[HorrorScience] Matango (1963)

Ishiro Honda is a Japanese director known mainly for his extensive contribution to the world of Kaiju Eiga (giant monster movies). However, he also directed films that were closer to horror and suspense films, like the film I am going to talk about now.

Matango It begins by showing us the boat trip that its seven protagonists take: a millionaire accustomed to doing whatever he wants, a television actress obsessed with traveling and succeeding, a modest professor and his student, a novel writer, and the ship's staff, which is made up of the Captain and his undisciplined sailor.

all of them They will enjoy the trip until the storm causes the ship to drift, finally arriving at an uninhabited island. While looking for help and food, they find another boat on the island, which seems to have been abandoned for a long time, as revealed by its dilapidated appearance and the fact that it is covered in mold and fungi, which will not prevent our protagonists from taking refuge in it.

The island is covered in a dense fog, it has no fauna (what's more, the animals seem to avoid any contact with the island) and the flora, despite being abundant (especially when it comes to mushrooms) does not seem to be edible, which is why survival is not easy. This situation causes the typical tensions between the protagonists, who have to decide what to do before they run out of supplies, with all the discussions and protests that this entails.

As it could not be otherwise, some of the protagonists decide to go their own way, seeking their own benefit, which causes one of them to decide to steal the food reserves during one night. At that same moment we see how on the boat There is something more besides the protagonists. That something manages to scare them and corner them in their room to end up slowly entering through the door and…

The next scene shows us the protagonists having breakfast while they debate whether what they saw the night before was something imaginary, like a ghost or something like that. Tension and mutual accusations continue to surface more and more, which does not help survival. The captain believes that they should repair their ship and leave the island as soon as possible; The person in charge of searching for food hides it so he can eat it alone; the millionaire refuses to collaborate; The television actress likes men to fight over her; and the novelist decides to eat the mushrooms that populate the island to discover that, among other things, they cause hallucinations.

The outlook does not improve and the characters take their individualism further. The captain, disenchanted with the rest, decides to fix his battered ship and return to sea. The sailor is jealous of the novelist for having an affair with the actress, which ends with the novelist shooting with a gun, whereupon he and the girl are expelled from the ship to what appears to be certain death on the island.

Time passes and the few survivors see the captain's ship returning, without a captain. The actress (who was presumed dead) returns to the ship to convince the millionaire to follow her, since apparently she knows a source of food that is what has kept it alive.

And so we reach the final part of the film, with the survivors trying to escape on the captain's ship, since the strange events they have seen on the island do not bode well for them. Furthermore, they know that they should not trust their former companions and, what happened to that being that was lurking around the ship the first night? Was it real or imaginary?

Matango It's a movie that is based on two things: its characters and its atmosphere. While it is true that the former are not deeply developed, the film takes its time to make us see what each one is like, giving us an understanding of what we can or cannot expect from them as the film progresses. In terms of atmosphere, Honda manages to create a feeling of “something is wrong” at all times. It doesn't matter whether we see the island in broad daylight, or immersed in the darkness of night, the fog and the strange things that seem to happen on it end up making it convey a strong feeling of insecurity.

However, I must also say that the film is quite slow, and on some occasions the special effects do not seem to be up to par, although at least we can say that these are used in just the right scenes, which is appreciated.

Three curiosities about the film.

• The film is inspired by the story The Voice in the Night by W. Hope Hodgson.
• In some posters of the film we can see a kind of mushroom man with a woman in his arms. That never happens in the film, the poster was simply created to create expectations and in the process comply with a cliché of horror and science fiction cinema "the monster with the woman in his arms" that we have seen dozens of times.
• in the video game Secret of Mana of Super Nintendo, the town full of mushrooms is called Matango in honor of this film.