ATTACK OF THE MUSHROOM PEOPLE / Toho Studios - 1963

It's another Monster Monday with Tabonga, here at The Dungeon!.. This great Toho flick was a favorite of ours in the sixties whenever it appeared on TV. American movies never got this weird! Directed by the awesome Mr. Ishirô Honda, a redo of a previous post from 2008.

We have a soundclip of the theme and the song being sung by Kumi Mizuno at the beginning. Notice that the theme sounds like it's from a HECKLE & JECKLE cartoon!! Soooo, push the big red 'GO' button there by the amp guage, now, lil' helper Ralphie The Tarantula! Here are some hallucinogenic sounds from... ATTACK OF THE MUSHROOM PEOPLE!

Here's Kumi as entertainer Mami Sekiguchi, singing her happy song, when things were fine, before the storm hit and landed them on that mysterious foggy island! Lovely Kumi is still working today and was also in these fine films... I WANT TO BE A SHELLFISH, KILL THE KILLER!, GORATH, THE LOST WORLD OF SINBAD, FRANKENSTEIN CONQUERS THE WORLD, INVASION OF THE ASTRO-MONSTER, GODZILLA vs THE SEA MONSTER, THE WAR OF THE GARGANTUAS, GODZILLA AGAINST MECHAGODZILLA and GODZILLA: FINAL WARS!

After making it to the island, they discover a tattered old ship in a radio-active mist. Of course, they decide to explore it...

It's nothing less than a spook joint inside, filled wif' funky atomic fungus and the like!!

Numbnuts here finds a box of rations in the hold and decides to horde it.

This pic is plain cool, and, that's why it's here! I knew a friend that could pop his jaw, he could blow smoke rings that would blow your mind!

Here's another nice pic I couldn't resist showing.

It's the creepy roaming atomic mushroom man everyone's starting to see!

Weak men cannot resist sexy dames' demands, it's in the DNA...

Here's a cool quote from Eegah!! from an earlier post... I just read that in Japan, you used to be able to buy psilocybin mushrooms in vending machines; now a lot of this (Japanese) stuff is starting to make sense!

The movie was nearly banned in Japan because the makeup the cast wore as they were turning into mushrooms was reminiscent of how some victims looked after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki!

The interior of the dark, dank old ship helps make for plenty of chilling moments! That mushroom dude knows how to fight, too.

Horror of horrors!.. Kenji finds his girl enjoying some of the radio-active 'shrooms! He has to get away and makes it back to their boat, where he's eventually rescued at sea.

What's neat about this film is that it's told in flashback, a great setup for the final scene, where, Kenji wishes he had just stayed on the island with the rest of them...