Matango (1963)

The Worst Film Ever

Best movie ever!

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

Looking more like giant asparagus plants that walk rather than the delicious mushrooms as described by the Rita Moreno like Japanese sex kitten, the mushroom people come to life and make me glad that I did not utilize these 'shrooms for my regular egg dish. Starting off like a Japanese "Gilligan's Island", this unintentional comedy is a hoot from start to finish, and had me in stitches from the moment I recognized a song number that Gilda Radner had utilized in "It Came From Hollywood" (which this obviously didn't) as part of the "musical memories segment". The sexy nightclub songstress obviously gets her thrills by being the center of attention as she roams around the S.S. Minnow (or whatever it was called) singing "La da da la da da da da la la....", lyrics that translate easily into English or whatever language you manage to find this dubbed in and ones that Radner had described as "truly memorable". A storm shipwrecks them, just like the seven stranded castaways, and as luck would have it, they find an abandoned ship three times the size of their own. The problem is that it has definitely had its share of storms beating on it, and the captain's log only reveals that pretty much everybody has either completely disappeared or died. Upon venturing into the strange jungle, several of the passengers begin to snack on the delicious mushrooms they have previously been warned about, but even one bite I guess is too much.With the cast of about 10 men and 2 women (the other one being very shy and jealous of the singing sex kitten), there is bound to be some fighting over the ladies aboard. The jealous skipper fires shots as one of them leaves with the first mate (No little buddy this one), and the two don't even flinch. The jungle looks like something you'd see in an "Alice in Wonderland" tale, colorful but deadly, and when the giant walking toad stools appear, they seem to laugh nefariously. This whole film is a delicious hoot, nothing like any of the other dozens of Asian science fiction films I've seen, including the TV series of "Ultra Man". While I had hopped to find an English dubbed version, I was perfectly happy with the subtitled print I found to go along with another copy I managed to locate in Spanish!

Nitwits get off at the wrong stop when they walk onto an island inhabited by zombie mushrooms.Things become a free-for-all after our heroes discover they are not alone. 90 minutes later, everybody is still running to and fro, half the time looking for a way off the island, the other half staving off those annoying shrooms which have been wandering around in the jungle. A Japanese film from the famed Toho Studios, this one was later English-dubbed and released in the U.S. as 'Attack of the Mushroom People'. OK sci-fi/horror movie; fun to watch at 3 AM with all the lights off.

One of my favorite activities in my childhood days was to check out the TV section of the newspaper to see if a monster movie will be running that night, and if it was, I'd check my monster book, draw movie posters and put them up on the wall, and when the movie started, I would turn the lights of with a bag of pop cones and pretend I was watching the movie on the big screen. I think it was around 1970 when the movie aired on Japanese TV and I sat there in the darkened room but the movie was so scary that in the last 15 minutes when the mushrooms actually appear in their full-fledged form, I couldn't keep watching the film because of the creepiness and the tension that had built up in the last hour and 15 minutes was just too much for a 7 year old.The next day I asked a friend if he saw the movie till the end what happened at the end. He told me that the professor blew up the island and the mushrooms all died. I believed this kid for about 30 years until I had the chance to watch the movie again when I realized that this friend hadn't had the guts to watch the movie till the end either.Even as a kid I could feel the tension and desperation that dominates the entire film but more so as an adult and still give you that heavy feeling in your stomach. Compared to modern films it is a bit too slow and a bit too heavy. Risk feeling depressed and stressed after watching the film. Not recommended when feeling down or tired. Still a good movie overall.

I just got watching this movie on DVD, and i have to say i am more then impressed with it. i didn't think Japanese scary movies from the 60's could actually scare me, but when that thing peeked into the girls' cabin, i was freaked out for the rest of the movie. It's one of those movies that toys with your head, makes you think that you can trust all the characters when in the end there's only one that you can trust even then you wonder if he's truly trustworthy or not. not to mention the idea of people eating mushrooms and then turning into them is one hell of an original idea. by the time the movie was over i felt as though i had watched a different incarnation of Night Of The Living Dead. It leaves that feeling of oh my god there was no hope for them at all! Not to mention the Matango are never destroyed meaning that there's a possibility of more and more people going to the island and that they'll continue multiplying. but yeah definitely an outstanding movie that's got my 10/10 rating