Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to an all new Reaction & Review. Tonight, guys, I'm gonna be checking out a Japanese horror film from 1963. That movie is "Matango".
Now, originally, when I read first read that title on the DVD case, I honestly thought it was called "Matango: Attack of the Mushroom People", since it had that surname. Which would've sounded like a really cheesy, goofy, yet sorta awesome title at the same time. Because sometimes, those sorts of names really do catch your eye, especially if you're into these sorts of oddball movies like I am. Sadly though, that's not the case here. Instead, the "Attack of the Mushroom People" name was used to release this movie in the U.S. as a TV film in 1965. Now what's a little strange about this is the fact that there *is* an English dub for it, but nobody knows when it was actually released. I'm gonna take a wild guess here and say *maybe* it was released in between 1963 and 1965. Again, that's just a guess I'm making there, so make of that what you will.
So, setting all that aside, what do I know about tonight's movie? Well, a couple of things. First of all, it was distributed by Toho, the same company that releases all of the Godzilla movies. And the other thing I know about this movie is that it was almost banned in Japan entirely, mainly because the makeup effects on the actors faces supposedly resembled the disfigurements of the victims from the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. Now, in a way, I can kinda understand the reasoning behind it, because it only happened 18 years ago at the time of this movie's release. And, well, Japan is still very sensitive about that sort of subject for obvious reasons. So, I'm not about to claim that whether or not the decision regarding this reasoning was right or wrong.
Having said that, though, this movie did eventually get released, and I already explained how, so I'm not about to repeat myself there on that front. So, I'm hoping for this movie to be pretty good. I don't know if it will be or not, but that's what this series is here for. And the only way I'm gonna find out if this movie is any good at all, is if I shut up and I push play, and I'm gonna do that right now. So, without further ado, it's time to kick back, relax, and check out "Matango".
7 minutes later
Well, guys, I believe I can start off by saying that this English dub here is kinda shit so far. I mean, granted, our dubs weren't really good at all back during those days, but this dub is just kinda proving that, since most of the acting here sounds incredibly wooden. I'm hoping, maybe, that I'll get use to this really wooden acting, but I'm not totally sure if I will.
19 minutes later
All right, guys, now that we're almost a half an hour into the movie, I'm gonna ask this. When exactly does it start to get interesting? I'm asking this, because this thing is becoming incredibly boring so far. I get that the movie is trying to soak you into it's atmosphere. But honestly, it's really not that impressive to look at. And I'm just hoping that, maybe, this movie will start to pick up soon and we can actually get our plot rolling here. As of right now, though, I'm slowly beginning to lose interest.
20 minutes later
Seriously, guys, I want to know, *when* does this movie actually start to get interesting? I have been patient now for quite a while, and my patience is beginning to wear thin on how dis-interesting this movie has become. I'm not sure if the next half of the movie is even going to get any better. I'm hoping it does, but at this rate, I'm beginning to lose hope here.
9 minutes later
Wait wait wait, wait a second here! So, that encounter they had with the unknown creature last night was real. And they all acknowledge that it happened. OK then, so...what *did* happen last night? Because, they showed the creature opening the door, and after that, the scene transitioned to them having breakfast the next morning, as if what happened last night...never actually happened! Did I miss something here? Because that scene made no fucking sense whatsoever, because no one said anything about it up until now. Guys, I'm at the point where I'm not even gonna question this thing anymore because not only has it been boring as shit, but now it's decided to not make any sense. I hope it does soon, but at this point, I really don't think it's going to.
The Review
Well, guys, that was "Matango". And thank Christ, this thing is fucking over. Let me shut this garbage off here...OK. Wow, that was...massively disappointing. I don't think I've ever been this disappointed about a movie in a very long time, but this...yeah, this one definitely fits the disappointing category.
So, I guess, without further delay, I may as well get into this review proper by first discussing the writing. Now I will say that the plot here is very simple, in concept anyway. We have a group of people shipwrecked on a mysterious island where it's inhabited by strange-looking mushrooms, and they have to try and survive by looking for food on the island, while also trying to find a way off the island while they're there. And at the same time, they also get to learn more about the true nature of the island and the mushrooms in general. So yeah, like I said, the plot here is pretty simple. OK sure, it's not entirely an original plot, but at least it is easy to understand...for the most part, anyway. I'll get a little more in depth on this later, but I will say that it could've worked, had the script for this thing been written better, and had the story been more interesting.
But that becomes a problem right there, because this movie is just so *painfully* dull, to where almost nothing of interest happens here. The movie tries to build some level of suspense, but like I said, most of it doesn't amount up to anything, and what they do try to build up doesn't really make any sense. And aside from all that, most of the movie is just our characters trying to find food to survive or just them resting inside a ship that they found on the island to make themselves at home, and to be honest with you, guys, it's really boring to watch, because, like I already said, nothing really happens here. Which brings me into another point in which I'll say that the pacing in this movie is just *bad*. This movie has so much padding here that they really could've cut out a lot of it and the film would've flowed better. I'm not saying that it would've been great, but it could've been a much better paced movie.
Speaking of which, let's actually talk about that scene I mentioned earlier that made no sense at all. So, around the halfway point of the film, we see one of these fungus-looking creatures sneaking aboard the ship. One of the crew members in red discovers the creature, and starts to run away from it, reuniting with the other characters. This leads into them fortifying their defenses, and when the creature opens the door, we actually get a first look at it...and then the scene suddenly fades to black, transitioning it into them having breakfast together. Again, I ask, what exactly happened with the prior scene? Was there some sort of fight sequence that I missed? My original thought was that our characters somehow ended up killing the creature, and used it's remains to have their breakfast. Which, thinking about it now, would've been a really stupid idea, considering you don't know where this creature came from to begin with. But during the breakfast, nobody ever brought that up! And then I thought maybe there was a deleted scene in which it never made it to TV broadcast and that I would hope to find it on the DVD extras. But again, that's not the case because, one, there are no extras involving deleted scenes on the DVD. And two, the scene doesn't get mentioned until nearly 10 minutes later! Which, again, begs the question of what exactly happened the night before where they first fully encountered that creature? Sadly, we never get to see that. So really, the scene is left very poorly up to interpretation.
Another thing that this movie fumbles upon is the characters. Now you think that with a movie like this that's centered around our characters trapped on a mysterious island, that you would care about these characters struggles as they try to survive, but unfortunately, this movie doesn't really execute that well at all. Every character here is very shallow and flat, in terms of both personality and depth. In fact, I could barely remember their names, save for Kasai, Yoshida, and Mirei. And even then, their characters are all flat and lifeless. The only traits I could pick up from most of them was that one of them is a singer, AKA Mirei. Yoshida, who I *think* is suppose to be a writer but I honestly don't remember. Kasai, who's just part of the crew. Another one is the skipper, we have our main character, who I honestly don't remember *anything* about him, and another girl who tends to act sickly a lot. And that's it. That is *all* for character depth and personality. None of them give you a reason to care about them, and their motivations, half the time, don't make any sense at all. Which kinda makes sense, considering how the story itself makes little to no sense, despite having a simple premise.
So yeah, guys, writing here is terrible here from every direction that this movie goes into. Now while I'm kinda sorta on the subject, the acting for this dub is terrible as well. I kinda had a feeling that it wasn't going to get any better the moment that I mentioned the dub being kinda shit, and well, unsurprisingly, it didn't get any better. Most of the acting here is very wooden, and any attempts to give out some sort of emotion for these actor's dialogue just comes across as being very stilted and phoned in. Now again, I totally understand that dubs like these back in the day, we didn't care if they were terrible, we just put them out there and leave it at that. But I feel like this dub is probably one of the worser ones out there. I can't even say that this movie's dub is so bad it's laughable, it's just...terrible. Now the good news here is that, if you seriously want to watch this thing, there is an option on the DVD where you can switch it over to the subtitles with it's original Japanese audio. So, at least there's that, and it might make for a somewhat lesser painful experience. Granted, that's not saying a whole lot, but at least it is something.
Special effects here are actually halfway decent. The makeup effects you see here, whether it's that creature I mentioned earlier, or the makeup effects involving the actors being turned into mushrooms, that stuff looked genuinely decent. Now granted, I can't really judge if the criticisms involving the makeup effects are accurate to what I talked about at the beginning of this R&R, but I honestly don't care and I don't feel like it should affect the overall film. I'll just leave at that by, again, stating that the makeup effects are decent. The costumes on the mushroom people look OK too, though admittedly, they're not really in the movie for that long. Which is honestly rather disappointing, considering the title and all. But setting that aside, the sets here involving the island actually look really good. Admittedly, I don't know how much this movie was going for in terms of it's budget, but I'm gonna take an estimated guess and say it was probably on the lower side. So anyway, the special effects, overall, I can say range on being rather decent.
Camerawork here is pretty good. The lighting here is lit very well. But then again, a lot of this movie was shot outdoors, considering the setting of this movie and all. So there is that. Sound-mix here is mixed pretty well. The score, though, honestly kinda ranges on being forgettable to kinda shit. I say that, because this movie uses quite a bit of synth music, and it's really not the good kind of synth music that's interesting to listen to. Beyond that, I really can't say much else about the music here, so I can probably put that one on the negative side of things.
Overall, guys, when everything is said and done, am I able to recommend "Matango"? Personally no, because I really think this movie is just so poorly written. And I don't really think that, even if you switched it over to the Japanese dub, it will make the movie that much better. That being said, there might just be one way that I could recommend this film to anyone. I'm mostly gonna recommend this thing to stoners. And the reason why I'm targeting them is because this movie tries to go for the psychedelic mindset, when it comes to the mushrooms in this movie. I won't spoil too much about it, but there is a sequence or two involving them. So, stoners, if you're looking for a kind of film that you can get high off of, then knock yourself out with this one. You might honestly really enjoy the movie much better if you were high off your ass. But for everyone else...no. You can just skip this one. There really isn't anything here that will grab your interest, since this movie is mostly boring as shit anyways. Now, as for me, I'm probably gonna go and watch something better. Perhaps maybe I'll just watch something like "Gremlins". It's kind of a weird film, but definitely a classic one, too. So I'm gonna go do that next and hopefully get this movie's memory wiped away from my mind, the sooner the better.
And with that, guys, we come to the close of another Reaction & Review. Until next time, ladies and gentlemen, take care, and I will see you all later. Peace.
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