MATANGO / ATTACK OF THE MUSHROOM PEOPLE

A tense moment in Matango

ATTACK OF THE MUSHROOM PEOPLE (aka Matango/1963). Director: Ishiro Honda. In Tohoscope. 

A businessman, Kasai (Yoshio Tsuchiya), sets sail on his yacht with his skipper Sakuta (Hiroshi Koizumi) and five friends, including the self-absorbed entertainer Mani (Kumi Mizuno) and the sweet and shy Akiko (Miki Ashiro). The others include the writer Yoshida (Hiroshi Tachikawa), the sailor Koyana (Kenji Sahara), and Professor Murai (Akira Kubo). The yacht nearly goes down during a very bad and frightening storm, but the group in the crippled ship mercifully sights land not too much later. On this deserted island they find a derelict research ship on the beach, which they make their home as they repair the yacht, which, unfortunately, drifts off to sea. Everything in the derelict is covered with fungi, and they decide it might be better not to eat the mushrooms that grow everywhere on the island. But some of them succumb ... 

Mami and Akiko

The interesting thing about Matango is how effective it is for much of its length. Well-photographed and directed, with an evocative score, it has a great deal of creepy atmosphere and suspense as we watch this assortment of characters, faced with starvation or a lifetime of isolation, start to unbend, each reacting differently to the crisis they find themselves in. It develops that the island is a ship's graveyard, adding to the ominous quality of the picture, as does the fact that experiments of an unknown nature were being conducted on the derelict ship. 

Where the picture falls down is in its monsters, people who have been turned into mostly mindless mushroom creatures that resemble something you might have seen on sillier episodes of the Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea TV show. The mushrooms also cause hallucinations and flashbacks, so things become a little strange in the final quarter of the film. The English dubbing of this Japanese film is excellent, however, and the performances of both the original actors and the dubbing cast all seem to be quite good.  One comical moment occurs when the group try the radio to see if anyone knows of their disappearance, and the very second they turn on the set their names are mentioned! Some people feel this is an uncredited version of "The Voice in the Night" by horror author William Hope Hodgson. Honda also directed the classic original Gojira (Godzilla).

Verdict: Oddly, this is an absorbing and ultimately depressing horror flick. ***.