Sadly Over-hyped

Please don't spend money on this.

Brilliant and touching

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.

Ishiro Honda directed this surprisingly effective Japanese science fiction/horror film that sees seven people on a sailing ship encounter a fierce storm, and survive, but find themselves shipwrecked on a mysterious and deserted island, where they find a derelict vessel covered in moss, but loaded with canned food, which has a most unfortunate side-effect on these castaways, just like it did before...Plot does strangely resemble "Gilligan's Island" in many ways, but this film is made in eerie and atmospheric style, with a most effective and striking ending. Later retitled "Attack Of The Mushroom People" for America! (A really dumb title that does this picture an injustice.)

OK--I've only seen the dubbed version of this retitled "Attack of the Mushroom People" on TV. I've heard the original version works but the dubbed one is stupid and funny when it's supposed to be scary. A bunch of idiots out sailing get lost in a fog and are shipwrecked on a deserted island. Being hungry they start eating the mushrooms on the island. They're slowly turned into walking, talking giant mushrooms! Seriously.Lousy acting and terrible "special" effects really sink this one. Also the basic story is laughable. I mean come ON! There's nothing scary about people being turned into mushrooms! The only mildly scary parts are when you see a woman eating one of the mushrooms and seeing the mushrooms growing out of a guys face (until you get a good look and realize it's obviously fake). I suppose this movie does some good. I mean think of it--if people hadn't seen this movie there might be walking, talking giant mushrooms on every deserted island out there! Good for laughs and nothing more.

Attack of the Mushroom People (1963) * (out of 4) Incredibly poor horror film from Toho about seven people who get stranded on an island and turn into the title characters. Toho certainly should have looked at some Roger Corman films for inspiration because the monsters here don't show up for 80-minutes in an 90-minute movie! I'm not sure why Japanese horror movies had to be filled with so much boring talk that doesn't lead to anything except boredom for the viewer. The characters themselves are also annoying, which doesn't help matters. The really bad thing is the fact that all these characters and boring dialogue takes away from the monsters, which look pretty good but again, they appear way too late.

And you thought that YOU ate some funny mushrooms back in your college days! Just take a look at the 'shrooms that the seven island castaways in the 1963 Japanese horror outing "Matango: Attack of the Mushroom People" partake in! In this film, the seven people in question go on a yacht outing, get trapped in a storm and are washed ashore on a desert isle. The seven--the skipper, his first mate, a beautiful TV star, another pretty girl, a millionaire (hey, wait a minute...could "Gilligan's Island," which premiered the following year, have stolen from THIS film of all films?!?!), a writer and a psychiatrist--feed on the funny fungi and are soon turned into walking shiitakes themselves. Actually, despite the outrageous title and bizarre plot, this is a fairly levelheaded, reasonably intelligent and restrained film, not the laughable piece of crap you might be expecting. The picture is very well shot, and appears just fine on this pristine-looking, wide-screen DVD. The first half is a bit slow but nonetheless suspenseful, as the characters explore the perpetually fog-enshrouded island, and the second half, in which the fungus folk get it on, is occasionally quite trippy and hallucinatory. Remarkably, this DVD also features loads of interesting extras, including interviews with some of the folks behind the cameras and some fun trailers for other Toho Studios pictures. All in all, this film is certainly worth a rental...if only so that you can tell your coworkers that you saw a movie last night called "Matango: Attack of the Mushroom People"!