Matango begins with an evening panorama of the city that moves into the Tokyo Medical Center psychopathic ward as a narrator tells his story and from there the film wastes no time cutting to a ship on a weekend pleasure cruise with a small crew of seven people. The weather starts out nice, and we're introduced to a Psychology professor (Akira Kubo) and his cute assistant (Miki Yashiro), the ship owner (Yoshio Tsuchiya) and his girlfriend (Kumi Mizuno), the ship's captain (Hiroshi Koisumi), the first mate (Hiroshi Tachikawa), and a writer (Kenji Sahara). Then the weather is not-so-nice and the boat is wrecked off one of the Ogasawara Islands (which Epinions.com helpfully writes "will be of a nice trivia note to Godzilla fans, as that's where Destroy All Monsters stated Monster Island was"). As the increasingly hungry survivors clamber about the misty vegetation and shore they come across another shipwreck, this one eerie, abandoned, and covered with mold. As they investigate they find all kinds of odd things that indicate it was "some kind of research ship." The also find a turtle with no eyes ("a mutation caused by radiation"), carbolic acid ("If we scrub the cabin with it, we can live here!"), and in a large crate marked "Matango" they find "A monster mushroom!" It is aboard this abandoned shipwreck that Matango truly shines as an example of sustained atmosphere. As the inevitable internal tensions rise and external impending dread tightens (and ultimately becomes internal) it slides into the familiar and claustrophobic terrain of horror films wherein a small group of people are besieged by outside horrors, such as the mental vegetables of Night of the Living Dead or the literal ones from Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The film suffers from a few ill-advised choices, such as flashbacks and overtly phallic monster costumes, which ultimately undermine the potential for a more consistent atmospheric tone of true horror, but it still does a fine job of delivering on otherworldly goods, and it gets extra points for taking no prisoners. Well, technically, the narrator is a prisoner within the psychopathic ward, but even he confides at the very beginning that he is the unlucky one compared to those who died before him.
Matango is loosely based on The Voice in the Night - a short story by William Hope Hodgson (1877-1918). In that story there are two people aboard a small schooner in the Northern Pacific who encounter a strange man fishing for food in the foggy night. The stranger appeals to them for food and then tells the men his tragic tale, all the while staying anonymous under cover of the dark fog and remaining safely in the distance. Hodgson's story benefits from his own experience traveling around the world for eight years, many of those on a ship serving for the Merchant Marine, and in his stories readers can get an authentic taste of nautical life along with the occult and horror for which he was known. In judgement of Hodgson's craft, no less an authority than H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) himself gave positive reviews to some of his work, referring to The House on the Borderland as being "a classic of the first water," with The Night Land being one of the "most potent pieces of macabre imagination ever written."
The special features on the Media Blasters dvd of Matango include a commentary track with actor Akira Kubo, an interview with Teruyoshi Nakano (28 minutes), previews, the original trailer, and an unusual little entry called "Spoken Word from Matango Writer Masami Fukushima" (17 minutes). Kubo's running commentary often veers off-course, although there are moments of interest when he talks about Honda's collaborations with Akira Kurosawa or his own experiences on the Oshima and Hachijyojima islands (where Matango was shot, and where locals would skin snakes for their blood). The Fukushima interview is of more interest and features some nice behind-the-scenes stills of the miniatures and sets used in Matango. Among many of Fukushima's insights into the special effects for Matango viewers can find out how corned beef cans were used to make some of the more interesting mushrooms in the film. Also fun is his description of the Toho lot during a lunch break, when samurai, monsters, and aliens wandered around casually to grab a bite to eat.
For more information about Matango, visit the Tokyo Shock section of the Media Blasters website. To order Matango, go to TCM Shopping.
by Pablo Kjolseth
