Matango

If you look around on the Internet you can see that almost all the entries for this movie, are above average and there are probably a million different reasons for that. I think they all have in common that somehow this movie really gets people on a sub-conscious level and represents something.

I remember seeing this movie at various times growing up on the late night horror shows, in Houston, Texas, called "Weird" and "Late Wierd", and then in California on "Creature Features".

There is something about watching this movie about a groups of somewhat related friends who are out on a cruise in their rich friends sailboat, well, actually the exact details escape me, and I am not sure that the English tranlation accurately tells what was supposed to be going on in the original story.

The boat is caught in a storm, and they drift through heavy fog to a deserted island where everything is misty, moist, and fungus ridden. To survive they look for food, and find that people have been to the island before, in fact a large group of people on a freighter ship that has wasted away.

There are some clues on the ship as to what happened, and some strange goings on that stress these "friends" to the breaking point, and their cohesion starts to unravel.

There is just something special about this eerie and fun movie that if I ever see it in DVD format I will pick it up.

Purely because not all their contemporary monster movies could feature big mutated lizards (Godzilla), flying turtles (Gamera) or humongous moths (Mothra), the Japanese also made a monster movie with giant … mushrooms! Well, I say "the Japanese" but basically it's once again just the one and only legendary director Ishirô Honda who was responsible for yet another imaginative and extremely entertaining cult classic. Honda was an amazingly talented director and he single-handedly directed Japan's finest genre milestones. So… mushrooms! Yes I know this sounds incredibly idiotic and the international title "Attack of the Mushroom People" also strengthens the suspicion that we're dealing with a silly and light-headed B-movie, but this honestly is a very competent and admirably atmospheric tale of terror! Seven prominent citizens, including a university professor, a writer and a famous pop singer, turn their back on the stress of Tokyo for a holiday on a luxurious sailing yacht. There's a lot of flirting, laughing and "La La La La" singing on board, but then a massive thunderstorm turns their yacht into a heavily damaged piece of driftwood and the group washes ashore a mysterious fog-enshrouded island. With a food supply of barely one week, the group rapidly falls apart due to intrigues and selfishness, and what's the deal with those ominous mushrooms that grow all around the island? They also stumble upon a large and stranded research vessel that is overgrown with fungus and the same damn mushrooms! The survivors instinctively know they shouldn't eat them, but what else are they supposed to do when there's no more food? I consider myself very lucky and privileged because I was able to see the original Japanese-language version of "Matango" on a big cinema screen, during a little festival in my country with a focus on botanical- themed horror movies. Granted, the picture quality was quite creaky and the film was interrupted every 10 minutes due to technical reasons, but the charm and nostalgia value of an early '60s film on the big screen is irreplaceable! The concept of the film is one of the most original in horror cinema history, and director Honda maintains an unsettling atmosphere throughout. He achieves this thanks to subtle camera work, eerie sound effects & music, embittered character drawings and frightening monster designs and set pieces. Yes, the mushroom-monsters definitely DO look creepy and the large vessel is truly nightmarish!

First of all, if possible avoid the dubbed version of this one (ATTACK OF THE MUSHROOM PEOPLE). The dubbing is no worse than usual for a Japanese sci-fi/horror movie, but this one really needs the subtitles so the viewer won't be distracted by the cartoonish dubbed voices. There is an excellent widescreen/subtitled edition of this available from Video Daikaiju ( if they're still in business; they somehow got away with putting out excellent-quality subtitled versions of the films that Toho released for the Japanese video market), and it is also pretty easy to find at various comics/sci-fi/media conventions.

MATANGO scores very high on the slow-burn creepiness meter, and the story of a bunch of hapless castaways slowly descending in to distrust and madness is utterly compelling. What they find on the island is truly disturbing, and I can't put into words how thankful I am for not having seen this during my formative years. This is one of those movies that can royally mess up your mind if you're a little kid. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

The cast of this film all consider it one of their proudest achievements. This film is about false friendships, utter hatred, and abandonment of values. Constructed from William Hope Hodgson's rather simple horror story, in which a man hailing a schooner for food tells how the virtuous (abstinent) unmarried couple (himself and his fiancee) were in a shipwreck and tried to make their home on an island encrusted with fungus, first in a ship and then in two tents on an unidentified sandy substance, only to eat the fungus and become it, takes on a whole new dimension by placing the man, here a psychology professor, and his student fiancee with a rich couple together only for the money, a serious writer, and the two-man crew. Though they never abandon the fungus-encrusted ship for tents, they soon become embittered over food, and the men all want the virgin, not the rich showgirl. Hodgson was on the way to becoming a minister before he was killed in WWI, and his story is explicitly Christian. This film takes out explicit religion (though the Japanese version has a brief scene related to Akiko's Shinto beliefs, which was deleted because most Americans wouldn't understand it), but retains the morals. The psychologist is unable to cope with the degrading values, particularly after the mate is shot over money (useless) and turtle eggs (food). The skipper takes the ship (which isn't his, Kasai wearing a captain's uniform to prove it (and how stuck up he is)) after repairing it, without anyone else, but he dies at sea, Murai soon finding the abandoned ship. The voyage reveals the true character of the relationships with one another, and their attempts to break down the virtuous couple, which ends with the psychologist in the asylum, where he tells his story. He gets succumbed, too. "My friends are alive; I'm the one who died," he tells them. The crew dead, his friends are left on the island, slowly merging with the fungus...

I have noticed that many of the commentators in this forum have stated that this film gave them nightmares. No wonder. This film based on William Hope Hodgson's novel "The Voice in the Night", has a plot that is so bizarre that it could only have been inspired by someone's nightmares. The premise of intelligent fungus luring people to eat them and then the people slowly turn to "mushroom people" is so nightmarishly creepy that I can't imagine that Hodgson (or anyone else) could of dreamed this idea up when he was wide awake.

MATANGO (aka ATTACK OF THE MUSHROOM PEOPLE) is a surprisingly low key atmospheric Japanese horror fantasy. The film is a bit slowly paced at times and too much time is spent on the castaways bickering amongst themselves. There are some elements that I suspect were better developed in the novel. One scene has the two female castaways hearing the voices of dead relatives trying to lure them into the rainforest. This never occurs again and leads nowhere. I'm sure the stuff about nuclear experiments was not in Hodgson's novel. However, the art direction is excellent, the music creepy and the final sequence memorable. Overall, the boys at Toho did a good job.

I don't care what the Medvids think of this film, or the pseudo hip MST3K crowd thinks either, your old pal jim says, see this one.