, frothy sci-fi caper. This is most evident when Mizuno tells his backstory which, although pure science fiction, is so grounded in reality as to bring a humanity to its subject.  He was in the Japanese Air Force but the shadow of cancer cut his career short and forced him to be a librarian and a guinea pig for the doctor that crated his condition.  It is really some epic stuff.

The restored HD version of the film on internet archive shown in its full 2.35:1 TohoScope aspect ration  shows Honda at his full powers telling a story about humanity in the context of a Shinju tragedy while still having fun doing it.  The film achieved critical acclaim both in Japan and in the United States and there were plans for a sequel which never came about; however, it is premiering as an original Netflix series in April 2026, so we will see how that fares.

I prefer the H-Man because it is goofier; but this is really a more serious than normal effort from Honda and Company that really deserves not only an audience but a proper physical release as well.

WATCH IT!

Michael Fried has no formal training in movies, except having watched over 26,000+ movies — if not more — in his 60-plus years on this planet, starting with Goldfinger as his first cinema experience. He knows what he likes and he knows what he doesn’t like, and it’s quite often different from the conventional wisdom. He knows that the best franchise is Godzilla and he loves action movies and comedies. He has not been nominated for any awards except some boring insurance awards which has no applicability to movies (with the possible exceptions of Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity and John Cassavettes’ Big Trouble). He is part of a team that won the 1980 SUNY Albany Trivia content by correctly guessing the question, “Who played the president of Klopstockia in Million Dollar Legs?” So he has that going for him, which is nice.

Contact Mike at moviemike3@yahoo.com and mike.fried@yahoo.com.