These 'shrooms provide majorily bad trips

Matango (aka "Attack of the Mushroom People") (1962)
Starring: Akira Kubo, Miki Yashiro, Kumi Mizuno, Hiroshi Koizumi, Hiroshi Tachikawa, Yoshio Tsuchiya, and Kenji Sahara
Director: Ishirô Honda
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

A sudden storm maroons a group of pleasure-boaters on an uncharted island inhabited by strange mushroom creatures.

If "Gilligan's Island" were a horror movie, then this would be it. We have the Skipper and Little Buddy characters (although they're contemptuous of their passengers and treacherously self-centered as opposed to bumbling and helpful); we have Ginger and Mary-Ann (although one is a shy student and the other a bitchy diva), the Millionaire (the owner of the yacht who is always quick to remind everyone else how rich he is... and the bitchy diva stands in for His Wife), and finally, the Professor (who is, well... the Professor).

"Mantango" is a far more effective horror film than I expected to see from the home of Godzilla and who-knows-how-many-other giant monsters. It stars out feeling like an adventure flick, but once our crew of castaways find the wrecked research vessel on the coast of the island where they are marooned, a sense of claustrophobic horror starts to build. And as desperation starts to grip our band of contentious castaways, it becomes more and more evident that they have nowhere to hide from the monsters or each other.

Perhaps the biggest surprise in the film was that the monsters--the mushroom people--were not as silly as I expected them to be. Perhaps it was because they were tied in with the fact that the only way for the characters to survive was to eat food they knew would turn them into monsters, but the effective make-up effects and costumes also played a role.

While I wasn't thrilled with the "shocking twist ending"--which was so bad that it rivals some of the worst modern offenders I've complained about--everything prior to it as very well done. It's a horror film that's free of gore and nudity, so it can be enjoyed by the entire family. Heck, it's even free of stringy-haired girl-ghosts, so this might just be a Japanese horror flick that even those who are sick of them can enjoy!

'Fungicide': Great intentionally bad movie

Fungicide (2005)
Starring: Dave Bonavita, Wes Miller, Dave Wascavage, Mary Wascavage, and David Weldon
Director: Dave Wascavage
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

When Silas Purcell (Weldon), a dorky mad scientist who still lives in his parents' basement, takes his latest project with him on vacation, the audience-expected accident happens, and soon the residents at a budget bed-and-breakfast place are fighting for their lives against a hoard of giant killer mushrooms!


It's not often that a movie described as "so bad its good" actually is so bad it's good, but that is the case with "Fungicide". It's an absolutely horrrible movie that looks like it was shot with a camcorder over a weekend, is performed by amateur actors (who, literally, are the director's family and friends, as well as the director himself), and features "manshrooms" and killer mushroom puppets that are only exceeded in their laughable-ness by the computer graphics effects.

However, the badness, coupled with the unadulturated glee displayed by the cast as they fight badly drawn CGI mushrooms and guys in dressed up in badly done mushroom costumes that shoot silly string at them as a defense, make this a movie that I watched with increasing glee and ausement myself.

Wascavage and his actors brought an energy to this film that is all-too-rarely seen in low-budget pictures. None of the actors had that lethargic quality that is so common among those who are working in front of a camera for the first time, and, while they had plenty of the "Look... I'm ACTING!" quality that is equally common in performers at this level, it is something that complemeented and enhanced the awful special effects and cheezy monster costumes. Wascavage and Friends clearly understood they weren't making the next big monster movie, and they are clearly having fun making the best movie within their reach, and making it intentionally goofy as they go.

The comedy, intentional goofiness, and the sense that the actors and director KNOW they are making a bad movie all combine to give the film its infectious enegy. It also helps that the script has some hilarious moments in it (the dream sequence with Silas spending a happy life with this killer mushroom "children" is truly one of the funniest bits I've seen in a amateurish production like this, ever. The handpuppet mushroom is so goofy that it in-and-of-itself is one of the niftiest and craziest things about this film.

And, to top it off, as silly as this movie is, the final showdown with the killer mushrooms actually managed to be a little scary, partly because I found that I had some invested in the very silly characters that are the films heroes--a reality TV star Major Wang (Miller), a retired pro-wrestler who is secretly suffering from a deadly yet potentially tragi-comic malady (Bonavita), an obnoxious realtor (Dave Wascavage), and the happy hippy who runs the B&B (Mary Wascavage)--and partly because David Weldon does such a fabulous job as Silas the Mad Scientist.