Shrooms
Matango, from 1963, was directed by Ishiro Honda, who made many Godzilla films and others in the monster genre. The American title, Attack of the Mushroom People, gets the climactic events right, but trivializes the overall artistry of a widescreen color film made to frighten and unsettle the viewer. Dealing with seven people of varying backgrounds on a sailboat caught fatefully in a bad storm, the film shows a group trying to survive on a seemingly deserted island.
They find a wrecked ship washed onto the shore, an oceanographic vessel with missing crew. The vanished crew were apparently engaged in radiation experiments on indigent organisms. Opening a big container marked MATANGO, the sailboat group finds a huge mutated mushroom. Inland, they discover fungi in abundance, but the skipper warns them not to eat it. They clean up part of the wrecked ship to live there until rescue. They find turtle eggs, roots, and berries to eat. It rains a lot on the island so they have plenty of drinking water, collected in buckets.
Close proximity to each other wears on their nerves. The presence of two attractive young women makes it difficult for at least one of the men. One of the group, a writer, succumbs and eats some of the weird mushrooms. This fate comes to several of them. The island's dominant species is the fungus--they become one with the fungus.
Symbolism rises up in the form of the mushrooms growing after heavy rainfall. The Hiroshima-Nagasaki nuclear cataclysms, with their mushroom clouds and subsequent radiation-caused mutations is visibly represented on the bodies and faces of those affected by the island's mushrooms.
The mushrooms seem to have hallucinogenic properties. Everything sparkles and glows for the eater after one ingests the fungus. One bite and they must consume more.
The film has an excellent buildup of atmosphere, the foggy island a character, the battered ship where the castaways take refuge a murky, gloomy place. The constant battering of the sea increases their loneliness and growing sense of helplessness. They notice that birds in their approach to the island steer clear, knowing somehow that the place is unwholesome.
A growing madness comes upon these people; ultimately only one of them makes it, but he finds his survival pointless because the woman he had come to love is back on the island, transformed into a mushroom. It's a crazy plot, but it's a good movie.
In spite of searching, I can't figure out what the word "Matango" means. It's the name given to the mutated mushroom, but apparently the screenwriters or the director made it up. If any Japanese reader should happen to read this, please explain this word if you can in the comments section. Thank you.
Vic Neptune
Matango, from 1963, was directed by Ishiro Honda, who made many Godzilla films and others in the monster genre. The American title, Attack of the Mushroom People, gets the climactic events right, but trivializes the overall artistry of a widescreen color film made to frighten and unsettle the viewer. Dealing with seven people of varying backgrounds on a sailboat caught fatefully in a bad storm, the film shows a group trying to survive on a seemingly deserted island.
They find a wrecked ship washed onto the shore, an oceanographic vessel with missing crew. The vanished crew were apparently engaged in radiation experiments on indigent organisms. Opening a big container marked MATANGO, the sailboat group finds a huge mutated mushroom. Inland, they discover fungi in abundance, but the skipper warns them not to eat it. They clean up part of the wrecked ship to live there until rescue. They find turtle eggs, roots, and berries to eat. It rains a lot on the island so they have plenty of drinking water, collected in buckets.
Close proximity to each other wears on their nerves. The presence of two attractive young women makes it difficult for at least one of the men. One of the group, a writer, succumbs and eats some of the weird mushrooms. This fate comes to several of them. The island's dominant species is the fungus--they become one with the fungus.
Symbolism rises up in the form of the mushrooms growing after heavy rainfall. The Hiroshima-Nagasaki nuclear cataclysms, with their mushroom clouds and subsequent radiation-caused mutations is visibly represented on the bodies and faces of those affected by the island's mushrooms.
The mushrooms seem to have hallucinogenic properties. Everything sparkles and glows for the eater after one ingests the fungus. One bite and they must consume more.
The film has an excellent buildup of atmosphere, the foggy island a character, the battered ship where the castaways take refuge a murky, gloomy place. The constant battering of the sea increases their loneliness and growing sense of helplessness. They notice that birds in their approach to the island steer clear, knowing somehow that the place is unwholesome.
A growing madness comes upon these people; ultimately only one of them makes it, but he finds his survival pointless because the woman he had come to love is back on the island, transformed into a mushroom. It's a crazy plot, but it's a good movie.
In spite of searching, I can't figure out what the word "Matango" means. It's the name given to the mutated mushroom, but apparently the screenwriters or the director made it up. If any Japanese reader should happen to read this, please explain this word if you can in the comments section. Thank you.
Vic Neptune
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