The liquid can become a monster and do untold damage.
A drug smuggler named Misaki is mysteriously killed. He appears to have melted and the only thing left are his clothes. The police bring his wife in for questioning. His wife, Arai is a singer in a nightclub. The police stake out the nightclub and arrest Dr. Masada when they see him talking to Arai. At the station Inspector Tominaga recognizes Dr. Masada and clears him. Later Arai goes to Masaki’s apartment. One of Misaki’s associates shows up and thinking Arai knows where Masaki is he tries to strong arm Arai into telling him Misaki’s location. When he leaves, he disappears the same way Misaki did. He dissolves.
The next day Masada tells the police that there was a similar instance where people disappeared leaving just their clothes on an abandoned ship that some fisherman had found. They said that the ship went through a radioactive cloud affecting the crew. It created a living liquid that dissolved the crew. Those that did not dissolve turned into liquid monsters. Dr. Masada takes Inspector Tominaga to the hospital where the men from the fishing vessel are being cared for from their ordeal. That way the police can get the story firsthand.
At first the police are skeptical until they see for themselves a liquid creature (the H man) kill three people at the nightclub. He appears as a liquid and then solidifies into a glowing green human form. Now that the police believe in the H-man they must not only find the criminal gang they had originally been looking for but find a way to destroy the H-man before all of Tokyo is destroyed.
"The H-Man" was released in 1958 and was directed by Ishiro Honda. It is technically a combination of science fiction, horror and film noir although that term is not usually attributed to Japanese movies. Mistakenly written off as a blob-type movie H-man goes a lot deeper than that. Many Japanese films, especially monster movies are based on creatures made due to atomic testing. Godzilla for example. After all it had only been about thirteen years between the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima to the time this movie was made. Since then, Japan has had a great aversion to atomic testing of any kind. So even though the science is a little iffy, the message is loud and clear.
This is the English dubbed version of “The H Man” produced in 1958 staring Akihiko Hirata as Inspector Tominaga, Kenji Sahara as Dr. Masada, Yumi Shirakawa as Chikako Arai, Makoto Sato as Uchida, Korenari Senda as Dr. Maki, and Eitaro Ozawa as Inspector Miyashia.
Many of the stars in “The H Man” were also in hundreds of other Japanese movies and Television shows. Hirata stared in several kaiju movies including the original “Godzilla” (he was the guy with the patch on his eye) as well as many other TOHO movies. He has more than 150 film credits to his name. Sahara was also prevalent in many of the TOHO movies and has at least fifty film credits to his name. Shirakawa has at least 96 film and television credits to her name. Sato has been in more than 100 films. Senda has been in more than 50 movies as well as being a stage director, Ozawa has more than 200 films to his credit. Japanese movies may not get a lot of respect, but there’s a lot of talent there. Even the director Ishiro Honda directed over 50 films including Godzilla. He is often credited as being the father of Godzilla.
American dubbed
Japanese subtitled