dimfuture.net

The American Version

It’s clobberin’ time!

In May of 1964, it was announced that Henry G. Saperstein – remember that name; it’ll be more important later in the series – had acquired the U.S. rights to Mothra vs. Godzilla, and was going to release it as “Godzilla vs. the Giant Moth.” This didn’t last. Saperstein sold the rights to American International Pictures, where it came under the stewardship of James Nicholson and Samuel Z. Arkoff. Nicholson renamed the film “Godzilla vs. the Thing.” (Which latter character presumably came from the Place, where it lived side-by-side with the Persons.) Perhaps he thought the giant-moth idea wouldn’t play in Peoria; perhaps he was concerned about copyright, as another company had released Mothra in the U.S. Whatever his reasoning was, AIP’s massive marketing campaign played off of the ambiguity of the new title, tempting audiences with the mysterious identity of Godzilla’s opponent. The dubbing for this version was done by Titra Studios, an organization which provided supplemental income for numerous struggling actors. Said actors’ attitude toward these movies ranged, predictably, from enthusiasm to outright disdain. The dubbed film debuted on a double bill with Voyage to the End of the Universe. It has been reported that many of the children who went to see the bill were really only there for the Godzilla picture.

The American version of Mothra vs. Godzilla is far and away the most respectful of any such version to date. The music is intact; the translation is excellent. Very few scenes are taken out, and most of them are extremely trivial. The dubbing is mostly very good, though some of the characters have extremely lame Asian accents, as if we are meant to believe that all these Japanese people are speaking English, as a second language, amongst themselves all the time. Mothra is referred to by her real name the first couple of times we hear of her, but then she starts getting called “the Thing,” and this about half the time, apparently at random. Why would the Shobijin call her “the Thing”? Or the Infant Islanders? Other renamings occur – Infant Island becomes Mothra Island, and Junko becomes Yuka, or Yoka, or something like that. But these are fairly minor points in an otherwise first-rate ‘americanization.’ And they are quite offset by a unique event: The U.S. version has a short sequence, shot by Toho Studios, of American warships attacking Godzilla. This was actually a holdover from the original script of the film, in which these were to be ‘Rolisicans’ doing the attacking; this was scrapped, but then reattached, for international release. It’s a pretty good scene, with some great shots of Godzilla emerging from smoky explosions. More importantly, it doesn’t exist in the Japanese version, possibly because it was felt that Japanese audiences would be a little nervous about the depiction of the U.S. military firing missiles toward Japan. But why would that be?

(continue reading…)

Review

Yeah, I’m pretty sure they’re ignoring us.

In Steve Ryfle’s Japan’s Favorite Mon-Star: The Unauthorized Biography of “The Big G,” – really the definitive English-language Godzilla text – he calls Mothra vs. Godzilla “indisputably the greatest of the Godzilla sequels.” Though it pains your reviewer to differ with so eminent a Godzilla scholar, he must dispute this anyway. In doing so, your reviewer is at variance with not only Ryfle, but most of North American Godzilla fandom; the treatment that this movie receives in the literature is enthusiastic to the point of the embarrassing. And it’s certainly not a bad movie. What, then, is your reviewer’s problem?

Well, it’s not Godzilla. Godzilla is more threatening in this film than he has been since the first, or will be for the rest of the Showa period. He is a pure engine of destruction, here. Some commentators have argued that he destroys in this film accidentally, just through the fact of his existence; but upon alighting in Nagoya, his first action is to blast a building with his ray for no reason, and he assaults Mothra’s egg with a similar lack of provocation. This is an evil Godzilla, and it’s nice to see. He also remembers to use his atomic breath in this film, and that’s great too. Further, he attacks a lot of things with his tail, which whips around nicely when not being so used; and if the recent Godzilla video games have taught humanity anything, it’s that Godzilla’s tail is especially dangerous. On the down side, the sequence where he tears down buildings through sheer clumsiness could probably go. Where appearance is concerned, this is one of the better Godzilla suits (constructed by Kanzi Yagi, with a particularly high level of input from Haruo Nakajima), though it is not as good as the one fromKing Kong vs. Godzilla. It’s thinner and darker than before, and has a lumpier head; its upper lip quivers in a lifelike manner, though this was apparently caused by a tear in the suit rather than intentional agency. His light-colored eyebrow ridges, while a bit odd-looking against his general coloration, are positioned so as to give him an angry and sinister appearance.

(continue reading…)

Synopsis

Goddamn metal detector lied to me again!

This movie starts out with scenes of a typhoon ravaging a coastline. Afterwards, two reporters, Sakai (Akira Takarada) and his lovely assistant/ photographer Junko (Yuriko Hoshi; note that her character’s name comes from the background material, and is not mentioned in the movie) cover the damage at Kurata Beach and find a strange, flat, blue-gray object. Meanwhile, a huge, blue and yellow egg floats ashore at Shizonoura, and is claimed by a fishing village. Cut to a crowd gathering around the egg. Our reporters are there; they talk to Dr. Miura (Hiroshi Koizumi), who tells them nothing, really. Then Kumayama (Yoshibumi Tajima), of “Happy Enterprises,” who is an overweight man with a bad moustache, shows up. He says he’s bought the egg (for 1,224,560 yen – the price of its weight in chicken eggs), and, despite protestations, is going to put it on display for a small admission fee.

Our three heroes trail Kumayama to the hotel room of his financier, the arrogant and obviously Evil Jiro Torahata (Kenji Sahara). The two evil persons discuss their evil amusement-park-building plans, and then hear a duo of high-pitched voices, begging them to give the egg back. The voices are revealed to come from two tastefully-dressed women who are less than a foot tall (Emi and Yumi Ito); the villains try to catch them, but they escape.

(continue reading…)

Statistics

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)

(continue reading…)

The American Version

Aw, I don’t wanna see Godzilla! Whatever happened to Gigantis?

John Beck, as you’ll recall, retained for himself most of the western distribution rights to Kingukongu tai Gojira, and he sold them promptly to Universal-International, the deal being reported in Variety in April of 1963. And Universal released the film, and released it big. Universal’s delightfully-named Exploitation Department published an advertising handbook for cinema owners, with many excellent publicity suggestions. It urged them to send telegrams to local sports journalists, encouraging them to cover the movie as a prize fight. It suggested that local children be recruited to carry around signs supporting one monster or the other. It proposed that the theaters send people out in monster costumes, which “should be easy to prepare.” And so on. Whether any cinemas did any of this is unrecorded.

Of course, none of this could happen until the film was tarted up for an American audience. A number of new scenes were added, under the direction of Thomas Montgomery (which Godzilla scholar Steve Ryfle thinks to be a pseudonym, an ‘Alan Smithee’). These had been written by Paul Mason and Bruce Howard, and featured Michael Keith as Eric Carter, James Yagi as Yukata Omura, and Harry Holcombe as Arnold Johnson. These gentlemen, who were probably very nice in person, came together to do the most godawful hack-job on the American release of a Godzilla film ever.

(continue reading…)