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Japanese Title: Mosura tai Gojira (“Mothra vs. Godzilla”)
Toho Studios’ Official English Title: Mothra vs. Godzilla
Other American Titles: Godzilla vs. the Thing (original release); Godzilla vs. Mothra
Noteworthy International Titles: Watang! Nel Favoloso Impero dei Mostri (Italian, “Watang! In the Fabulous Empire of Monsters”); Godzilla und die Urweltraupen (German, “Godzilla and the Primeval Caterpillars”); Godzilla contra los Monstruos (Spanish, “Godzilla vs. the Monsters”); Godzilla Affronte la Chose (Belgian, “Godzilla Confronts the Thing”)
Director: Ishiro Honda
Producer: Tomoyuki Tanaka with Sanezumi Fujimoto
Screenplay: Shinichi Sekizawa
Music: Akira Ifukube
Special Effects: Eiji Tsuburaya
Japanese Release: 4/20/64 or 4/29/64; reports vary
American Release: 8/26/64 or 9/17/64; reports vary
U.S. Distributor: American International Pictures
Review Copy DVD Distributor: Classic Media
Running Time: 89 min./ 88 min. (American version)
Monsters: – Godzilla (Japanese: “Gojira”)
- Mothra (Japanese: “Mosura,” the closest that language can come phonetically to “Mothra”) – A huge, benevolent moth, white and brown in color; also, either of her two offspring, which appear as segmented, brown caterpillars of enormous size
- The Shobijin (“tiny beauties” in Japanese; also referred to as ‘Ailenas’ in American publicity) – A pair of 30-centimeter-tall, identical women who share a bond with Mothra
Principal Cast: – Godzilla – Haruo Nakajima
- Mothra – One source gives Katsumi Tezuka as the performer of Mothra, but more often it is stated that Mothra was brought to life entirely by puppetry and the like
- Ichiro Sakai – Akira Takarada (previously “Ogata” in Gojira; by now a major star in Japan)
- Junko Nakanishi – Yuriko Hoshi
- Dr. Miura – Hiroshi Koizumi (previously “Tsukioka” in Gojira no gyakushu
- Jiro Nakamura – Yu Fujiki (previously “Furue” in Kingukongu tai Gojira
- Kumayama – Yoshibumi Tajima (previously a ship captain in Kingukongu tai Gojira)
- Jiro Torahata – Kenji Sahara (previously “Fujita” in Kingukongu tai Gojira)
- The Shobijin – Emi and Yumi Ito (“The Peanuts,” a popular Japanese pop duo; birth names Hideo and Sukikio)

We must not tell the Americans that we have created Mothra for real!

Background

With the spectacular success of King Kong vs. Godzilla, Toho Studios decided to get cracking on these here Godzilla pictures. At least one a year would come out for every year of the mid- to late-1960s, starting with 1964’s Mosura tai Gojira, or Mothra vs. Godzilla.

The road to the final script for Mothra vs. Godzilla was a circuitous one, or at least history records it as such. After King Kong vs. Godzilla, a script for Frankenstein vs. Godzilla was produced. In this screenplay, a small boy basically becomes a huge, colossal Frankenstein’s monster, as a result of bizarre and horrifying events which we will not go into here, mainly because said events eventually will appear in the Toho film Frankenstein Conquers the World, which we will discuss later. In Frankenstein vs. Godzilla, Godzilla is herded to giant-Frankenstein’s location, to rid Japan of the menace of Frankenstein. A bad idea? You bet, but then, a similar thing had just been tried with King Kong and Godzilla, and had basically worked out fine. The monsters fight, until Godzilla is carried away by a river, and Frankenstein by a lava flow. Anticlimactic, to say the least. It is perhaps best, then, that this idea was scrapped.

More weird marketing stills from Toho

Instead, it was decided that Godzilla would face one of Toho’s own heavy hitters, the colossal insect Mothra, from the 1961 film of the same name. In the original treatment for this script, the apparently dead body of Godzilla washes up on the Japanese shore, where a cartel from Rolisica – a made-up country from the first Mothra film, providing its villains, and also a thinly-veiled stand-in for America – decides to charge admission to see it. Everybody is presumably really surprised when the body wakes up and goes on a rampage. Our heroes decide to travel to Infant Island, the home of Mothra, and there offer themselves up as hostages in return for Mothra’s aid against Godzilla. Meanwhile, Godzilla attacks Rolisica, is himself attacked by Frontier missiles, and then goes on to tear down Himeji Castle – the only castle in Japan that has never been destroyed and rebuilt. Sorry, had never been destroyed and rebuilt. Mothra shows up, and the flying insect and Godzilla have a battle that can only responsibly be called ‘climactic.’

This would not be the way the screenplay went, however. Screenwriter Shinichi Sekizawa, as was his wont, took the ‘best parts’ of the treatment and then wrote something largely else. Director Ishiro Honda also took a hand, rewriting the ‘hostages to Mothra’ section into something more in keeping with the messages he wanted to send. And so your reviewer has not just given away the whole plot of Mothra vs. Godzilla. He’ll do that next.