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Sick Product of a Sick System

best movie i've ever seen.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

This movie begins with a lone survivor in a hospital ward explaining to an investigator the events which led him there. Essentially, it all starts with an extremely wealthy and arrogant corporate executive by the name of "Masafumi Kasai" (Yoshio Tsuchiya) who owns a small yacht and one day decides to invite a few people to go sailing with him. Besides the skipper, "Naoyuki Sakuta" (Hiroshi Koizumi) and the sailor that assists him, "Senzo Koyama" (Kenji Sahara) his guests include an attractive pop singer named "Mami Sekiguchi" (Kumi Mizuno), a professor of psychology, "Kenji Murai" (Akira Kubo), a writer of mystery novels, "Etsuro Yoshida" (Hiroshi Tachikawa) and a pretty college student, "Akiko Soma" (Miki Yashiro). Naturally, being the overbearing person that he is Masafumi Kasai micromanages everything the skipper does which inevitably results in the yacht sailing directly into a storm--causing major damage to it. Fortunately, after a few days of drifting they manage to spot a small island and eventually make land upon it. Not long afterward they discover an abandoned ship along the beach and to their astonishment find a log book which is covered in a thick fungus. Not only that but they also find several giant mushrooms located in the center of the island as well. After more investigation they learn that this particular ship was involved in experiments on the effects of nuclear radiation and that the log book specifically warns against eating these giant mushrooms. That being the case, and with very little food remaining, they soon begin to turn on each other. It's at this time that they also begin to suspect that someone—or something—is stalking them. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this was an entertaining B-movie which could have been much better if it hadn't started out by informing the audience who the lone survivor would be. Although having a person retelling a story to interested observers is a standard opening technique, I have found that it inhibits the element of suspense that is often necessary for a film of this type. That said, I have rated this movie accordingly. Average.

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.

Now this was quite a pleasant surprise. If you read the title, "Matango:Attack of the Mushroom People", the idea of a film legitimately creeping you out with it's "under the skin" effectiveness probably wasn't as expected as a cheesy monster movie. This film's premise is simple..a group of Japanese friends are on a yachting trip when their boat is viciously damaged by a major storm. They find, through a heavy fog, this island which has no known forms of life except growing mushrooms thereabouts and a massive derelict oceanographic ship overcome by moss and rot. There are some food rations and booze within that derelict ship, but a couple of the group steal more than their share. Soon, the relationships of these unfortunate souls deteriorate as hunger, jealousy, fear, and insanity overcome them. But, the deck becomes even more stacked when, one by one, each individual succumbs to the delicious mushrooms nearby the derelict and face the horrifying fact that in doing so, like a plague, their human bodies become ravaged internally which soon shows externally..they, like others whose ships were caught in the current that affected our protagonists stranding them on the island, steadily grow into mushroom people! The final climax as our hero, the professor, is trying to escape the clutches of these mushroom monstrosities(..the sound effects of echoing sinister laughter is eerie)after his love-interest, a weak school clerk, is trapped within the lair of these creatures, is quite unsettling.Along with "Gojira", this has to be considered director Ishirô Honda's finest hour..he creates this incredibly disturbing experience that is hard to shake. I tried just to imagine the terrifying ordeal that would be if I were in that professor's shoes, trying to forge his way through the scary mushroom monsters closing in from every corner. I think the film, besides the mushroom monsters that rear their ugly heads at the end, works well at building the suspense thanks to this practically hopeless situation the characters find themselves in..coupling that hopeless situation with a growing mistrust, anger & hidden feelings which come up to the surface away from their civilized world of modern Tokyo, as tension becomes so thick you can cut it with a knife and tempers flare quite often as pressure for survival squeezes them dry.