BONUS BLOG -- 1963: MATANGO

What’s it about?

Seven hard-partying jet-setters run into trouble when their yacht is disabled in a storm. After floating aimlessly for days, they wash up on a deserted island far south of Japan. While looking for food and water, they discover the rotting shell of a derelict ship on the beach. It’s covered in a weird mold and is missing all its mirrors, but they do find some food inside and after scrubbing down the decks the castaways decide to move in.

The supplies from the ship doesn’t last long and food is scarce on the island, forcing the castaways to spend most of their time foraging for wild potatoes and digging for clams and turtle eggs. Strangely, the island seems bereft of all non-aquatic animal life and even the birds won’t land there. Before long, the castaways start seeing strange things moving in the jungle, and then eventually on the ship itself. Ultimately they learn that the ship’s missing crew have not exactly left the island yet -- and that unless they find a way off the island they are likely to share their fate as well.




Is it any good?

MATANGO is a surprisingly slow movie -- it’s twenty minutes until the castaways even land on the island, and a good forty-five until anything seemingly out of the ordinary happens. Even once the science fiction elements start asserting themselves, MATANGO still doggedly sticks with the human side of the story -- leaving the monsters mostly (but thankfully not entirely) in the shadows. Though not exactly dull, the movie consequently feels pretty draggy in places. But, on the other hand, the restraint of the first eighty-five minutes makes it all the more trippy when it finally pulls out all the stops at the very end.

For the most part, the cast and the script are not really good enough to make the human focus as riveting as it otherwise might be. But the characters do make the situation at least somewhat interesting. They’re selfish and petty people, and most are perfectly will to steal food for themselves, extort a profit from the situation, or use violence to get what they want. Another interesting element is that the island does abound in one particular kind of food: mushrooms. But log books from the derelict ship seem to indicate that the mushrooms are toxic in a peculiar (but non-fatal) way, and as starving characters resort one-by-one to eating the mushrooms they are ostracized from the group as though they have become toxic themselves.




Like a lot of other sci-fi and horror movies about island castaways, MATANGO is not really interested in what it takes to survive on an uninhabited island. The island is simply an excuse to strand the characters alone someplace where weird things can happen in a way that may or may not double as commentary on contemporary society. Some of the weird things -- like the moldy abandoned ship -- are really pretty neat. The long sequence where the castaways explore the derelict and search it for useful items is probably the best part of the movie. (Except, perhaps, the wild and crazy final five minutes.) There are also two neat bookend segments at the very beginning and very end where one of the survivors recalls the story in a Tokyo that looks as weird as any alien city.

It’s also very easy to read the mushrooms as a societal metaphor. The obvious parallel would be something to do with drugs, but there are a couple of scenes where they are pretty clearly linked with sex instead. The conclusions are not exactly the same ones that most horror movies seemingly arrive at, but when all is said and done MATANGO still doesn’t leave you with too much to think about it. Any metaphorical level is strictly a slight added bonus, rather than a major theme.

BONUS BLOG -- 1954: GOJIRA

What’s it about?

In case there’s anybody who doesn’t know the story of Godzilla, here it is. Underwater tests of atomic bombs disturb a prehistoric monster known in Japanese legends as Gojira and cause him to come to the surface in a seriously bad mood. After trashing the island of Odo, the monster moves towards the mainland and destroys much of Tokyo in a couple of midnight raids.

Meanwhile, a scientist has developed an oxygen destroying substance that could be used to make a weapon even more powerful than the atomic bomb. The substance is seemingly the only thing that might stop Gojira, but the scientist is unwilling to share his discovery until he has converted it into a form that cannot be used as a military weapon. As the destruction and death toll mounts, the scientist finds himself faced with a moral dilemma -- let Gojira continue on his rampage, or stop him and give the world a new deadly weapon in the process.


Illustration copyright 2009 Dennis J. Reinmueller


Is it any good?

The ending is really terrific, though there are parts in the middle that are fairly dull. The first third of the movie mostly follows the arrival of Gojira -- from the mysterious sinking of ships to the destruction of Odo to the first appearances of the monster himself. The second third is mostly concerned with Gojira’s attacks on Tokyo and the attempts to stop him with conventional weapons. Finally, the end of the movie -- where things really come alive -- deal with the devastating aftermath of the monster attacks and the scientist’s moral dilemma.

It seems strange to say, but the weakest part of the movie are really the attacks on Tokyo. Gojira was reportedly the first movie to use a suited actor so extensively in monster attack sequences -- previous movies like THE LOST WORLD (1925), KING KONG (1933), MIGHTY JOE YOUNG (1949), and THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS (1953) had all used stop-motion animation. Any novelty that may have attached to the man-in-a-suit approach in 1954 has been erased by fifty years of sequels and knock-offs with the same kind of miniatures being destroyed in much the same way. Some of the miniatures are pretty neat (the boats especially look very good), and several shots of Gojira are quite striking -- when he rises suddenly from underwater or from behind a hill, or is framed by fire as he stalks through Tokyo. But overall, both Gojira himself and the attack sequences feel too familiar to be truly exciting anymore.

But it’s worth sitting through those Tokyo attacks to get the final third of the movie. There’s an appropriately dramatic demonstration of the oxygen destroyer in the laboratory. (Though the true effects of the discovery are unnecessarily withheld from the audience until late in the movie.) The invention itself makes absolutely no sense as explained -- but the important thing is the chilling effect it has on living matter. The scenes after Gojira’s final attack on Tokyo are also very effective. It’s no secret that the movie is a parable about atomic weapons -- and in fact the movie lays this on a bit thick -- but knowing that Japan had suffered two nuclear attacks less than ten years before GOJIRA was released really does give the aftermath of the radioactive rampage an extra layer of emotional depth.

As a final note, I ought to say that it’s been at least fifteen years since I’ve seen the American re-cutting of GODZILLA from 1956 (with Raymond Burr inserted to appease American audiences), so I can’t really say how it compares to the Japanese original.

For the rest of my thoughts on 1954 in sci-fi movies, see the entry on THEM!