Which of these films was the first to extensively use the front projection effect?

Matango is a 1963 Japanese horror film directed by Ishirō Honda. The film stars Akira Kubo, Kumi Mizuno and Kenji Sahara. It is partially based on William H. Hodgson's short story "The Voice in the Night" and is about a group of castaways on an island who are unwittingly altered by a local species of mutagenic mushrooms.

A front projection effect is an in-camera visual effects process in film production for combining foreground performance with pre-filmed background footage. In contrast to rear projection, which projects footage onto a screen from behind the performers, front projection projects the pre-filmed material over the performers and onto a highly reflective background surface.

Front projection was invented by Philip V. Palmquist who, while working at 3M Corporation, received a patent on the technology and also won an Academy Award for the invention. It was first experimented with in 1949, shortly after the invention of Scotchlite, and had appeared in feature films by 1963, when the Japanese film "Matango" used it extensively for its yacht scenes. Another early appearance was in 1966, during the filming of "2001: A Space Odyssey". Dennis Muren also used it for his 1967 debut film "Equinox". Two British films released in 1969, "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" and "The Assassination Bureau", used the technique, as did the 1969 film "Where Eagles Dare".