matango [attack of the mushroom people] (1963)

post-war japanese genre cinema seemed to be dominated by one man, ishiro honda, a filmmaker whose most famous export was a gaggle of godzilla flicks. i've not been a big fan of godzilla even tho i've must've seen all of them growing up either on tv or in various matinee movie houses. however, matango is a film that started it all for me way back when. my love of exploitation and horror films began with this japanese cheapie.

the 1970s was a rich era not only in drive-ins and grindhouses but also in late-night tv horror hosts. n ca had as its host the estimable bob wilkins' creature features who possessed a laid-back, deprecating demeanor on his show. wilkins looked, to me, a lot like woody allen because of his slight build, his sandy hair, his thick black-frame glasses, and the fact he always had in his hand a huge stogie. wilkins wasn't yr typical horror host, and he would often implore his viewers not to watch his movies because they were crap. he even would read the tv guide to let you know what was on the other channels.

even so, wilkins became something of a legend around here. everyone remembers him. and i would beg my parents to let me stay up late on sat. nights to watch his program. that the films would freak me out, even the cheesiest of them, added to the thrill of watching them. so matango was the first horror movie i recall watching and loving every frame of it. thus it all began.

by the time i got to seeing this flick it was already 10 years old and it was considered pure poop. i didn't know what critics were saying about the film. honda is a master storyteller. the director casts his cinema in the fall-out of post-war japan. monsters and people are living in the aftermath of defeat and radiation. this film is about a hodge-podge group of young professionals out for a day's sailing. their boat is shredded in a freak storm and we find our protagonists marooned on a rainy, rocky island. they think they are alone until they find on the other side of the island another wrecked ship seemingly devoid of its crew, and the ship is covered in orange fungus.

sure it sounds almost like a japanese version of gilligan's island, except these yahoos lack a professor to make tools and grow gardens for food. our poor crusoes have no food and no man friday to act as guide in flesh and spirit. they do make repairs to their own damaged vessel in the hope of drifting into the shipping lanes. what little tinned stuff found onboard the strange fungoid vessel is quickly munched. the plot is languid, testifying to the boredom and tedium of having lots of time on hand and nowhere to go. the group slowly turn on each other as they ran out of food. before that they find the log of the mysterious captain of the mushroom ship, and they discover that it was a research vessel investigating nuclear radiation. there are snippets in the captain's prose about his crew eating the only edible thing on the island, mushrooms, and these pieces of texts are grave warnings to stay the hell away from them shrooms.

all to no avail. the movie starts with the one lone survivor narrating his adventures in the locked cell of a tokyo mental hospital. outside his window is the city haloed in neon. the film ends with one last look at the skyline of tokyo as the narrator turns in finality to face his doctors, and us, doomed and cursing civilization. which is a strange tack to follow so late in the film since the majority of screen-time each castaway is yearning to leave the island and get back to home.

honda marked this venture with his usual themes of the individual versus collective identity, a country blighted by radiation, and the mutations that are the results of nuclear horror. the film is lushly photographed in color, and turns highly psychedelic in the last reel as we find the mushroom people growing and alive in the island's forest. that was the scene that scared the shit out of me. even for relatively tame 1970s tv. back then.

tv no longer have horror hosts, well okay, they do, but back in the day when one can see movies only at the theater, wilkins was special in his particular brand of nerdy looks and good humor. that he brought us some of the worst in world cinema is a wonder.