Dir. Ishirô Honda
It would have been amiss not to
include fifties, nuclear paranoia era sci-fi, having covered one last year, and
it's one of the many choices I could have chosen from the boutique of genre
films made throughout the decades in Japan. So many are there to choose; even
if horror cinema only really came to be around the time of
Jigoku (1960) and the influence of its director
Nobuo Nakagawa, there are ghost stories
and sci-fi monster films from before than I could have used. The same fears of
nuclear fallout he tackled through
Godzilla
(1954) is yet taken to a different tone with
The H-Man by director
Honda.
Godzilla was the ruminations of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki through the wholesale destruction of Tokyo, potentially symbolic of all the earthquakes that have
beset the nation too, but with this film, it feels more concerned with the
effect of nuclear aftermath, nuclear waste and radiation, the fear that a
substance could get into the water. The film at first evokes acid rain in the
first scene, but it gets more complicated than that.
A drug runner suddenly vanishes
one night when trying to transport a large package of narcotics. In the middle
of a street, in heavy torrential rain, all that is left of him is a pile of
clothes dumped on the road. It's presumed, logically, by the police that it's
just a bizarre coincidence surrounding the per usual yakuza infighting, where
the gangs are going after each other and the drug runner has ran for his
safety, leaving his girlfriend, a club singer, to fend for herself. But said to
be hopelessly in love with her, to being the kind of person to still try and
see her even at his own risk, his complete absence is a mystery, and while
there is still an issue with the drug related crime, another person vanishes
leaving only their clothes. Only a scientist who studies nuclear radiation, who
to the bafflement of the top police detective takes interest in the case, could
have the answer, and it may show a horrifying threat for the entire Tokyo
population. Very much sci-fi at its most fantastical. Horror as well, especially
with an extended flashback including a "ghost" ship. Pretty gruesome
when it shows what actually happens to the victims in sloppy, wet detail. Even
if they're replaced with fake ones, toads get the worst of it in the name of
figuring out what the protagonists are dealing with.
The Japanese sci-fi/kaiju/monster
genre is barely tapped into in my viewing of Japanese films as a whole, but it's
such a distinct genre in what I've seen while also having pieces of it that
bleeds into other areas like anime. The bright colours to the images, glossy
and rich, its foot between reality with the films between the fifties and
seventies, but also close to both illustration and manga. A big thing about
these sci-fi films, alongside yakuza films, is the amount of Western influences
and how they almost drown out the Japanese origins of something like in The H-Man. Jazz instead of traditional
instruments. (Great jazz pieces at that). The female heroine sings longue songs
in English. Proto Pop Art deco for swanky, alcohol soaked nightclubs, one a
prominent location in this film with local girls doing showgirl performance
numbers in spangled bikinis. The gangsters here are in suits, slicked back hair
and only carry guns, inching the film closer to the area of mukokuseki, cross-cultural
works on film, that Seijun Suzuki
went to with a film like Branded To Kill
(1967). Post Second World War, when Western culture entered Japan in vast
amounts, this is not a film that questions and or scrutinises this, like a Shohei Imamura film would, and even
Godzilla had the first quarter of it set in rural Japan with its traditions
clearly visible. No one raises a question about it, and baring certain things
like the housing with interior paper walls, nothing pronounces it as
"Japanese", more concerned with the story of people randomly
disappearing. But it still manages to feel very Japanese paradoxically. The
methodical pace. The willingness to depict such a premise completely seriously.
The take on the fears of nuclear destruction spoken from experience. Even in
being completely nationless in look, it's still very much a creation of Japan
only.
The H-Man is a b-movie. Pulp. The first viewing I found it dull and
disappointing. This time I liked it. Opinions change in hindsight sometimes. It
still drags by the end, probably because the cause of the incidents is not
something like a kaiju that is visually frightening unless the icky practical
effects are used, having to rely on the crime subplot for enough menace. But
for a b-movie it was made with consideration. It has a grace to it, and at
moments it becomes both freakish, and at least once or so far more sexual and
edgy than anything that could have been dared done in an American film at this
time. There's another example of the bravery in Japanese pop culture here which
is willing to show with more vividness fears and anxieties, desires and
fantasies even in something like this with its premise. Even in the simplest
terms with The H-Man, just making
something entertaining its creators went further and made this bright, gangster
sci-fi hybrid film which mixes sultry, elaborate jazz orchestration with ominous
fears of every drain pipe housing a dangerous entity based on real national
scars. With an ending, without spoiling most of it for you the readers to watch
it fresh, where you see the bay of Tokyo on fire, the water itself an inferno
of flame, with a warning of the events possibly happening again, it neither comforts
the viewer into believing it could never happen again, or that such an event
couldn't happen in reality in terms of what is scientifically possible, not
wrapping itself up in a quickie, happy package. It's still a happy ending, but
unlike an American film of this genre, its Japanese counterpart, after seeing
the brunt of war and the nuke, still desires to tell its viewers of the era,
even if they're entertained in their cinema seats, not to be complacent about
the dangers that a nuclear weapon or radiation, or a natural disaster or
chemical fallout, could have when it's not a H-Man or a giant, god-like lizard
destroying Tokyo. In the American sci-fi film I watched last year, while
superior and still creepy, it was about the norm triumphing over an alien
outsider. With The H-Man, it's not
an issue of the norm being even in the centre of the threat, but that the folly
of mankind, regardless of norm, can doom itself, and that even if the threat
was an alien, mankind is responsible to keep on their guard rather than take
their lives after for granted in a gee-whizz, apple pie mentality.
First of all, hopefully I'll be able to pick up from the few days I missed. The least expected thing - technical malfunction out of my hands and nothing to do with my computer - delayed the final stage of the season. It will have to run into November to make up for thirty one films I wanted to write reviews of. A conclusion for the series will have to be written in November or part of the next Month In Review too. To compensate today, I present a review of another Jess (Jesús) Franco film and the first in a group of reviews I wrote for Videotape Swapshop to tie both places I write for together into this blogathon. 
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