Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Good concept, poorly executed.

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

. . . such as the original NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, while others including WORLD WAR Z are peopled by fast-moving, gymnastic brain-eaters, there are scads of blob movies in which the title mass skedaddles right along, but sadly THE H-MAN is not one of these. "O.N. John" might have been "Torn between two lovers," but she certainly would have felt even MORE like a fool had she been divvied up among at least a dozen film genres, as is THE H-MAN. Whether you look at this tale as a mob saga, horror flick, musical, police procedural, romantic comedy, pacifist rant, anti-Nuclear plea, exercise in science fiction, ghost story, Asian sex industry expose, maritime myth, post-war anti-American propaganda piece, or something else, viewers cannot deny that THE H-MAN is one mixed up mess, given its leaden pace, ludicrous English voice dubbing, cheesy special effects, pretentious professors, flip-flopping police, idiotic crime lords, kitchen sink plotting, pulled punches, eye-candy teases that lead nowhere, amphibian genocide (putting one in mind of Dolphin Bay), and other incompatible jagged puzzle pieces.

This Japanese variant on THE BLOB sees atomic bomb testing (what else?) responsible for a gloopy ball of slime (nicknamed the 'H-man') going around dissolving people and leaving just their clothes behind. It sounds a lot of fun and it is, even though the majority of this film's plot is actually a crime drama, following a squad of policeman on the track of various criminal gangs. There are the requisite shoot-outs, car chases, and lengthy nightclub scenes involving scantily-clad singers, but it's the sci-fi trappings that make this movie so enjoyable. The first half hour is a little slow – other than a couple of people who disappear, we don't know what's going on – but once we get a flashback about the origin of the creature, the pacing picks up a great deal.The highlight of the film is the aforementioned flashback, a creepy segment involving some sailors investigating an eerily abandoned ship (a cliché, but designed perfectly here). Before you can say 'Steve McQueen', there's a slimy menace on the loose, dissolving people in some surprisingly gooey, graphic scenes that must have caused an uproar when this was first released. Although director Ishiro Honda is more used to shooting gigantic monsters, he's more than able to hand a smaller-scale menace on this occasion, delivering a suitably fiery climax in the sewers and another decent set-piece in which the titular menace invades a relaxed nightclub.The film doesn't offer up much that we haven't seen before, and it's fair to say that the cops-and-robbers element is fairly ordinary. None of the criminals stand out as really dastardly, and none of the cops are very interesting, either. Yet other characters are better – Yumi Shirakawa as a fragile mobster's girlfriend plays a pivotal role (the literal English title translates as Beauty and the Liquidman) and Kenji Sahara's dedicated scientist, forever performing experiments on unfortunate frogs, is entertaining. The special effects are fairly dated but always amusing, with glowing green figures, dissolving heads and a moving blob that looks like nothing more than washing up liquid squirted up the wall. A masterpiece this isn't – but it is a solid B-movie of the kind they made so well in the '50s.

Utilizing the most offensive dubbing of Japanese I've ever heard (even in Godzilla movies), this actually seemed to have been a pretty good movie until Eng-rish speaking dubbing took over to turn this into a real cheesy mess. The science fiction element of the plot is actually very interesting with nuclear reactions to dumping at sea causes some people to become walking water fountains, covered in a green slimy mess that when it encounters human flesh causes that victim to melt like the wicked witch of the west. The moments of these innocent victims being attacked is very frightening, and there is also a scary looking scene where several of these green globs gather together on what appears to be some sort of ghost ship. In its original language, it would probably rank in a rating a bit higher (being technically much better than many of the Godzilla and other various monster films), but putting in these silly voices to bring it to English speaking audiences just makes it outrageously bad, both with the dubbing and its outrageously laughable (if still one dimensional) stereotyping of how Japanese people speak the English language.

This is one of the legendary Toho sci-fi films that is remembered more then actually seen. A number of friends fondly recall this film as one of the best that Honda directed even with the less than stellar English dubbing.The film is very well done but with some weak points that detract from the overall effect of the production. One aspect that is very good is the excellent special effect work by Eji Tsuburaya. The scenes of liquid humans going up walls works and the scenes where the victims are liquefied are still effective. Towards the end we are treated to some great miniatures of the Tokyo waterfront and sewer system that are almost indistinguishable from the life-size sets. The film is filled with shadows and creepy sets. The story moves along quite well until the times we get to the nightclub were everything stops for dance numbers with bikini clad women and two songs (one in English!). The film would be a good fifteen minutes shorter without them and they contribute nothing to the story. Of course you might enjoy these for their own qualities.The ending is a little screwy and there seems to be some budgetary constraints as a promised H-Man destruction event never occurs.Overall, a very good horror film that stands up to anything that came out of the US or Britain at the same time.