Matango

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.

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

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.

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.

First a correction : the making year and distribution release year in Japan of MATANGO is 1962 and not 1963. It is of course a very good movie from Inoshiro Honda, the father of "Kaiju Eiga" and every cinephile knows what that means. Besides, it is a "Kaiju eiga" (= "monster movie" as trasnlated in English) quite closer to horror than to science-fiction, even it is also a sci-fi, including mentions of the atom research in the ghost boat in which the survivors are living. It is closer to BINJO TO EKITAI NINGEN [L'HOMME H] (Jap. 1958) than to GOJIRA (Jap. 1954), both directed by Honda, if you want to have a comparative idea. Anyway, it is a very original movie in Honda carrier. Even it can remind, as a cultivate reader mentionned it, a W.H.Hodgson's novel. But were the Japanese scriptwriters aware of that source ? Interesting question. I am glad to announce you that in France, a smart distributor has bought the rights from Toho and distributed that movie in a beautiful Cinemascope complying with 16/9 TV screening : it has been shown on Canal + private famous French TV but I do not think it is available on DVD or video.

It was around one or two years ago and we have been able to discover it in original japanese langage with French subtitles : beautiful master and beautiful movie. Honda is my favorite horror and sci-fi movie director with regard to history of Japanese movie. I have recently written an "Elementary filmography of Kaiju Eiga" in which Inoshiro Honda has of course the main place, as far as Toho is concerned. MATANGO is a masterpiece.