CPB Writes

Info Also Known As: Beauty and the Liquid People (original Japanese); The H-Bomb Monster (Brazil) Director: Honda Ishiro. Screenplay: Kimura Takeshi, from a story by Kaijo Hideo. Director of Special Effects: Tsuburaya Eiji. Composer: Sato Masaru. Runtime: 87 minutes. Release Date: June 24, 1958 What’s It About? A wanted member of a drug gang disappears, leaving his clothes behind; to all intents and purposes, he seems to have melted away on the spot. This may be exactly what happened, as the man’s lounge singer girlfriend Chikako (Shirakawa Yumi) sees another mobster who had come to intimidate her meet the same fate. Naturally, the police suspect her of lying and hiding her boyfriend, but Dr. Masada (Sahara Kenji), a university professor working with radiation, proposes a bizarre theory: the murderers are H-Men, former humans turned into gelatinous carnivores by exposure to nuclear fallout. As evidence mounts in favor of the H-Men’s existence, the creatures seem to be converging on ...

Info Also known as: Earth Defense Force (original Japanese); Barbarians Invade the Earth (Argentina and Brazil); Space Beasts (Austria). Director: Honda Ishiro. Screenplay: Kimura Takeshi, based on Shigeru Kayama’s adaptation of a story by Okami Jojiro. Director of Special Effects: Tsuburaya Eiji. Composer: Ifukube Akira. Runtime: 89 minutes (original), 85 minutes (U.S. cut) Release Date: December 28, 1957 What’s It About? Abnormal forest fires and landslides rock the Japanese countryside, soon revealed to be the work of a giant burrowing robot that shoots energy blasts from its eyes. The robot, Moguera, is eventually destroyed, but prominent astrophysicist Ryoichi (Hirata Akihiko) disappears during its rampage. He reappears in the company of the Mysterians, an alien species he had been writing a theoretical paper on. The Mysterians are refugees from their home planet Mysteroid, which they destroyed thousands of years ago in an atomic war. Now they just want a small plot of land on ...

  Info Also Known As:   Radon, Great Monster of the Skies (Japan); just plain Radon (Japan); Invasion 2034  (Belgium) Director: Honda Ishiro. Screenplay: Kimura Takeshi and Murata Takeo, from a story by Kuronuma Ken. Director of Special Effects: Tsuburaya Eiji. Composer: Ifukube Akira. Runtime: 82 minutes (Japan), 74 minutes (United States), 70 minutes (United States TV prints) Release Date: December 26, 1956 What’s It About? (Note: significant spoilers here) A remote mining community experiences strange accidents that culminate in disappearances and brutal murders. Prehistoric dragonfly larvae are discovered to be the cause, but a missing miner comes back with even worse news; the creatures that eat the insects have hatched from their eggs. Two Rodans, giant mutant Pteranodons  (flying prehistoric reptiles), have been awoken by hydrogen bombs, and now they’re soaring around the skies of Japan at supersonic speeds! Also, unlike what Belgium seemed to think, the film ...