MatangoIt isn't just radioactive mushrooms that can turn people into monsters--but it helps. Matango--also known as Attack of the Mushroom People--is a campy monster movie released by Toho in 1963 and directed by Ishirō Honda, perhaps best known for directing Godzilla and several of its sequels. This film follows a group of seven people from Tokyo who are shipwrecked on a seemingly deserted island. As food and the prospect of escape become increasingly scarce, the survivors gradually crack under the pressure, while an ominous warning found on the rust and fungus-encrusted husk of an old research ship warns against eating the mushrooms growing on the island.
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Matango shares copious similarities with the tale of the S.S. Minnow from "Gilligan's Island"; there are seven castaways, stranded after a "fateful trip", and each of the passengers and crew embody similar archetypes. The film is narrated by Professor Kenji Murai (Akira Kubo), who recalls the tale after returning to Tokyo, only to be institutionalized afterwards. Murai is the sole survivor, giving Matango a layer of dramatic irony, since everyone else is obviously doomed from the start. Others on the overpriced yacht owned by a wealthy businessman named Masafumi Kasai (Yoshio Tsuchiya) include Kasai's sexy girlfriend and famous singer, Mami Sekiguchi (Kumi Mizuno), a novelist named Etsurô Yoshida (Hiroshi Tachikawa), and Murai's girlfriend and student, Akiko Sōma (Miki Yashiro). There is also a skipper named Naoyuki Sakuda (Hiroshi Koizumi) and his first mate, Senzō Koyama (Kenji Sahara), who is always wearing his sunglasses, even to bed. (As an aside, the men in Matango are consistently referred to by their last names, and the women by their first names.) With the exception of Murai and Akiko, the rest come across as arrogant, foreshadowing the eventual collapse of civilized behavior when they become stranded. Mami relishes being ogled by most of the men on the ship, strutting about the deck singing (kind of), and almost always baring her midriff. The ambivalent Yoshida reveals himself to be an opportunist like Koyama when they are the first to discover a small collection of untouched canned goods on the deserted research ship, claiming that it is "first come, first serve". Yoshida's curiosity compels him to be the first to eat the dreaded mushrooms that grow all over the island, despite the captain's log suggesting that it causes nerve damage. Yoshida's interest in the mushrooms has less to do with the hunger seizing the survivors, but exploring the "reality" that the former inhabitants experienced before succumbing to their bizarre transformation. Koyama is the scummiest of the castaways, self-serving to the extreme. He berates the other survivors for being too soft to get their hands dirty and eat the roots from grass to survive, yet sneaks around on the beach and hoards the turtle eggs he finds, reselling them in secret at an exorbitant rate to Kasai. Koyama is jealous of Mami, who sneaks around behind Kasai's back with Yoshida, starting a fight with the writer after catching them together--all while Mami looks on, aroused by seeing men pummeling each other for her affection. Sakuda appears to be the most level-headed and capable member of the group, but he secretly resents Kasai--his patron while he was growing up--who turned him into little more than an indentured servant.
Matango also shares similarities with Godzilla, especially how the eponymous "Matango" creatures are played by men in giant foam body suits. When the ill-fated yacht encounters a devastating storm at sea, it is represented with a miniature vessel being buffeted by waves--like the miniatures used to depict scenes of destruction in the kaiju monster movies. Matango--like Godzilla--is also an anti-nuclear power monster movie. The mysterious island that the survivors land on draws in vessels like the Bermuda Triangle--and the research ship the castaways find was used to perform secret experiments involving mutations caused by nuclear radiation. When Murai and the others first enter the wreckage, they find it is overrun by fungus, and discover the results of various mad science experiments--like turtles with no eyes and a crate with the words "Matango" scribbled on it, containing a giant, mutated mushroom. Matango builds to a surreal climax where the island virtually sprouts to life in the rain, as laughing mushroom men flail around while Murai screams in terror--a hallucinatory episode resulting from these "magic mushrooms" that adds to the film's camp and unintended humorousness. The castaways encounter an erstwhile passenger from this doomed ship after it shambles back on board one night like a zombie, with spores growing out of its spongy head, recalling The Thing from Another World. The survivors' transformation into something inscrutable, born from both biological and alien sources, is a staple of sci-fi body horror--a motif still explored in contemporary films like Annihilation. The myconid marauders become a cautionary metaphor for the dangers of ignoring the risks inherent in nuclear power. Despite witnessing the shuffling horror at their doorstep, some of the survivors who witnessed it are convinced that it was either some kind of nightmare or that the threat of it pales compared to other concerns--like fighting over the only rifle among them (which never seems to run out of bullets). The bountiful, cursed fungus is constantly described as a death sentence, but one by one, the group begin to indulge in it. They become convinced that it represents their only salvation, representing how easily people can justify something dangerous--like nuclear weapons--because they fail to develop other solutions.
Recommended for: Fans of a camp classic of Japanese B-movie cinema, featuring castaways, mushroom people, and plenty of unintended humor. Matango cautions against reckless exploration into dangerous forces like nuclear power through its metaphorical depiction of the effects of the contaminated mushrooms on the survivors.
Matango also shares similarities with Godzilla, especially how the eponymous "Matango" creatures are played by men in giant foam body suits. When the ill-fated yacht encounters a devastating storm at sea, it is represented with a miniature vessel being buffeted by waves--like the miniatures used to depict scenes of destruction in the kaiju monster movies. Matango--like Godzilla--is also an anti-nuclear power monster movie. The mysterious island that the survivors land on draws in vessels like the Bermuda Triangle--and the research ship the castaways find was used to perform secret experiments involving mutations caused by nuclear radiation. When Murai and the others first enter the wreckage, they find it is overrun by fungus, and discover the results of various mad science experiments--like turtles with no eyes and a crate with the words "Matango" scribbled on it, containing a giant, mutated mushroom. Matango builds to a surreal climax where the island virtually sprouts to life in the rain, as laughing mushroom men flail around while Murai screams in terror--a hallucinatory episode resulting from these "magic mushrooms" that adds to the film's camp and unintended humorousness. The castaways encounter an erstwhile passenger from this doomed ship after it shambles back on board one night like a zombie, with spores growing out of its spongy head, recalling The Thing from Another World. The survivors' transformation into something inscrutable, born from both biological and alien sources, is a staple of sci-fi body horror--a motif still explored in contemporary films like Annihilation. The myconid marauders become a cautionary metaphor for the dangers of ignoring the risks inherent in nuclear power. Despite witnessing the shuffling horror at their doorstep, some of the survivors who witnessed it are convinced that it was either some kind of nightmare or that the threat of it pales compared to other concerns--like fighting over the only rifle among them (which never seems to run out of bullets). The bountiful, cursed fungus is constantly described as a death sentence, but one by one, the group begin to indulge in it. They become convinced that it represents their only salvation, representing how easily people can justify something dangerous--like nuclear weapons--because they fail to develop other solutions.
Recommended for: Fans of a camp classic of Japanese B-movie cinema, featuring castaways, mushroom people, and plenty of unintended humor. Matango cautions against reckless exploration into dangerous forces like nuclear power through its metaphorical depiction of the effects of the contaminated mushrooms on the survivors.