I can’t help but wonder if Matango inspired Gilligan’s Island. You have a small crew of people with different roles in society cruising the high sea for jollies when a storm comes up and shipwrecks them. In Matango, the island on which they are shipwrecked has barely anything edible on it. Most of the movie is spent revealing the various crew members’ truly cruel and selfish natures as they struggle to survive starvation. It’s a dark and uneasy story compared to the kindhearted Gilligan’s Island, where everybody cheerily works together on their island rich in its bounty: bananas and coconut radios. It’s Matango‘s dark, brooding atmosphere that makes it so creepy. And also creepy is that the mushrooms’ poisonous nature is known, but never truly accepted (except towards the end of the movie). The mushrooms are more than an obvious physical metaphor on human society. Or maybe it’s the evil of peer pressure. Or it might be a bit of both.
Tonight I will be participating in a Pumpkin Carving Contest hosted by the CLAW. I'll be sure to post photos of the various pumpkins later.
