#759: Matango

Matango

Ishirō Honda
Initial release: August 11, 1963 (Japan)
Alternate title: Fungus of Terror (UK)
Attack of the Mushroom People (USA)

I know that the post-apocalypse franchise The Last of Us gets a lot of flack for a variety of reasons, not all of it undeserved, but as someone with a phobia of mushrooms and fungi in general, I found its concept of a world devastated by a parasitic fungus that mind controls its victims in an effort to spread itself to be, quite frankly, terrifying. The concept itself draws from nature; many species of cordyceps fungi evolved to take over one particular species of insect or another. Like a lot of things about nature, it's a frankly horrifying thing to consider, which makes one wonder why there aren't more examples of it in fiction. The Last of Us is the most famous, to be sure, but half a century before that was Matango, Ishirō Honda's body horror classic, filmed for Toho, famous for their monster movies.

While based partially on William Hope Hodgson's short story "The Voice in the Night," Honda took things in a more socially conscious — and altogether more grotesque — direction. The story goes something like this: six people on a little three hour tour get their yacht caught in a storm. The boat is left dead in the water, the radio is busted, and they're drifting. Eventually the boat comes ashore at a deserted island, with no human population, but fresh water and large mushrooms. Eventually they discover a derelict ship, apparently abandoned. The ship's log suggests that the fungi on the island is poisonous and causes hallucinations, but as food supplies dwindle, some of the group start eating the mushrooms anyway. Between sightings of a fungal-infested figure stalking the derelict, growing distrust among the group, and rampant food theft, the situation deteriorates rapidly, culminating in mutiny, expulsion, and, finally, consumption: the survivors infected by the fungus, with some ultimately becoming overtaken and turning into walking mushroom people.

On its surface, it's a kitschy, even cheesy '60s horror flick; the mushroom costumes aren't the most convincing in the film's final moments. But look beyond the rubber outfits, and dive into the abject horror of a fungus that slowly takes over your body and subverts your will to that of the mold; the film's climax has the mushroom men, hulking fungal monstrosities only vaguely humanoid in shape, laughing sinisterly as they try to drag the last two survivors away to join them with the biomass. It's not quite the feral terror of clickers from The Last of Us, but it's still scary as hell. Honda's cinematography is stark, claustrophobic; it reminds me of some of the cinematography of fixed-camera survival horror games. He uses color — only just becoming more common in the early 1960s — to lurid effect, with the captain's cabin in the derelict ship especially striking, covered in red mold. 

Honda also had a few things to get off his chest with this movie. Godzilla had been his commentary on the atomic bombings of Japan and the fallout from nuclear testing; the survivors at one point begin to suspect that the mushrooms on the fog-enshrouded island are so big because of nuclear testing having mutated them somehow. There was something of a small kerfluffle when it was pointed out that the signs of infection on a person bore a startling resemblance to radiation burns — no doubt intentional on Honda's part. But even more than that, Honda said decades later that he was inspired by a wave of countercultural rebellion in Japan that saw the rise of popular drug use (much like the rest of the world at the outset of the swingin' Sixties.) He saw the film as a commentary on the ruined relationships and social alienation that often accompany addiction, as the survivors eat more and more of the mushrooms around the island, group cohesion falls apart, and eventually they fall under the thrall of the fungus.

While Matango is one of the lesser known films in Toho's repertoire, it's nonetheless a darkly compelling film. A sagging middle — dedicated largely to infighting between the group — doesn't really get in the way of what's one of Toho's most unique films. 

-june❤