Moving away from giant monsters for a moment, Ishiro Honda brings Eiji Tsuburaya's special effects skills on a smaller, perhaps more effective, scale in service to a monster movie disguised as a gangster film. It's a curious mix where we get Honda's now expected over-explanation of scientific nonsense in combination with underwritten characters who never feel terribly distinct. The spectacle is on a much smaller scale and with less screentime, leaving these thin characters to fill in the gap which creates a less enticing overall genre experience. I mean, it basically functions as it lurches from one bit of special effects to the next, but at least the special effects are pretty good.
Misaki (Hisaya Ito) is running through the rain with a parcel of heroin when he suddenly gasps in pain, shoots downward, and vanishes, his clothes left behind. The police are baffled at the happening, the investigation being led by Tominaga (Akihito Hirata). They are approached by Dr. Masada (Kenji Sahara), a specialist in radiation, who has a theory that Misaki was dissolved because of radiation from H-bomb tests off the Japanese coast. At the same time, Tominaga is watching Misaki's girlfriend, Chikako Arai (Yumi Shirakawa), a lounge singer who purportedly knows nothing of Misaki's work with organized crime smuggling drugs.
So, this being a Honda science-fiction film, the scientist is definitely going to be right, dragging the civilian authorities towards the truth, and the film is going to take a good amount of time laying out why all this silly nonsense purported to be science is right and true. I just don't understand this need to try and prove to the audience that men being turned into gelatinous monsters who crawl up and down walls and turn people into water (or other monsters, it's just a bit unclear) when it's so obviously nonsense. I mean, it's part of an effort to scandalize H-bomb testing and atomic power in general, but by putting such weight onto stuff that's obviously not true about what radiation does feels counter-productive to the point. It desensitizes the audience to the dangers of nuclear power rather than sells them an actual case. This is why combining silly genre thrills with serious points about the world is a tricky balance to pull off.
Anyway, most of the movie is actually about the investigation around Misaki that touches on the organized crime angle. It's honestly not great. There's no strong sense of anyone in the organization, so the investigation feels half-hearted. It ends up focusing on Uchida (Makoto Sato), another low-level gangster who pretends to be eaten by the monster, leaving his clothes behind, and going after Chikako because he desires her. Since Dr. Masada and Chikako had grown close during the investigation, it provides what little character-based thrill is in the film, but none of the character-based stuff is terribly well-done. But, at least it's there. There's something. It's not great, but it's there.
The highlight is the monster itself. Filmed inventively using upside-down sets from all angles to simulate movement along with a weird ghostly image at heightened moments, the monster is surprisingly effective for being just a glob of goo that snakes around on the ground. It's helped in no small part by the actual visual of the bodies dissolving when attacked. It's quite gruesome in a non-gory way, and it's very effective. Honda saves the visual for later in the film, not giving it away too early, which would have been a great thing if what filled those early minutes were effective storytelling. But, it's, at best, moderately functional storytelling that precedes that reveal.
So, I wouldn't go so far as to call it bad. It's interesting to see Honda squeeze in another genre into his monster movie, implying that he had some desire to work outside the realm that his producer, Tomoyuki Tanaka, was forcing him into all of the time. The monster stuff is really good. There's a flashback scene to the shipping tanker where it all started that's decently well-done. However, the gangster stuff is massively underwritten, the characters are paper-thin, and the overall plot is nothing terribly exciting while the thematic point is degraded to the same level of silliness as the science that "explains" the monster. It's a mixed bag, but Honda has made worse. There's some halfway decent entertainment to be had in this film, but only halfway.
Misaki (Hisaya Ito) is running through the rain with a parcel of heroin when he suddenly gasps in pain, shoots downward, and vanishes, his clothes left behind. The police are baffled at the happening, the investigation being led by Tominaga (Akihito Hirata). They are approached by Dr. Masada (Kenji Sahara), a specialist in radiation, who has a theory that Misaki was dissolved because of radiation from H-bomb tests off the Japanese coast. At the same time, Tominaga is watching Misaki's girlfriend, Chikako Arai (Yumi Shirakawa), a lounge singer who purportedly knows nothing of Misaki's work with organized crime smuggling drugs.
So, this being a Honda science-fiction film, the scientist is definitely going to be right, dragging the civilian authorities towards the truth, and the film is going to take a good amount of time laying out why all this silly nonsense purported to be science is right and true. I just don't understand this need to try and prove to the audience that men being turned into gelatinous monsters who crawl up and down walls and turn people into water (or other monsters, it's just a bit unclear) when it's so obviously nonsense. I mean, it's part of an effort to scandalize H-bomb testing and atomic power in general, but by putting such weight onto stuff that's obviously not true about what radiation does feels counter-productive to the point. It desensitizes the audience to the dangers of nuclear power rather than sells them an actual case. This is why combining silly genre thrills with serious points about the world is a tricky balance to pull off.
Anyway, most of the movie is actually about the investigation around Misaki that touches on the organized crime angle. It's honestly not great. There's no strong sense of anyone in the organization, so the investigation feels half-hearted. It ends up focusing on Uchida (Makoto Sato), another low-level gangster who pretends to be eaten by the monster, leaving his clothes behind, and going after Chikako because he desires her. Since Dr. Masada and Chikako had grown close during the investigation, it provides what little character-based thrill is in the film, but none of the character-based stuff is terribly well-done. But, at least it's there. There's something. It's not great, but it's there.
The highlight is the monster itself. Filmed inventively using upside-down sets from all angles to simulate movement along with a weird ghostly image at heightened moments, the monster is surprisingly effective for being just a glob of goo that snakes around on the ground. It's helped in no small part by the actual visual of the bodies dissolving when attacked. It's quite gruesome in a non-gory way, and it's very effective. Honda saves the visual for later in the film, not giving it away too early, which would have been a great thing if what filled those early minutes were effective storytelling. But, it's, at best, moderately functional storytelling that precedes that reveal.
So, I wouldn't go so far as to call it bad. It's interesting to see Honda squeeze in another genre into his monster movie, implying that he had some desire to work outside the realm that his producer, Tomoyuki Tanaka, was forcing him into all of the time. The monster stuff is really good. There's a flashback scene to the shipping tanker where it all started that's decently well-done. However, the gangster stuff is massively underwritten, the characters are paper-thin, and the overall plot is nothing terribly exciting while the thematic point is degraded to the same level of silliness as the science that "explains" the monster. It's a mixed bag, but Honda has made worse. There's some halfway decent entertainment to be had in this film, but only halfway.