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 Shinichi Hoshi (adaptation) William Hope Hodgson (story The Voice in the Night) Takeshi Kimura (screenplay) Sakyo Komatsu (uncredited) |
| Starring | Akira Kubo Kumi Mizuno Hiroshi Koizumi |
| Music by | Sadao Bekku |
| Cinematography | Hajime Koizumi |
| Editing by | Reiko Kaneko |
| Distributed by | Toho AIP |
| Release date(s) |  August 11, 1963 1965 (TV) |
| Running time | 89 min. |
| Country | Japan |
| Language | Japanese English |
| Allmovie 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 (Japanese "special effects film"). It was directed by Ishiro Honda, written by Takeshi Kimura based on the story "The Voice in the Night" by William Hope Hodgson (an adaptation credit is given to Masami Fukushima and Shinichi Hoshi, but Kimura threw out most of their contributions), and had special effects by Eiji Tsuburaya.
The movie has developed something of a cult audience over the years; partly due to its bleakness and unusual themes, particularly when compared to other Japanese films of the same period.
The film was never released in mainstream American theatres, but probably did have limited exhibition in Japanese-American communities on the West Coast in its original language. When it was dubbed by American International Pictures in 1965, it was directly syndicated on 16mm color film to television as a TV-movie bearing the title Attack of the Mushroom People (the title is, in fact, placed directly over the original title painted on stone, part of which is cropped out of the image). With the advent of home video, used TV prints of this dubbed version found their way to well-established public domain dealers such as Something Weird Video, making it available for home viewing in Beta or VHS formats. It was at this time that it began developing its cult following and its reputation as an unusually disturbing film.
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[edit] Synopsis
When a yacht is damaged in a storm, 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 reveals that it had an international crew which appear to be involved in radiation and fallout research. Despite this it seems that the crew survived for some time after the ship was beached, however there is no indication of their current whereabouts.
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 turtle 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. In the meantime, they also discover that the crew of the abandoned ship hadn't vanished as completely as they'd originally thought.
[edit] DVD release
Matango was issued on DVD by Media Blasters in the United States on March 15, 2005. 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.
[edit] Cultural references
Matango was the name of a villain who appeared in issues #103-109 of the Swamp Thing comic book. He is a dragon who rules the fungus kingdom.
Three variants of full-scale Matangos appeared in some of the Hyperspace locations in the video game Godzilla: Monster of Monsters, which produced smaller, floating mushroom creatures for Godzilla and Mothra to destroy. If enough damage is inflicted to the large Matangos, they stop producing these creatures.
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.
Matangos are a kind of mushroom-like monster in the Game Boy Advance action RPG Shining Soul II by Sega.
[edit] Cast
| Actor | Role |
|---|---|
| Akira Kubo | Kenji Murai |
| Kumi Mizuno | Mami Sekiguchi |
| Hiroshi Koizumi | Naoyuki Sakeda |
| Yoshio Tsuchiya | Fumio Kasai |
| Kenji Sahara | Senzo Koyama |
| Hiroshi Tachikawa | Etsuro Yoshida |
| Miki Yashiro | Akiko Soma |
| Eisei Amamoto | Skulking Transitional Matango |
| Jiro Kumagai | Medical Center Doctor |
| Akio Kusama | Medical Center Doctor |
| Yutaka Oka | Medical Center Doctor |
| Kazuo Higata | Medical Center Doctor |
| Keisuke Yamada | Mushroom Monster |
| Tokio Okawa | Mushroom Monster |
| Mitsuko Hayashi | Dancer |
| Kakue Ishibanji | Dancer |
| Haruo Nakajima | Matango |
| Katsumi Tezuka | Matango |
| Masaki Shinohara | Matango |
| Koji Urugi | Matango |
| Toku Ihara | Matango |
[edit] References
- Wingrove, David. Science Fiction Film Source Book (Longman Group Limited, 1985)
[edit] External links
- Matango at the Internet Movie Database
- マタンゴ (Matango) (Japanese). Japanese Movie Database. Retrieved on 2007-07-16.
- Download entire film (with English subtitles) from the Internet Archive.
