And now, the latest review:
Matango - Attack of the Mushroom People (http://www.badmovies.org/movies/matango/)
I must say that the film is a little disappointing to me. It works fairly well, but it is mostly a study of social breakdown in the face of hardship. The mushroom people is mostly used to avoid the more difficult wrapping up of the plot around the people falling to pieces.
While I think your review is very good, and touches on a lot of the high points, I disagree on the overall effect -- I thought it was all the weirder & scarier for the holding off of the mushroom people until the very end -- and, as you point out, the actual "attack" of the "mushroom people" is them devouring themselves.
I liked the constant fog & dreary atmosphere too.
Anyway, glad you finally saw it, but maybe you should watch it again sometime . . .alone . . . at 2am . . . with the lights out . . .
peter johnson/denny crane
I agree with Peter; the overall atmosphere of dread and foreboding, the appearance of the derelict ship, the gradual unveiling of the monsters and thier nature--all this from Ishiro Honda, the director of the original Gojira and a host of other Japanese monster flicks. All in all a successful departure from his usual venue.
Yep, I liked the MANTANGO: ATTACK OF THE MUSHROOM PEOPLE. Right from the start with the lighting and look of the sail boat then approaching the Island. Then you have the mushrooms..........................Now I want to see FROM HELL IT CAME.
Hey, Andrew.
Is this the Tokyo Shock Mediablasters DvD? I realy like the MYSTERIANS DvD they did.
So, this is where the weird musical clip in It Came from Hollywood was from. I can still remember the woman singing on the sailboat. They don't write lyrics like that anymore.
Post Edited (06-30-05 07:58)
I remember watching this when I was a kid and was really disappointed because it was on the afternoon movies on tv and that week was mostly Godzilla or giant Japanese monster movies. I was expecting huge mushroom people attacking cities and was thouroughly annoyed that they were just human size and not shown until the last bit of the movie.
I did catch it a couple weeks ago again and enjoyed it much more now. I still prefer War of the Gargantuas to it though.
I have seen this one four or five times now. The movie does have good atmosphere and is pretty enjoyable, but I was disappointed. Not only in the lack of mushroom monsters, but just the cop-out that they (the shroom-beasts) provide. They spend the entire movie carefully crafting a small society's breakdown, but then the mushrooms get everybody anyway.
This is a Tokyo Shock DVD and the presentation is gorgeous. Much better than any other version of this movie that I have seen.
And, yeah, the "Lalalalalalala" song is priceless. Imagine a woman happily walking along a yacht as she does that.