Matango (1963)

Looking more like giant asparagus plants that walk rather than the delicious mushrooms as described by the Rita Moreno like Japanese sex kitten, the mushroom people come to life and make me glad that I did not utilize these 'shrooms for my regular egg dish. Starting off like a Japanese "Gilligan's Island", this unintentional comedy is a hoot from start to finish, and had me in stitches from the moment I recognized a song number that Gilda Radner had utilized in "It Came From Hollywood" (which this obviously didn't) as part of the "musical memories segment". The sexy nightclub songstress obviously gets her thrills by being the center of attention as she roams around the S.S. Minnow (or whatever it was called) singing "La da da la da da da da la la....", lyrics that translate easily into English or whatever language you manage to find this dubbed in and ones that Radner had described as "truly memorable". A storm shipwrecks them, just like the seven stranded castaways, and as luck would have it, they find an abandoned ship three times the size of their own. The problem is that it has definitely had its share of storms beating on it, and the captain's log only reveals that pretty much everybody has either completely disappeared or died. Upon venturing into the strange jungle, several of the passengers begin to snack on the delicious mushrooms they have previously been warned about, but even one bite I guess is too much.With the cast of about 10 men and 2 women (the other one being very shy and jealous of the singing sex kitten), there is bound to be some fighting over the ladies aboard. The jealous skipper fires shots as one of them leaves with the first mate (No little buddy this one), and the two don't even flinch. The jungle looks like something you'd see in an "Alice in Wonderland" tale, colorful but deadly, and when the giant walking toad stools appear, they seem to laugh nefariously. This whole film is a delicious hoot, nothing like any of the other dozens of Asian science fiction films I've seen, including the TV series of "Ultra Man". While I had hopped to find an English dubbed version, I was perfectly happy with the subtitled print I found to go along with another copy I managed to locate in Spanish!

"Matango" surely must go on record as one of the strangest horror films to come out of Japan, and the strangest thing that director Ishiro Honda ever made. It's got a premise right out of somebody's craziest imagination (maybe they were ON mushrooms at the time), yet it also has poignancy and subtext. The special effects and art direction-set decoration are truly remarkable; this film has a one of a kind atmosphere, and would make a perfect "midnight movie". Honda, working with a supremely talented filmmaking team, creates lots of beautifully twisted imagery, and neatly arranging it within a 2.55:1 aspect ratio.It plays like 'Gilligan's Island' as if that series were turned into a surreal and offbeat horror film. We've got a professor (handsome leading man Akira Kubo), a skipper (Hiroshi Koizumi), a singer (Kumi Mizuno), an author (Hiroshi Tachikawa), and an industrialist (Yoshio Tsuchiya), among others, as our main cast. They're on a pleasure cruise when inclement weather wrecks their yacht, and they drift near an isolated, supposedly uninhabited island. They have to do something about their hunger, and there's definitely enough mushrooms to go around, but ingesting them could create real problems.The performances are all sturdy, with Tachikawa generating most of the comedy relief by playing a number of scenes with a sense of humor. Honda wastes little time in getting the story under way, and keeps the viewer fascinated through a haunting and affecting 90 minutes. Sadao Bekku composed the eerie music score, which is no small asset as Honda and company completely draw you into this little world that they've created.Although the full American title makes this sound like utter schlock, it's got more substance and beauty than a lot of low budget genre fare.Eight out of 10.

This was a pleasant surprise. I remembered seeing about 15 minutes of this about 30 years ago, and I was interested to see how well "Matango" held up. Very well indeed, as it turned out.My first time out, I missed the whole aspect of the 7 people stuck on the island turning on each other over food and as things got grim. One of the depressing aspects to this plot, of course, is that the group might well have survived and made it back to civilization if they had pulled together. Instead, greed, fear, lust, and weakness in the face of physical hardship tore the group apart and pretty much insured their doom.It was a if the cast of "Gilligan's Island" stumbled onto "The Masque Of the Red Death".The second aspect of the film I missed on initial viewing was how well shot and acted the film was (except for the English dub - more on that in a bit). The sets and the visual design of the island, the wrecked ships, the revelation of the ships' graveyard, the shots of people outlined against the surf, the colors of the various rooms covered in fungus - the people who did the story board and the cinematographers and director knew what they were doing. It was a pleasure to see the cool setups and reveals and camera work here.I really wish I had to chance to see this with English subtitles, though - the dub I heard ranged from mediocre to cheesy and really detracted from my enjoyment of the film. I mean, this wasn't Herzog or Kurosawa or "The Woman In The Dunes", but it had depth and subtext and weight behind the goofy "Attack Of the Mushroom People" title, and the American distributors didn't do it any favors with their treatment. These days, a film like this would be treated with much more care and respect, since the American hunger for "real" Japanese weirdness has created a market for uncut Japanese fantasy and horror.Very impressive. I might go out of my way to get a chance to see "Matango" as the director meant it to be experienced, uncut with subtitles.

A yacht containing seven people gets damaged in a severe storm and winds up on a deserted island. The shipwreck survivors run afoul of both poisonous mushrooms that cause them to mutate and grotesque humanoid fungi monsters that inhabit the place. While the premise sounds laughable and ridiculous, this film works remarkably well thanks to Ishiro Honda's capable direction, an initially light and breezy tone which becomes more progressively dark, despairing and nightmarish as the absorbingly strange story unfolds, Hajime Koizuma's bright, fluid, polished cinematography, the stunningly hideous make-up effects, the believably drawn characters, Sadao Bekku's brooding gloom-doom score, the deliciously spooky and mysterious atmosphere, convincing performances by the sturdy cast, Takeshi Kimura's intriguing and wildly imaginative script, and a potent and provocative central theme on how such basic human weaknesses as lust, greed and selfishness sow the seeds of man's ruination. Offbeat, original and well worth checking out.