MATANGO aka ATTACK OF THE MUSHROOM PEOPLE (1963)

In an opening perhaps inspired by Invasion of the Body Snatchers, we are in a psychiatric ward in Tokyo where a college professor named Kenji is telling the story of how he wound up there. Kasai, a rich businessman, invites some friends to go on a day trip on his yacht (cue the Gilligan’s Island theme song of “a three hour cruise). In addition to Kenji, there’s a famous pop singer, a psychologist, an employee of Kenji’s, a shy young female student, and a sailor. A storm hits that evening and the next morning, the disabled craft eventually comes across a seemingly uninhabited island. They find fresh water and lots of mushrooms, and also a derelict oceanography ship covered in mold with no survivors (and with all the mirrors taken down). As tensions emerge between the group, mushrooms become a main source of food, but some suspect that the diet is causing humans to mutate into, yes, mushroom people. Though only 90 minutes, this has some doldrums in the middle with a series of stagy dialogue scenes highlighting, to some degree, the social differences between the characters. There is also a lot of what MST3K would call “rock climbing,” as we watch people explore the island and the derelict ship with little dramatic payoff. But the ship sets are fairly convincing, and the jungle sets are colorful. The mushroom mutants are a variation on slow-moving zombies with gross skin. I didn’t find them all that convincing, but their appearances come fairly late in the film. Production values are a notch above that of equivalent American B-movies of the era. The blogger at Allusions of Grandeur thought of it as sort of Lovecraft lite and I agree. Directed by Ishiro Honda, best known for directing the original GODZILLA. The title refers to the name that the original scientists on the derelict ship gave to the original fungus which became the mushroom people (I think). Not a waste of time, but not essential viewing. Pictured is Akira Kubo as the psychologist. [DVD]