Matango: Attack Of The Mushroom People by Sadao Bekku (Mondo)

"Have you ever been walking in a forest and stopped to try some fruit growing on a tree or bush? You may think twice after MATANGO, a tense psychological horror from Ishirō Honda, director of GODZILLA (1954). Released in Japan in 1963 to immediate controversy over the similarity of the makeup effects to the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, MATANGO is about a group of men and women driven to violence and murder after being shipwrecked, only for them to fall victim to the horrifying mutated monsters that inhabit the island they discover.

Released overseas under the titles ATTACK OF THE MUSHROOM PEOPLE and FUNGUS OF TERROR, MATANGO's eerie musical score was composed by Japanese classical composer Sadao Bekku and is as hypnotic and surreal as the film's shocking climactic sequences. Bekku's music takes much of its inspiration from jazz, from the irreverence of a cue for the shipwrecking storm to the haunting trumpet that hails the first sight of the desolate island. Much of the score is about form, colour and texture, and it often offers dissonant patches that wind up the tension between the men and women and snakey woodwinds that highlight the insidious nature of the island's true inhabitants. MATANGO is a masterpiece." -Charlie Brigden