If there are any recurring ideas in the classic Ishiro Honda back catalogue, it's that he loves to mix crime thrillers with science fiction. Whether it's Godzilla movies that use assassins like Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster or the jewellery heist meets creature feature Dogora, this sort of mix and match approach appears fairly often. He might enjoy international co-operation and relatable human struggles, but there are also a lot of crooks with sunglasses. This is a prime example of these two worlds colliding as a man subject to a shady experiment becomes an unstoppable bank robbing murderer called 'the gas-man'. It might be a well worn idea but it's execution is very solid.
Like The H-Man this is a special effects laden story in which a series of strange occurrences are linked to unsolved crimes. The optical effects showing the eponymous thief are pretty standard for the time, as he phases between solid human form and his gaseous state to enter locked rooms and bank vaults. The practical effects are what really make this all come together as he's shown becoming a cloud of real smoke that seeps away as his clothes crumple into a heap. One particular scene in a city jail is very reminiscent of the iconic Terminator 2 sequence in which Robert Patrick walks through a barred prison door. Maybe James Cameron was a big fan of this story.
The star of the show is Mizuno, played by recurring bad guy Yoshio Tsuchiya who often seems to be type cast as someone who's either up to no good or on the verge of mental collapse. Both of these character traits are played up here as he shifts between lunatic killer and melancholy romantic. Beyond the eerie effects work it's his sinister performance that stands out as he threatens the police and the press while evading capture. The plot itself is very simplistic for the genre although it does include a kind of Phantom of the Opera style romance as Mizuno explains that he's doing all of this to support a stage performer. It's a great mixture of megalomania, anger, and sadness which make the role memorable.
The story opens with Detective Okamoto (Tatsuya Mihashi) chasing down the mystery robber while his journalist girlfriend Kyoko (Keiko Sata) tries to get a scoop on the case. Again these archetypes are nothing new but the stoic cop and the feisty reporter make a fun team and their interactions are fun to watch. He's overly sombre and doesn't take her seriously while she goes out of her way to get information and any cost; you know these characters already. It keeps the tone from becoming too dry after a lot of slower moments involving dead security guards and mystery phone calls. But as far as a blend of strange horror and thriller plots go these elements are pretty well balanced.
The scenes involving the robberies are pretty striking, particularly the opening in which a series of gun barrel shots are fired into the camera. It's not all entirely serious but there's never a sense that this is being played for laughs even during the lighter moments. It's a tragedy at the core, something which becomes readily apparent as Mizuno explains how he lost his humanity and what he's trying to achieve by helping the dancer Fujichiyo (Kaoru Yachigusa). There's a kind of sadness prevalent in both his mannerisms and her performance in the theatre, which helps it feel less like a typical man-made-monster story. Which it still is of course, but Mizuno's revenge takes place in a brief flashback and is not his driving motivation.
The main issue is that he's supposed to be doing all of this for Fujichiyo and they never have a properly fleshed out relationship. There are a lot of mysterious packets of money being exchanged and his arrival at the police station when she becomes the main robbery suspect is on of the best sequences. The finale in which he insists on watching her whole theatre piece despite the fact it's probably a set-up lends it a certain amount of drama and is very effective. But there are no flashbacks that sell this as a romance. Maybe these kind of scenes would have been pretty trite and it's better this way, but I'd like to see more of Mizuno before the experiment and more of Fujichiyo when she was still famous.
Overall it's certainly one of the most consistent stories of its kind, particularly from Toho and Honda. But it feels like certain story beats should have been expanded on to really make the conclusion hit home effectively. It borrows from The Invisible Man but Mizuno is meant to be more than a total loony. Or so he claims. Just as an early 1960s science fiction tale and an example of ingenious effects work this is a must see of course, and it will satisfy genre fans looking for something more serious than the suit-mation films of the era. There might be a few missed opportunities but it's still a briskly paced thriller with just enough tragic overtones and thematic beats to keep things interesting.
3/5
BONUS REVIEW
SPACE AMOEBA (1970)
Onto something much less subtle and far less interesting, Ishiro Honda's alien possession story is also very typical for the genre. There are space probes carrying sinister life forms, shady corporate spies and even superstitious natives living on tropical islands. But beyond the spectacle of a series of ocean creatures growing to enormous size there isn't really anything else here of note. Some of the monster effects are a really fun, while others look decidedly cheap and cartoony. There are various plot stands vying for attention but none of them are well thought out or particularly interesting. It's a strangely run of the mill feature that doesn't ever become the sum of these parts.
A strange life form commandeers a craft sent from Earth to study Jupiter and crashes into the sea where it takes over a series of animals; a squid, a crab, then a turtle. They have fun names (from the original title these are Gezora, Ganimes, and Kamoebas) but none of them do a lot besides kill a few locals. It's never clear why an alien with this power doesn't do anything more creative but I guess that's the movie. The island itself is the target of a company looking for resort locations and Kudo (another reporter played by Akira Kubo) takes a photography assignment as he believes the probe landed nearby. Maybe this all has something to do with mankind spoiling places of natural beauty? Unfortunately there isn't much in the way of subtext here.
Later the alien uses the local fauna to smash the place up while the humans see if they can learn its fatal weakness (fire and then sonar waves for some reason). It's kind of watchable overall but it's also pretty dull. The idea that the 'amoeba' can jump into human hosts should have been introduced earlier to add suspense and there should have been more creature horror and more spy intrigue. The alternate English language title Yog,Monster From Space leans into a potentially Lovecraftian idea which is never even toyed with here. It's mildly entertaining and it has a lot of colourful creature nonsense, but it's just too simplistic to ever really become much more.
2/5
