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IMDbPro

Matango

  • 1963
  • Unrated
  • 1h 29m
IMDb RATING
6.4/10
3.8K
YOUR RATING
Matango (1963)
KaijuMonster HorrorSupernatural HorrorHorrorMysterySci-FiThriller

Shipwrecked survivors slowly transform into mushrooms.Shipwrecked survivors slowly transform into mushrooms.Shipwrecked survivors slowly transform into mushrooms.

  • Director
    • Ishirô Honda
  • Writers
    • Takeshi Kimura
    • Shin'ichi Hoshi
    • Masami Fukushima
  • Stars
    • Akira Kubo
    • Kumi Mizuno
    • Hiroshi Koizumi
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • IMDb RATING
    6.4/10
    3.8K
    YOUR RATING
    • Director
      • Ishirô Honda
    • Writers
      • Takeshi Kimura
      • Shin'ichi Hoshi
      • Masami Fukushima
    • Stars
      • Akira Kubo
      • Kumi Mizuno
      • Hiroshi Koizumi
    • 89User reviews
    • 48Critic reviews
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • Photos51

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    Top cast29

    Edit
    Akira Kubo
    Akira Kubo
    • Kenji Murai - Professor
    Kumi Mizuno
    Kumi Mizuno
    • Mami Sekiguchi - Singer
    Hiroshi Koizumi
    Hiroshi Koizumi
    • Naoyuki Sakuta - Skipper
    Kenji Sahara
    Kenji Sahara
    • Senzô Koyama - Sailor
    Hiroshi Tachikawa
    • Etsurô Yoshida - Writer
    Yoshio Tsuchiya
    Yoshio Tsuchiya
    • Masafumi Kasai - Owner
    Miki Yashiro
    • Akiko Sôma - Student
    Hideyo Amamoto
    Hideyo Amamoto
    • Skulking Transitional Matango
    Takuzô Kumagai
    • Doctor
    • (as Jirô Kumagai)
    Akio Kusama
    • Police Personnel
    Yutaka Oka
    • Doctor
    Keisuke Yamada
    • Doctor
    Kazuo Hinata
    • Police Personnel
    Katsumi Tezuka
    Katsumi Tezuka
    • Police Personnel
    Haruo Nakajima
    Haruo Nakajima
    • Matango
    Tokio Ôkawa
    • Matango
    Kôji Uruki
    • Matango
    Masaki Shinohara
    • Matango
    • Director
      • Ishirô Honda
    • Writers
      • Takeshi Kimura
      • Shin'ichi Hoshi
      • Masami Fukushima
    • All cast & crew
    • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

    User reviews89

    6.43.7K
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    Featured reviews

    9fertilecelluloid

    One of the most beautiful and haunting fantasy films ever made

    MATANGO, directed by Ishiro Honda, is an exceptionally beautiful fantasy film from the mighty Toho. Bastardized for its American release, badly dubbed, retitled ("Attack of the Mushroom People") and afforded very little respect, its recent re-emergence as a special edition DVD confirms its place in the realm of fantastique cinema.

    What makes this amazing film so effective is its seductively spare but intelligent screenplay, nightmarish atmosphere, serenely creepy score and stunning special effects. Tonally, it recalls underrated Japanese genre flicks such as "The Mistress in a Cave", "Horror of Malformed Men" and the delightful "Living Skeleton". Like the mushrooms the shipwrecked survivors of a pleasure craft are drawn to, it seduces us with its simple structure, pleasing taste and rich subtext.

    The film operates on a number of thematic levels, but Honda's achievement is that he never allows the dense thematics to weigh the very human drama down. Like all classic stories of survival, human greed, envy, love and hunger are the engines of the conflict. The search for a state of being free of responsibility and consequences is the dream driving the conflicted.

    It is of curious interest to me that the characters in this "uncharted island" fantasy include a Skipper, a Millionaire, a Professor, a First Mate and a Girl Next Door. Produced before "Gilligan's Island" debuted on American TV, it could surely be argued that this orchestration of characters was a template for Sherwood Schwartz, the creator of "Gilligan's Island".

    A palpable sadness permeates the last twenty minutes of MATANGO, a sense of blinding melancholy that elevates it to a dizzying level of achievement.

    MATANGO explores how we are all drawn to pleasures that we know may sign our death warrants while daring to suggest that death by pleasure is a demise more preferable to death without love.

    Stunning.
    LJ27

    A Masterpiece of creepiness and atmospheric horror

    First of all, it takes guts on the part of the filmmakers to make a commercial movie about people turning into giant mushrooms. It's all a big modern morality fable. Once the characters get to the island, we the audience are sucked into a horrific world of constant rain where the only food that grows is fungus. The characters try to resist but most eventually give in to the temptation. This film is very creepy and maintains an atmosphere of dread. Even the final evolution of the mushroom people is convincing enough to keep you wrapped up in it. It starts off slow but give it a chance. It's a beautifully made and memorable little masterpiece of horror that rightfully seems to have been born of nightmares. It's too bad that even in our supposedly enlightened, politically tolerant world that there is no American distributor for the uncut Japanese version of this film. This film is hard to locate but well worth the effort. I even saw the American International Pictures version that is badly dubbed and it is still a powerful and original film. See it at all costs if you are a fan of Japanese horror films.
    7youroldpaljim

    If you are in the mood for a bizarre, imaginative, nightmarish fantasy, see this film.

    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.
    8ceolen@humboldt1.com

    Even better in black and white

    When I first saw this film on a local late-night horror movie show, it was the late 1960s and our family hadn't yet purchased a color TV. Growing up with films and TV shows produced and viewed in B&W made me sensitive to the unique qualities of this medium, particularly the way in which it focuses the viewer's attention on the quality and play of light. It is this element of "Matango" which most impressed me—the cold ethereal light of the fog-shrouded forest covered in great lumps of pallid fungus sent a real shiver down my back. Although I had cut my teeth on such midnight horror movies, this one actually stole away my sleep for a couple nights!

    Over time I had lost track of this film. The Saturday Night horror show became a thing of the past and no one seemed interested in rebroadcasting these old films. Then very recently, on a lark, I asked our local (independent) video rental place if they had this film in their data base, and Lo! there it was, available on VHS. They ordered it, held it for me, I rented it and prepared to sit down and be scared by it again after a hiatus of over 25 years.

    Imagine my surprise to find that the film is in color! In color, it didn't have the same impact at all as it did when I watched it on our B&W TV back home. Quickly, before it got too deep into the story, I changed all the settings on my TV to a nicely balanced black and white, and WOW! There it was, the scariness, the moodiness, the mystery, and the visual subtleties which make it a very nice piece of art.

    Really, folks—you gotta see this film in black and white to really appreciate how well it was photographed, lighted, constructed and dressed. This is quite a gem of a film, but one which should have been in black and white to begin with.
    6Platypuschow

    Matango: Ahead of its time

    Toho are mostly known for their dark bleak period pieces and their goofy monster flicks, but every once in a while they delved into something else and Matango is a great example of this.

    Well ahead of its time it tells the story of ship wreck survivors trying to make it until help comes, but they don't appear to be alone on the island and tensions are beginning to build.

    So okay I admit the concept is daft, the antagonists are a bit silly but lets be honest they aren't a million miles from those in The Last of Us (2013). Despite this they actually do the job quite well and look considerably better than you'd imagine considering this was the early 60's.

    The film is a real slow burner and very little of it features the antagonists at all, the majority is the turmoil between survivors but it does this to a passable degree.

    Though not everything it could have been there is a lot to be impressed over in Matango and it's a neat little forgotten Toho movie that deserves attention.

    The Good:

    Looks excellent for its time

    Some good ideas

    The Bad:

    Cast and characters are pretty forgettable

    Very slow burn

    Things I Learnt From This Movie:

    An opportune time to tell a woman you love her for the first time is straight after hitting her

    Could easily have had a sequel about killer cheese people

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    Storyline

    Edit

    Did you know

    Edit
    • Trivia
      The film was nearly banned in Japan. The makeup some characters wore as they were turning into humanoid mushroom creatures was very similar to how many Japanese people looked after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
    • Goofs
      When Kasai shoots at Yoshida and Mami as he chases them off the boat, you can see the bullets ricochet off the ground before he even fires a shot.
    • Crazy credits
      The opening credits of the Japanese version are on animated sailboat sails.
    • Connections
      Edited into Gli ultimi giorni dell'umanità (2022)

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    Details

    Edit
    • Release date
      • August 11, 1963 (Japan)
    • Country of origin
      • Japan
    • Language
      • Japanese
    • Also known as
      • Attack of the Mushroom People
    • Filming locations
      • Hachijôjima, Japan
    • Production company
      • Toho
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Tech specs

    Edit
    • Runtime
      • 1h 29m(89 min)
    • Sound mix
      • Mono
    • Aspect ratio
      • 2.55 : 1

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