Matango
Encyclopedia
, also known as Matango, Fungus of Terror and Attack of the Mushroom People, is a 1963
Japan
ese 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 location
s were Hachijōjima
and Ōshima
, Japan.
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.
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.
, 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)
1963 in film
The year 1963 in film involved some significant events.-Events:* June 12 - Cleopatra starring Elizabeth Taylor, Rex Harrison and Richard Burton premieres at the Rivoli Theatre in New York City....
Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
ese tokusatsu
Tokusatsu
is a Japanese term that applies to any live-action film or television drama that usually features superheroes and makes considerable use of special effects ....
movie. It was directed by Ishirō Honda
Ishiro Honda
Ishirō Honda , sometimes miscredited in foreign releases as "Inoshiro Honda", was a Japanese film director...
, written by Takeshi Kimura
Takeshi Kimura
Takeshi Kimura was a Japanese screenwriter who wrote many films for Toho studios. Kimura scripted several films for director Ishirō Honda, including Rodan, The Mysterians, Matango, Frankenstein Conquers the World, War of the Gargantuas, King Kong Escapes, Destroy All Monsters, and Godzilla vs....
based on the story "The Voice in the Night
The Voice in the Night
"The Voice in the Night" is a short story by William Hope Hodgson, first published in the November 1907 edition of Blue Book Magazine.The story has been adapted a number of times, most prominently in the 1963 Japanese film Matango....
" by William Hope Hodgson
William Hope Hodgson
William Hope Hodgson was an English author. He produced a large body of work, consisting of essays, short fiction, and novels, spanning several overlapping genres including horror, fantastic fiction and science fiction. Early in his writing career he dedicated effort to poetry, although few of his...
(an adaptation
Film adaptation
Film adaptation is the transfer of a written work to a feature film. It is a type of derivative work.A common form of film adaptation is the use of a novel as the basis of a feature film, but film adaptation includes the use of non-fiction , autobiography, comic book, scripture, plays, and even...
credit is given to Masami Fukushima
Masami Fukushima
was a Japanese science fiction editor, author, critic, and translator. As the first chief editor of SF Magazine, he endeavoured to propagate science fiction in Japan and became known as the "Demon of SF". His real name is . He also used the pen name: ....
and Shinichi Hoshi
Shinichi Hoshi
Shinichi Hoshi was a Japanese novelist and science fiction writer. He is best known for his "short-short" science fiction stories, often no more than three or four pages in length, of which he wrote over 1000...
, but Kimura threw out most of their contributions), and had special effects by Eiji Tsuburaya
Eiji Tsuburaya
was the Japanese special effects director responsible for many Japanese science-fiction movies, including the Godzilla series...
.
The movie has developed something of a cult
Cult film
A cult film, also commonly referred to as a cult classic, is a film that has acquired a highly devoted but specific group of fans. Often, cult movies have failed to achieve fame outside the small fanbases; however, there have been exceptions that have managed to gain fame among mainstream audiences...
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 Human Vapor
The Human Vapor, known in Japan as , is a tokusatsu film produced and released by Toho Studios in 1960. The film was made by Toho's legendary Godzilla directing/special effects/producing team of Ishirō Honda, Eiji Tsuburaya, and Tomoyuki Tanaka...
).
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
American International Pictures
American International Pictures was a film production company formed in April 1956 from American Releasing Corporation by James H. Nicholson, former Sales Manager of Realart Pictures, and Samuel Z. Arkoff, an entertainment lawyer...
in 1965, it was directly syndicated on 16mm color film to television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
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
Pan and scan
Pan and scan is a method of adjusting widescreen film images so that they can be shown within the proportions of a standard definition 4:3 aspect ratio television screen, often cropping off the sides of the original widescreen image to focus on the composition's most important aspects...
out of the image). With the advent of home video
Home video
Home video is a blanket term used for pre-recorded media that is either sold or rented/hired for home cinema entertainment. The term originates from the VHS/Betamax era but has carried over into current optical disc formats like DVD and Blu-ray Disc and, to a lesser extent, into methods of digital...
, used TV prints of this dubbed version found their way to well-established public domain
Public domain
Works are in the public domain if the intellectual property rights have expired, if the intellectual property rights are forfeited, or if they are not covered by intellectual property rights at all...
dealers such as Something Weird Video
Something Weird Video
Something Weird Video is an American publisher of video tapes and DVDs, based in Seattle, Washington. They specialize in exploitation film, particularly the works of Harry Novak, Doris Wishman, David F. Friedman, and Herschell Gordon Lewis. SWV videos are available on demand to Comcast subscribers...
, 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 location
Filming location
A filming location is a place where some or all of a film or television series is produced, in addition to or instead of using sets constructed on a movie studio backlot or soundstage...
s were Hachijōjima
Hachijojima
is a volcanic Japanese island in the Philippine Sea, administered by Tōkyō and located approximately south of the Special Wards of Tōkyō. It is the southernmost and most isolated of the Izu Seven Islands group of the seven northern islands of the Izu archipelago...
and Ōshima
Oshima
-Places: :** Nii Ōshima Island, part of Niihama in Ehime Prefecture** Ōshima, Ehime, an island connected by the Hakata-Ōshima Bridge and the Kurushima-Kaikyo Bridge...
, Japan.
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
Media Blasters is an entertainment corporation founded by John Sirabella and Sam Liebowitz, based in New York City. They are in the business of licensing, translating, and releasing to the North American market manga compilations and anime and live-action movies and television series to home-video...
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
Teruyoshi Nakano
, is a Japanese special effects director, most notable for his contributions to the Godzilla film series and other tokusatsu movies. Nakano was a special guest at G-Fest XI, where he was the recipient of the Mangled Skyscraper Award....
, 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 MonstersGodzilla: Monster of Monsters
-Gameplay:The game features two playable characters, Godzilla and Mothra. The player uses both monsters in turn by selecting the desired character on a virtual gameboard, representative of the planet it is on, and moving it like a chess piece. Each space is a hexagon that represents playable,...
, which produced smaller, floating mushroom creatures for Godzilla
Godzilla
is a daikaijū, a Japanese movie monster, first appearing in Ishirō Honda's 1954 film Godzilla. Since then, Godzilla has gone on to become a worldwide pop culture icon starring in 28 films produced by Toho Co., Ltd. The monster has appeared in numerous other media incarnations including video games,...
and Mothra
Mothra
is a kaiju, a type of fictional monster who first appeared in the serialized novel The Luminous Fairies and Mothra by Takehiko Fukunaga, Shinichiro Nakamura, and Yoshie Hotta...
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 Akira Kubo Akira Kubo is a Japanese actor. He has appeared in 75 films since 1952. He starred in the film Arashi, which was entered into the 7th Berlin International Film Festival.-Selected filmography:* Arashi... |
Kenji Murai |
| Kumi Mizuno Kumi Mizuno is a Japanese actress most famous for appearing in several Toho Kaiju films of the 1960s and early 1970s.... |
Mami Sekiguchi |
| Hiroshi Koizumi Hiroshi Koizumi is a Japanese actor. He was born in Japan. In a 1999 interview with Steve Ryfle, Koizumi laments that while he stated he has easy parts to play, he felt he could have done more in his performances... |
Naoyuki Sakuda |
| Yoshio Tsuchiya Yoshio Tsuchiya is a Japanese actor who has appeared in such films as Toshio Matsumoto's surreal masterpiece "Bara No Soretsu" and Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai and Red Beard, and Kihachi Okamoto's Kill!. He has a long-standing interest in UFOs and had written several books on the subject... |
Masabumi Kasai |
| Kenji Sahara Kenji Sahara Kenji Sahara is a Japanese actor. He was born in Kawasaki City, Kanagawa. His real name is Masayoshi Kato... |
Senzō Koyama |
| Hiroshi Tachikawa | Etsurō Yoshida |
| Miki Yashiro | Akiko Sōma |
| Hideyo Amamoto Hideyo Amamoto was a prolific Japanese actor from the Wakamatsu ward of Kitakyūshū best known for portraying Dr. Shinigami in the original Kamen Rider series as well as many other characters in tokusatsu films and the Godzilla series. Amamoto also used the pseudonym of Eisei Amamoto for most of his career, Eisei... |
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 Katsumi Tezuka is a Japanese actor. He is best known for playing monsters in several Toho science fiction and horror films directed by Ishirō Honda.-Films:* 1954 - Godzilla * 1955 - Godzilla Raids Again * 1956 - Rodan... |
Medical Center Doctor |
| Keisuke Yamada | Mushroom Monster |
| Tokio Okawa | Mushroom Monster |
| Mitsuko Hayashi | Dancer |
| Kakue Ishibanji | Dancer |
| Haruo Nakajima Haruo Nakajima is a famous Japanese actor. He is best known for playing Godzilla and is considered by many to be the best suit actor in the long history of the franchise... |
Matango |
| Masaki Shinohara | Matango |
| Kōji Uruki | Matango |
| Toku Ihara | Matango |