'Godzilla' director Ishiro Honda turned away from his usual giant monster fare for this early 60s science fiction/horror movie. It is really worth a watch. The same focus he showed in combining human themes with fantastic elements in Godzilla is put to good use here. Except here, the there's a lot less spectacle for a much smaller scale story.
While this is ultimately a 60s style sci-fi flick, those genre elements don't really show up in any relevant way until the last twenty minutes. For the bulk of the runtime this is a straight up castaway movie. Since I'm a sucker for those, I was hooked immediately and stayed hooked. Although I admit I did ask myself a few times when the mushroom folks were going to make a real appearance when it was an hour in and we were still focusing on the castaways and their castaway troubles.
'Matango' begins with a group of clueless yuppies from Tokyo crammed together in a yacht that seems far too small to fit them and their minimalist crew. Due to the owner's inept commands, they sail directly into a storm and wind up shipwrecked. Once there, they find another shipwrecked ship to stay in, avoiding the usual castaway tropes of having them build shelter. While the skipper shows some initiative to keep them alive, the passengers and rest of the crew range from incompetent to intentionally harmful. So it winds up being a problem when it turns out the most prominent potential food source on the island is a fungus with mutational properties.
If you go into this movie dead set on getting your monster fix you may be disappointed. Honda puts the focus on the survivors' attempts to survive and the immediate problems they face as lack of experience, class disrespect, and finally mutant mushrooms foil them at every turn. The characters are not the most fleshed out, but they work well enough and the actors and writing pull it together.
Don't be deceived by the goofy title this was given when released in America, 'Attack of the Mushroom People.' This is just a quite good castaway movie with sci-fi and horror elements.
While this is ultimately a 60s style sci-fi flick, those genre elements don't really show up in any relevant way until the last twenty minutes. For the bulk of the runtime this is a straight up castaway movie. Since I'm a sucker for those, I was hooked immediately and stayed hooked. Although I admit I did ask myself a few times when the mushroom folks were going to make a real appearance when it was an hour in and we were still focusing on the castaways and their castaway troubles.
'Matango' begins with a group of clueless yuppies from Tokyo crammed together in a yacht that seems far too small to fit them and their minimalist crew. Due to the owner's inept commands, they sail directly into a storm and wind up shipwrecked. Once there, they find another shipwrecked ship to stay in, avoiding the usual castaway tropes of having them build shelter. While the skipper shows some initiative to keep them alive, the passengers and rest of the crew range from incompetent to intentionally harmful. So it winds up being a problem when it turns out the most prominent potential food source on the island is a fungus with mutational properties.
If you go into this movie dead set on getting your monster fix you may be disappointed. Honda puts the focus on the survivors' attempts to survive and the immediate problems they face as lack of experience, class disrespect, and finally mutant mushrooms foil them at every turn. The characters are not the most fleshed out, but they work well enough and the actors and writing pull it together.
Don't be deceived by the goofy title this was given when released in America, 'Attack of the Mushroom People.' This is just a quite good castaway movie with sci-fi and horror elements.