Matango

for the town see Matango, Democratic Republic of the Congo

Matango
Theatrical poster for Matango (1963)
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[1] 1965 (TV)
Running time	89 min.
Country	Japan
Language	Japanese English

Matango (マタンゴ^?), also known as Matango, Fungus of Terror and Attack of the Mushroom People, is a 1963 Japanese tokusatsu movie. It was directed by Ishirō 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 fantasy and science fiction films of the same period (with the exception of Honda's 1960 film The Human Vapor).

The film was never released in mainstream American theaters, but probably did have limited exhibition in Japanese-American communities on the West Coast in its original language. The film did have limited release in the UK under it's Matango name. When it was released 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 dark and layered film.

Filming locations were Hachijōjima and Ōshima, Japan.^[2]

Synopsis

The movie begins in Tokyo where a man travels to visit a professor who is being held in the psych ward of a hospital. He tells the man that what happened to him sounded crazy but he in fact was not insane.

A Japanese Yacht on a day trip comes across a nasty storm that nearly capsizes the group, its crew and passengers are the skipper Naoyuki, his shipmate assistant Senzô, Etsurô Yoshida a writer, Kenji a university professor, Masafumi Kasai a celebrity and owner of the yacht along with two female passengers Mami a professional singer and a student Akiko. The storm leaves their ship in ruin, without a rudder or sails to steer by they are forced adrift. A few days following hearing a radio announcement that they were lost at sea, they come to a seemingly deserted island. After spending a day in search of food and water, they come across ponds that seem man made full of fresh rain water along with a seemingly endless forest of mushrooms. However Naoyuki warns them not to eat the mushrooms as they may be poisonous.

As they cross the island they come across a ship wreck on the shore, though it seems to have only been there about a year the sails are rotted and the ship's interior is covered with a mysterious fungus and mold that has spread throughout. Seeing a weakness to strong cleansing products, they work to clear the mold from the ship, uncovering the suspicion that the ship had been involved in some sort of nuclear testing of the polluted waters, forcing gross mutations on various objects including mushrooms. As the days pass, the group begins to grow restless as their supply of food stores start to run low, they instead try for turtle eggs and birds, though it is proven difficult as birds seem to actively avoid the island. With Kasai refusing to help find a way off the island and instead stealing from the food stores, Yoshida begins to get on edge, eventually eating from the mushrooms on the island instead of eating the potatoes and seaweed they are able to find to sustain themselves.

One night, as Kasai is raiding the food stores he is attacked by a grotesque looking man who promptly disappears after coming across the group leading them to believe something is very wrong with the island. Shortly after Yoshida and Kasai fight over Mami's affections, a craze comes over Yoshida as a direct result of the mushrooms' influence and he pulls a gun on the men. When he is locked in Kasai's room. Naoyuki decides that they must leave the island in order to survive, but the others don't agree so he departs on his own. Mami frees Yoshida and they attempt to take over the ship, shooting and killing Senzô in the process. Kenji and Akiko manage to wrest control from them and force them off the ship, forcing them to leave off into the island. Kasai travels out to the Yacht only to find Naoyuki missing and a note behind explaining he is responsible for the deaths of the group before jumping overboard himself. On his way back he is confronted by Mami who entices him to follow her into the forest, as perpetual rainfall had caused wild fungal growth, he finds that those who had been eating the mushrooms in fact start to turn into mushrooms themselves, and due to its addictive nature no one can escape once they take a bite. Kasai is last seen collapsing as mushroom beings swarm in on him.

Meanwhile, Akiko and Kenji are attacked in force by the mushroom people and they are separated and Akiko is kidnapped. As Kenji tracks her down, he discovers that she had been fed mushrooms and is under their influence along with Mami, Yoshida and Kasai. Kenji attempts to rescue Akiko but he is overwhelmed by the mushrooms and flees without her, making his way onto the yacht and escaping the island. The story concludes that several days had passed before Kenji was finally rescued, and as his story ends he begins to ponder if he should have stayed with Akiko on the island before turning toward the audience, his face covered in fungal growth as he exclaims that it wouldn't have made a difference if he had stayed or not, but he would have been happier there with his love. The screen fades as Kenji expresses that humans are not much different than the mushroom people as the camera pans over a night lit Tokyo.

DVD release

Media Blasters' DVD release of Matango

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.

Cultural references

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.

Episode 236 b of the Keroro Gunsou anime parodies the title of the movie and its plot (albeit very loosely) in the episode Tamama eats some mushrooms he finds in the mountains which he later finds out were possibly a type of space poison mushroom that will turn a person into a mushroom person (however the mushrooms he really ate only make a person dance).

Matango is also the home village of the mushroom people in the video game Secret of Mana (US) / Seiken Densetsu 2 (JP)

Cast

Actor	Role
Akira Kubo	Kenji Murai
Kumi Mizuno	Mami Sekiguchi
Hiroshi Koizumi	Naoyuki Sakuda
Yoshio Tsuchiya	Masabumi Kasai
Kenji Sahara	Senzō Koyama
Hiroshi Tachikawa	Etsurō Yoshida
Miki Yashiro	Akiko Sōma
Hideyo Amamoto	Skulking Transitional Matango
Jiro Kumagai	Medical Center Doctor
Akio Kusama	Medical Center Doctor
Yutaka Oka	Medical Center Doctor
Kazuo Higata	Medical Center Doctor
Katsumi Tezuka	Medical Center Doctor
Keisuke Yamada	Mushroom Monster
Tokio Okawa	Mushroom Monster
Mitsuko Hayashi	Dancer
Kakue Ishibanji	Dancer
Haruo Nakajima	Matango
Masaki Shinohara	Matango
Kōji Uruki	Matango
Toku Ihara	Matango

English-language Version

Sometime between 1963 and 1965, Toho had the film dubbed in English in Hong Kong. This international version was picked up by American International Television in 1965. Since the film wouldn't play in US theaters, AIP-TV left Toho's English dub intact and added a new Attack of the Mushroom People title card. The credits were moved to the end of the picture, but otherwise, the film is unedited. This version played for many years on late night TV. The Media Blasters DVD uses the same dubbing, but the edits are not retained.

References

1. ^ "マタンゴ (Matango)" (in Japanese). Japanese Movie Database. http://www.jmdb.ne.jp/1963/cm002470.htm. Retrieved 2007-07-16. 
2. ^ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057295/locations Filming locations for Matango. IMDB, accessed 22 June 2009.

• Wingrove, David. Science Fiction Film Source Book (Longman Group Limited, 1985)

External links

• Matango at the Internet Movie Database
• Matango at AllRovi