Matango
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| Matango | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical poster for Matango (1963) |
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| Directed by | Ishirō Honda |
| Produced by | Tomoyuki Tanaka |
| Written by | Masami Fukushima and Shinichiro Hoshi (adaptation) William Hope Hodgson (story The Voice in the Night) Takeshi Kimura (screenplay) Sakyo Komatsu (uncredited) |
| Starring | Akira Kubo Kumi Mizuno Hiroshi Koizumi Yoshio Tsuchiya Kenji Sahara |
| Music by | Sadao Bekku |
| Cinematography | Hajime Koizumi |
| Editing by | Reiko Kaneko |
| Distributed by | Toho AIP (USA) |
| Release date(s) | August 11, 1963 (Japan) 1965 (US TV) |
| Running time | 89 min. |
| Language | Japanese English |
| All Movie Guide profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
Matango (マタンゴ) (also known as Matango, Fungus of Terror and Attack of the Mushroom People) is a 1963 tokusatsu eiga. Produced by Toho Company, Ltd., it was directed by Ishiro Honda, written by Takeshi Kimura and had special effects by Eiji Tsuburaya. It starred Akira Kubo, Kumi Mizuno, Hiroshi Koizumi, Yoshio Tsuchiya, Kenji Sahara, Hiroshi Tachikawa, and Miki Yashiro. The movie has developed something of a cult audience over the years; partly due to its bleakness and overall weirdness, particularly when compared to other Japanese films of the same period. It is based on the story "The Voice in the Night" by William Hope Hodgson.
[edit] Plot
In the film a yacht is damaged in a storm, and its crew and passengers make their way to a nearby island. The island is apparently deserted, though the castaways soon discover a beached research ship on the other side of the island. An examination of the ship—the insides of which are encrusted with a thick mold—soon determines that it had an international crew which appeared to be involved in radiation and fallout research, and that the crew survived for some time after the ship was beached. However, there are no signs of the ship's crew.
Although mushrooms are unusually plentiful on the island, the ship's captain warns the passengers not to eat them because of the danger of poisoning, and to concentrate on birds and turtle eggs. However, it is soon discovered that birds are afraid of the island and that eggs are scarce. A small supply of canned food is found on the research ship, but this only buys the crew some time. Inevitably, members of the crew begin eating the mushrooms.
[edit] Miscellaneous
The film was never released in American theatres but began being shown on American television in 1965 as Attack of the Mushroom People. It was at this time that it began developing its cult following and its reputation as an unusually disturbing film.
An odd correspondence has been observed between the castaways in Matango and those in Gilligan's Island, which was filmed at about the same time. Both groups consist of seven castaways: two crew and five passengers. The five passengers in both cases included a college professor, a wealthy man, a popular female entertainer, and a contrasting, more innocent female character. As two possible explanations:
- Both vessels were intended as microcosms of Japanese and American society circa 1963.
- A theory among Gilligan's Island fans contends that each of the show's characters is intended to symbolize one of the Seven Deadly Sins. It's possible that the Matango characters were similarly intended.
Matango was issued on DVD by Media Blasters in the United States on March 15, 2005, though bootleg copies had been available for some time before that. The legitimate version of the DVD featured a generous selection of extras, including commentary by the film's male lead Akira Kubo, production sketches, an interview with special effects team member Teruyoshi Nakano, and other features. In Japan at the same date, a Matango video game was released for the Nintendo DS with an extended story to increase the length of the game. The game was very popular and may come to the US.
Matango was the name of a villain that appeared in issues #103-109 of the Swamp Thing comic book. He was a dragon who ruled the fungus kingdom.
In the SNES RPG Secret of Mana, a town inhabited by mushroom-like monsters is named Matango. This can be seen as a reference to this movie.
