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Extra Credit 008 - Attack of the Mushroom People (Matango) (Patreon)

Published:
2023-02-27 18:39:41
Edited:
2023-10-06 09:04:05
Imported:
2026-06
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We're approaching Spring and SPORES ARE IN THE AIR! Tune in as we talk about Matango, a Japanese film from 1963 by Godzilla director Ishirō Honda, released in the United States as Attack of the Mushroom People.

This film is based on the story The Voice in the Night by William Hope Hodgson, and you can listen to our episode covering the story here.

Video link for this episode: https://youtu.be/NH5FldpEaDo

Next up: March is for Draculas!

Comments

nils hedglin

Some day you guys gotta cover Hodgson's House on the Borderlands. Pig Faced Orcs FTW!

Rick Lyter

I was pretty excited to see you were doing this one, been a favorite of mine since I was a kid

Brian J

I actually did my homework for once and watched this yesterday! I was also disappointed by what was commercially available, but happily discovered that the Japanese/subtitled original is viewable for free on the Internet Archive, should anyone prefer to watch it that way.

Dennis Newsome

Another take on fungus horror is The Girl With All The Gifts by M. R. Carey. It’s kind of a mix of Children of the Damned and the Living Dead.

UltharMeow

I didn’t pick up on the social commentary in this one because I was 6 when I saw it. I just remember being all “oooooo mushroom people!” Which was enough to imprint it into my psyche so much that I did a little dance when this post dropped. Also, given the choice between starving or turning into a fungus-person, I am Team Mushroom all the way.

Joe Beck

It's quite an experience to rediscover something from your childhood that has been reduced to vague impressions. It's probably been 45 years since I saw this film. I couldn't have told you anything about it under torture - but I now recall a store of recognition when I read the Hodgson story a while back. I wonder how many other spores of craziness lurk in the cellar of my mind, placed there during Channel 5's Saturday afternoon Science Fiction Theater?

Jeremy Impson

"Next up: March is for Draculas!". *Swoons* *faints*

Richard Horsman

There’s a very good and clean subtitled print of this on the Criterion Channel right now. This is one of those movies that I saw as a kid and was terrified by, and then returned to as an adult and was absolutely enchanted. Hodgson’s dreamlike (and let’s be honest rickety) plotting suits Honda so well, even just as inspiration.

Richard Horsman

Also I’d love to hear a month on Hodgson’s Boats of the Glen Carrig, but stay away from The Night Land, unless you want something that unseats Lair of the White Worm.

Jason Thompson

Ultraman!!! One of the first TV shows I loved too. The perfect mix of superheroes + giant monsters. My mom said that whenever me and my little brother watched it, we would immediately tackle each other and fight for hours afterward. 😂❤️

Cacodaemoniacal

I saw Chad's ending as a kid. Less nuanced perhaps, but it gave me the collywobbles. The colors were so bright! His starvation so intense! And then after all that, he still loses!

It's a Ghost.

I really enjoyed this episode of scary Gilligan’s Island. I wonder if there was something in the zeitgeist that led Honda and Sherwood Schwartz (the creator of Gilligan’s Island) to start out with such a similar premise at essentially the same time. Matango was released in August 1963, and the pilot episode of Gilligan’s Island was filmed just three months later in November of 1963.

Stewart

Two of my favorite fungus horror based novels I read recently were Silvia Moreno-Garcia's Mexican Gothic and T. Kingfisher's What Moves the Dead, which is a fungus based retelling of The Fall of the House of Usher

Ravewolf

I too saw this as a kid on TV and found it interesting. In both this version and the original story, there is that scary concept of being so desperate for food that you eventually have to eat the forbidden fruit of horror. Japan was going through a very rapid post-war move from what was still a more rural experience for many to a more city and manufacturing based society during this era. So I imagine that all the negative talk about the big city reflects some mixed feelings about that. Idyllic depictions of the countryside still figure in some Japanese shows to this day, and country person moving to the city stories were still a thing there for quite a while.

Sweatin' to the Great Oldies

Nice conversation. I think you may have overdone the monoculture talk a bit. Japanese folks have been curious about other cultures and taking in aspects of them for . . . well, forever. Lots of very Japanese things originated in other places - especially Korea and China. I'm sure you noticed in the film that the characters had adopted Western dress, sported sunglasses, used playing cards from overseas, etc. The trick is to allow for other people, other cultures, and other cultural elements to come in. Having other people, cultures, or cultural elements forced upon Japan is, I think, the real fear.

Karlandos

I admit i have something of a personal disdain against things like the pastoral/agrarian vs modern/urban dichotomy in that those who favor a given position will emphasize and over emphasize and romantise its qualities while, in my view conveniently overlooking why things are the way they are and how. That is to say, there is nothing wrong with wanting those things, but i think it distorts tge reality of the lives and experinces of people who lived back then to fulfill a fantasy born from ones own weariness of their own lot in life.

Sludgecrawler

I always wondered how much interesting stuff usually got cut in your editing process. A live show like this greatly reassures me nothing good is lost and makes me love your regular edited shows just so much more ♥️

Joshua Weiss

All the major studios in Japan when Matango was made had a system not unlike that of Hollywood, where everyone was on contract and would make whatever the studio heads told them to. All the talent, in front of and behind the camera, were top stars, and brought their A game to even these seemingly silly productions. Compare the cast list of this film with, say, Throne of Blood, and you'll see a lot of the same names.