Mothra (1961)
Produced and Released by: Toho Co. Ltd.
Director: Ishiro Honda
By Dr Kain

Introduction

Mothra is one of the most well known monsters to have been created by Toho and a well-regarded fan-favorite. She/He is a giant moth, which often has two small twin girls under her/his protection. Mothra has appeared in many Godzilla movies, including the most recent addition to the series, Godzilla-Mothra-MechaGodzilla: Tokyo S.O.S.

There have been various incarnations of this classic monster throughout the years, several fans of the series however believe that the original is the best of all the designs Please note that Toho recently released it on DVD in Japan with a nice remastered print.

The Story

A ship sinks into the ocean, and the survivors have found themselves stranded on an island used for atomic bomb testing, called Beru. After they are found, they are discovered to not have been affected by radiation poisoning, which is believe to be due to a special juice they were given by the Beru’s natives.

This pushes the government to send people onto Beru to explore the island. Senichiro Fukada (Frankie Sakai) is a reporter sent there along with his photographer Michi Hanamura (Kyôko Kagawa), and they run into a scientist named Dr. Shin'ichi Chujo (Hiroshi Koizumi). While exploring the island, Chujo wanders off and is almost killed by some plant when suddenly these two little girls save him. He tells everyone his story, which creates interest to someone named Clark Nelson (Jerry Ito). When the expeditionary team continues their search, they run into the two girls, and Nelson tries to take off with them until the islanders show up ready to kill them. The remaining members of the expeditionary team joins the natives in order to force him to put them down, which he does, for a few hours.

Later on using his own team Nelson, takes the girls, and kill some of the natives on his way out. He then puts the girls in a show, where they begin to sing, which wakes up Mothra, who hatches from her egg. Mothra makes her way to Japan to save the girls, but is attacked by the army. She creates a cocoon and evolves into her moth form. When she hatches out of the cocoon, Nelson has taken the girls to New Kirk City in America. With the help of Senichiro, Michi, and Chujo, the fairies are returned to Mothra, who flies off back to the island.

Review

While Godzilla may be the biggest and most popular series for Toho, Mothra has been an important monster since she/he was introduced. There have been numerous movies which included Mothra, but sometimes using the same character multiple times does get annoying. I am not the only fan who believes this, there are others. Mothra was even featured in a trilogy of movies back in the late 90’s, which the first two were less than average movies featuring this monster, so this one is my second favorite of the four movies produced at this time. I do not believe there is even one Mothra fan, or Kaiju fan that can go on without seeing this movie at least once.

The plot is a little ridiculous, but for its time, it was great. This used to be one of my favorite movies when I was a kid, but not anymore. I still think it is a great movie, but I do wish there was more monster action because you really don't get anything with Mothra until the last 20 minutes of the movie. The human drama gets a little boring, but it does move quickly, so things are not all that bad. The print on the DVD is remastered, which looks great, and helps certain scenes look more realistic. One thing I find funny is that there is a lot of English dialog in the movie, especially at the end when they were in New Kirk City, which had Japanese subtitles.

It is also nice to see this because the new Godzilla-Mothra-MechaGodzilla: Tokyo S.O.S. includes this movie for Mothra’s origin.

Conclusion

Just seeing this movie in its original language was nice even with its flaws. Although the DVD does not include a 5.1 audio track, turning on my Surround Sound System’s Pro Logic sound made it sound great with an excellent use of the other four speakers. As I said before, no Kaiju fan can pass by this movie, so if you have not seen it yet, what are you waiting for? Even if you do not enjoy it, it is nice to see the original.

One more thing, this is also the movie which introduced the twin girls, and had them haunt us every time Mothra appeared except for 2001’s Godzilla-Mothra-King Ghidorah: All Out Monster Attack.

Being this is my first review, I would like feedback on things you liked, things I should try to improve on, add, or not to say.

Dr Kain