Self-important, over-dramatic, uninspired.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

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.

The score here is rather high, but this movie to me was kind of low. Low and really slow. It had some good parts to it, do not get me wrong, but it was incredibly slow moving. Most of the mushroom action takes place at the end, before that you get lots of build up and infighting between the characters and it just really made for a somewhat boring film. The story started out good, a group on a yacht are traveling the seas and are hit with a storm, they are adrift for a while and end up near an island. There is virtually no food on the island other than mushrooms, however, the captain's log plainly states you do not want to eat these particular mushrooms called Mantango. Well time passes on the island, tensions build and you just know someone is going to eat a mushroom and then the action begins. Only this does not really happen, the movie seems to want to really show these people passing away time in the island so I am guessing we can understand why they finally broke down, but I wanted to watch a film with a bit more things happening. Like I said, overall I was disappointed with this one, especially considering it was made by Toho studios who make my beloved Godzilla films, but this one just was a bit hard to watch for me personally. The good, the first scenes on the yacht and them finding the island initially. The makeup was good in places too, especially considering the time period. I also liked the ending. Overall, just not a movie for me I am afraid. I would love to have that rifle they used, however, I mean it was not particularly strong, but it never ran out of bullets!

I'd never heard of this film until recently, I bought it as part of a R1 Toho box set, mainly for the Mysterians. Matango really is a great movie, since watching the film, I've been trying to get more people to watch it. It should be hailed as a Sci-fi classic but instead it's a fairly obscure cult movie, which is a real shame as it's such a great movie. I'd love to see a directors cut/special edition of this film, complete with deleted scenes and all the other usual stuff you get with special edition DVD's, maybe then it would get the respect it deserves. Until then I'm going to force as many people as I can to watch it! The only issue with the film I have, is what do the mushroom people do once they've become mushroom people? Must be pretty boring just hanging around being a fungus.

Considering how many bad horror films were made in Japan in the 1960s, I was expecting something no better than a Gamera movie. Fortunately, it was far better than the title would suggest! After all, when I was a kid, it was marketed as "Attack of the Mushroom People".The first 90% of the film is pretty good and is highly reminiscent of "Lord of the Flies". A group of people are on a sailboat but are nearly lost in a storm. Being blown way off course and having a broken shortwave radio, it looks pretty tough for them. It's even worse when they finally find land but it turns out to be an island that seems to have little food--just lots and lots of mushrooms and fungi. To make things worse, if they eat the mushrooms, they are doomed to turn into mushroom people--though the film never adequately explained how they knew this to be the case or that they shouldn't eat the mushrooms but they tried eating practically everything else! What I liked about this aspect of the film is that the people began acting like animals due to the food shortage. Seemingly decent people began scheming and killing and it revealed some excellent insights into the dark side of human nature.However, the last few minutes of the film consisted of the mushroom monsters mucking about and this was incredibly silly. Still, despite this, the very end of the film did have a nice conclusion and the idea wasn't bad--until the mushroom monsters appeared!