Matango
Matango is a 1963 film from Japan, directed by Ishirō Honda, running 89 minutes. reelscum files it under kaiju & tokusatsu.
- Year
- 1963 · 1960s films
- Country
- Japan
- Runtime
- 89 min
- Director
- Ishirō Honda
- Updated
- 10 Aug 2026
- Obscurity
- cult (37/100)
- Also known as
- Attack of the Mushroom People · Matango: Attack of the Mushroom People · Matango, Fungus of Terror
Defined in the glossary: Kaiju & tokusatsu
Honda's mushroom-people film. Far bleaker than anything else Toho made.
Honda's mushroom-people film, and by far the bleakest thing Toho made in this era. Shipwrecked pleasure-seekers wash up on an island where the only food is a fungus that slowly transforms whoever eats it, and the film becomes a claustrophobic study of a small group turning on each other.
It is genuine psychological horror rather than monster spectacle, a grim parable about appetite and social collapse, and the transformations are unsettling. The cynicism is startling for the studio and the period.
Toho's most disturbing film, and one of its most underrated.
Trailer
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Where to watch
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