Made in Japan

Still in the throes of a cold that plagued my weekend and prevented me from properly enjoying the rise in temperatures as the Arctic weather finally relinquished its grip on the UK, I foolishly braved the wind and rain today to try and complete my Christmas shopping.  Having been left exhausted by fighting the aforementioned cold, I also left it until very late in the day to go out.  Consequently, a half hour trip to the shops turned into two and a half hours as I grappled with slow drivers, slow shoppers and slow check out operators.  Not to to mention the fact that I still couldn't get everything I wanted.  Oh, and I'm still grappling with Amazon over that cocked up order destined for my great nieces - they've now changed their mind and want the duplicate items returned, having told me the opposite on Friday.  The trouble is, they weren't sent to my address, so it is no good sending me the details for return labels etc.  I swear that I'll never buy from them again - they have turned what should have been a simple transaction into a bloody stressful nightmare.  But despite the cold and all the other nonsense going on, I did manage to catch up with some schlock this past weekend, most notably a double bill of Toho movies as I explored some the batshit crazy world of Japanese pop culture some more.

The two movies I saw - Terror of Mechagodzilla (1975) and The Human Vapour (1960, both directed by Inshiro Honda - provide quite a contrast in the development of Toho's science fiction films.  Terror of Mechagodzilla comes late in the original cycle, indeed it is both Honda's last directorial effort and the last entry in the Showa era of the Godzilla franchise.  Compared to earlier entries, particularly those from the sixties, the whole thing looks cheaply made, with poor miniatures work and a threadbare plot that feels hugely derivative of several earlier entries, with its combination of alien invaders, mad scientists and monsters under alien/evil human control.  Perhaps the only truly novel addition is the mad scientist's cyborg daughter - saved by alien technology after being seriously injured in one of her father's experiments - who has divided loyalties.  Even Godzilla's monstrous adversaries lack originality: Mechagodzilla was a swift returnee from the previous entry, Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla (1974) - to which this was a direct sequel - while the other featured monster, Titanasaurus is simply a generic giant dinosaur with little to differentiate him from countless other such creatures.  As a further sign of a lower than usual budget, Godzilla doesn't even get his usual buddy monster to help him fight his adversaries.  Moreover, Godzilla himself, by this point, just looked too 'cuddly' - a shadow of the force of nature that had terrorised Japan in the earlier films.

The Human Vapour, by contrast, comes early in Toho's science fiction cycle.  Unlike Terror of Mechagodzilla, which Honda seemed to direct on autopilot, The Human Vapour is full of memorable sequences, with virtually every shot interestingly and ingeniously framed and all filmed in vibrant colour.  It is also hugely atmospheric and suspenseful, particularly in the early scenes, the film kicking off with a bank robbery and getaway, before the robber's car crashes off of the road in a remote area.  The subsequent sequences of the police trying to find the driver - who has apparently vanished without a trace - and stumbling across a house where a woman is rehearsing a traditional dance, wearing a devil mask, are particularly atmospheric.  The scene where the detective watches, from some bushes, the woman dancer as she completes her dance at an open window, unaware of his presence, has an almost surreal, dream-like feel to it.  The scenario is also somewhat more original than that of Terror of Mechagodzilla - as a result of an experiment gone wrong, a man has been given the ability to turn himself into a vapor, a power he naturally uses to rob banks and murder people, (by suffocating them with his vapourous form).  While the concept is original, the plot owes a lot to 'The Invisible Man', both book and film, not only in its protagonist's gradual descent into megalomania as he abuses his powers, but it even echoes the structure of both book and film, effectively opening the story in the middle, only revealing the main character's origins part way through.  In addition to its debt to H G Wells, The Human Vapour also borrows from Gaston LaRoux's 'Phantom of the Opera' for some of its plot details, most specifically the protagonist's relationship with the dancer.  But the film uses its borrowings well, using them to develop its initial concept into a fast paced and intriguing story.  Representing something like the peak of Toho's output, the film has excellent production values and special effects, (the slow collapse of the 'Gas Man's' clothes as he turns to vapour, for instance, is hugely entertaining).

Perhaps it is unfair to compare the two films, as one is a Kaiju and the other a more straightforward science fiction thriller it is, arguably, like comparing apples to pears.  But there can be no doubt that, in terms of quality, Terror of Mechagodzilla represents a low point in Toho's productions, a tired formula played out, with nothing new to offer, whereas The Human Vapour, with its police procedural/newsroom backdrop and intriguing 'monster', still comes over as fresh, vibrant and original.  Although the shorter of the two films, Terror of Mechagodzilla, with its repetitive monster fights, threadbare production values and cardboard characters, felt much longer than The Human Vapour, which just breezed by.