Matango

A yacht of wealthy holidaymakers is wrecked on a fog-bound island. There is a derelict research ship, a warning against eating the local fungus, and the fungus is the only food.

Ishiro Honda, who made Godzilla, directed it, and it is a genuine surprise: a slow, nasty allegory about a group of people abandoning each other under scarcity, with the mushroom transformation as the endpoint of their moral collapse.

The creature effects, people bursting into walking fungus, are gruesome for 1963 and were controversial enough that the film was cut and kept off television for years because the makeup resembled radiation victims.

It is a survival drama first and a monster film second, and the framing device, a survivor in an asylum, gives it a truly despairing ending.

It has a cult following that includes a great many film-makers.