Mosura tai Gojira/Mothra vs. Godzilla (1964), Part 4: American Version and DVD
Friday, June 29th, 2007The 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?
