This is a great example of a poster drawn up by someone who had never seen the movie

Attack of the Mushroom People

In Texas in the early 1970s, television was great. Saturday afternoon TV had Godzilla films and Hammer Horror movies. I started my film education then, over at a friends’ house watching movies on one of those giant scrollwork console 28” TVs.

One Saturday, the film was Attack of the Mushroom People. To a pre-teen, this film was absolutely wild. I, being an American from an insular small town, knew this film only as Attack of the Mushroom People until the internet age. Then I realized that the film’s original title, that sounds much cooler, was Matango.

Attack of the Mushroom People is credited with scaring the willies out of a generation of young kids. Would it still do so?  This film is also what you would call a slow burn. There is no dramatic surge of crazed mushroom peeps until near the end, and the transformations and insanity take until almost the last third of the film to show up.

Slow burn films are kind of a thing in Toho movies. In many of those films, the character development and plot built slowly, until the monster or monsters arrived with a crescendo of action.  That is a hallmark of Ishiro Honda, who not only wrote tonight’s film, but wrote the original Godzilla.

This is a great example of body horror films, a genre where the integrity of the human body is compromised. The Island of Dr. Moreau is another example. Newer films like this include Tokyo Gore Police which I posted about 15 posts ago.

One last thing.  One of my favorite Toho actresses is in tonight’s film – Kumi Mizuno, who was in more cool movies  than just about anyone else in tonight’s film.

Watch!  Or Don’t! Everything is voluntary!  Next week is open for a vote.  I have Ahockalypse, where zombies attack a championship hockey team, Netherbeast Incorporated, where a nigh-immortal group of creatures work in a telephone company, and a movie I have yet to watch, The Haunting of Muffin Baker.

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(h/t: The Hyperbole)