Second Bill


At the time of it's initial US release, I believe this was the second feature on the bill. Does anyone remember what the top of the bill was? I seem to think it was with "The Fly". Both were released in 1958. However, according to the IMDb TRIVIA for "The Fly", "Spacemaster X-7" was the B-movie.

Just curious.

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The information I have is that the lower half of the double bill with THE H-MAN was a cheap, sexist 1959 British sci-fi/horror film called WOMANEATER (one word), about a mad scientist who brings back a carniverous tree from South America that feeds exclusively on women (though they apparently don't have to be virgins). The scientist thinks that by throwing enough girls into the tree's clutches (moving limbs) and letting it eat them he can ultimately extract a serum from the tree that will bring the dead back to life.

O-kaaaaaaay.......

Although THE H-MAN was released in Japan in 1958 (as BIJO TO EKITAININGEN), it was not released in the US till 1959, so neither THE FLY nor SPACEMASTER X-7, both of which were released here in '58, could have been on a bill with it, at least not as a first run.

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Thanks for the very well researched reply!

I've never heard of "Womaneater" although that doesn't mean that it was not the main featured advertised, it may only mean that "The H-Man" was the one that caught my attention.

I don't remember when my Father's house first got a TV and knowing that might help me work on a date when I saw the promotions on the air.

Like I said, it is only out of curiousity that I wondered aloud.

Thank, again. Always a pleasure, hobnob.

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You're most welcome, escalera. In fact, after posting my previous reply I went to the IMDb site for WOMANEATER and found that the couple of comments posted there all agreed it was an incredibly dull, dumb film, which jibes with a review I read. But frankly I'd barely ever heard of it, let alone seen it, and if I've never seen a movie like this, it's gotta be pretty obscure!

I mean, how good could a film be when it occupied the bottom half of a double bill with THE H-MAN?!

Talk to you later, my friend.

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It would be great to see information like this in a book. Contributors like you add a lot to the history of certain movies that may be lost someday because no one would know where to look.

I suppose I'll have to print it all and put it together for myself.

"Like tears in the rain..."

Stay well, hobnob. I hope to run into you again soon so I can snag yet another interesting tid-bit from you.

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You are extremely kind, escalera. I love exchanging info on these boards with people like you who are informed, interesting and cordial! You take care too and we'll run into each other again around the sites, as we have before.

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You who are hobnob53,I first saw THE H MAN in Camden,New Jersey sometime in the early 1960s.A relative took me to the now-long-gone Parkside Theatre in Camden.According to the building's marquee,it was presenting the two HAMMER movies,CURSE OF THE MUMMY'S TOMB and THE GORGON.Sat through the former and was horrified.When the intermission came I wasn't sure that I was up for the next feature to come.For reasons I never understood,THE GORGON was not presented regardless of the stateside poster in front of the building and in its place was some Japanese sci-fi/horror movie called THE H MAN. This movie terrified me even more than that "MUMMY" movie.The body dissolvement scenes left me numbed with fear and horror throughout.It tramatized me to the point where I was afraid of having any contact with jelly preserves.Those creatures reminded me of JELLO gelatin and jelly/jam treats.Never saw the movie again for two decades until it was broadcast late night during one Saturday evening.By then I overcame that dread fear of two decades prior.There's an ironic twist to this though.During the late 1990s, I actually wrote a article composition on THE H MAN,published in the now-defuncted magazine,KAIJU FAN.In this feature I made comparisons with both the English-dubbed COLUMBIA studios version and the original Japanese TOHO version.Life can really work in strange ways at times,doesn't it. Oh by the way,I'm an associate for Video Daikaiju.Glad you enjoyed the video.

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Hello Gucci1955-1. As I think I said in my review of the original Japanese version of Bijo to ekitainigen, a waitress at my favorite (Japanese) restaurant saw my DVD of the film and told me that she and her sister had seen it in Japan when it came out in 1958 and thought it was the scariest movie they'd ever seen. Almost fifty years later she was still shuddering!

The movie was much better in its original than the dubbed version distributed in the US by Columbia.

Say hello to the good folks at Video Daikaiju. I got put onto them by a poster on these boards (whose entries were all mysteriously deleted last year), and I've gotten many great films from them. They've very courteous in their service and in answering questions too. I've been highly recommending them to many kaiju eiga fans around IMDb.

Please ask them to sometime go to the effort of subtitling the great Toho war films they've recently acquired. It would be worth the effort!

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I saw this film in 1959 when I was 10 years old at a drive in in Albany, NY. It played with Womaneater. H Man terrified me more than any other film that I saw as a child. I was afraid of H Men coming into my bedroom at night after that. I think it was scarier than The Blob. The Blob you could see coming from a long way off because it was so big.
I have a theory about horror films and other images that scare us as a child. I think they signify some deep deficit in our soul. For me the H Man was about my having to learn boundaries and stand up for myself--to become firmer and not confuse my own feelings with others--for what it's worth.

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The first time I saw The H Man was on a local tv station on a b&w tv w/ commercial interruptions, so it did not make as big an impression as other posters here. Seeing the recent TCM broadcast in color and commercial-free, I was quite impressed, and it probably would have scared the hell out of me then. While I too would like to see the original Japanese version, what impressed me the most about this print was the dubbing was better acted than most other Japanese imports (I noticed on the imdb entry voice actor Paul Frees provided multiple voices, so this could well be a contributing factor).

But throughout it all, my motto was "Dignity! Always dignity!".

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I had seen this title very much the same way as your describe, 3rdrowleft, and, unfortunately for me, have not seen it since. That was sometime in the mid-60's. Curiously enough, it was not the actual viewing of the broadcast film that impressed me as much as the TV spots during it's initial theatrical release that got to me. Those did the trick!

And, again, like you, should very much like to see it now in any form even if I had to put up with the annoying commercials and pop-up ads on TV!

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