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Weirdhouse Cinema: Mothra vs. Godzilla

2025/5/23

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Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb. And this is Joe McCormick. And today on Weird House Cinema, we are going to be talking about the 1964 giant monster movie Mothra vs. Godzilla, directed by Ishiro Honda. This is our third Godzilla movie following 1971's Godzilla vs. Hedera and 1969's All Monsters Attack.

That's films 11 and 10, respectively. This is also our third Ishiro Honda film. He directed this, All Monsters Attack, and a 1969 film titled Atragon that we've talked about on the show before. That is a flying submarine and another kaiju creature. He is one of only a handful of directors that we have featured on three or more Weird House Cinema selections.

You know, we are really doing the Godzilla films in a strange order. And by that, I mean, we're working, first of all, backwards through time. But also we started with what are widely seen as some of the weirdest, most divergent films in the Showa era Godzilla catalog. So the first one we did, like you said, was Godzilla versus Hedera. That's from 1971. Yeah.

That was indeed the 11th film in the Godzilla canon. And that one was a psychedelic ecological doom trip in which Godzilla is summoned to defend Japan from a toxic sludge monster that powers up by huffing pollution out of factory smokestacks.

A lot of Godzilla fans regard Hedera as one of the worst films in the series. I do not share that opinion. I like it a lot more than some of the more mainstream monster slams in the middle of the original run. I think its weirdness actually kind of makes it more unique, really makes it stand out. I

but I will agree. Yes, it is one of the most unusual Godzilla films. Yeah. I mean, at the end of the day, if you're watching a Godzilla movie or any Kaiju movie, it's like you're in a good place. Yeah. Yeah.

Uh, so we did that one. And then the next one we covered, uh, was based on a listener suggestion. That was all monsters attack from 69. This was the 10th Godzilla film, as you said. And once again, this one was a departure from the established format at this time. Uh, because while the main series starting from pretty early, uh,

had been especially popular with kids. I think All Monsters Attack was the first Godzilla movie that you could really say was explicitly just made for children. It was just a kid's movie. The main character is a lonely little boy whose parents are always busy working. And so he sort of has Godzilla and the previously introduced babyzilla creature known as Minilla, like mini Godzilla, as imaginary friends.

All Monsters Attack was also a very budget-conscious film, making extensive use of archival footage from previous Godzilla movies, recycling fights and inserting them in creative ways into this framing narrative about the little boy who imagines the adventures of Godzilla and Manila.

This one was also unusual for the series because within this frame narrative, it was understood that Godzilla and the other monsters are basically fictional beings. So they're not being portrayed as acting within the real universe of the movie, but they are being dreamed about or imagined about by the main character.

So in, in all monsters attack, they're creatures of the imagination. And the main point of the story was about what they mean to the children who love them. There's actually a monologue. I don't know if you remember this, Rob, there's like a monologue at the end of the movie, uh, that explicitly makes the case that the Kaiju are for children, what the gods are for adults, right?

Yeah, yeah. That one was very interesting in that in many ways you could see it as a lesser Godzilla film because it is clearly aimed at children and it has a mini Godzilla and so forth. But yeah, it does chew a little bit on the meaning of a kaiju film. So I really did appreciate that one as well. Yeah. So those were number 11 and then number 10. And now we're doing a big hopscotch down the chronology ladder to number 4.

Mothra versus Godzilla was the fourth film in the Godzilla franchise, and it represents the third time that Godzilla would face off against another giant monster in battle. Uh, the first time a Godzilla movie would include a monster that I think you should regard as explicitly good or as a protector of humans against a greater threat. Uh,

This is a role Godzilla would himself usually take in later films. But here the Protector is not Godzilla, but rather his antagonist, Mothra. Yeah, the title is Mothra vs. Godzilla, which kind of does imply that Mothra has top billing. We'll get into that in a little bit. But also it is like Mothra against Godzilla. Mothra is a force in opposition to Godzilla. And yeah, Mothra is absolutely good.

Mothra is a protector. It's not one of these, like, oh, the enemy of my enemy monster is my friend monster. No, like, Mothra is...

is a divine being. Mothra is the creature of the gods. But also, Mothra is not cute and friendly and cuddly the way that, say, Manila is. Right. Mothra is a somewhat frightening being, but frightening to protect us. You know, frightening on the side of good. But she also looks very soft. Like, you know, she's kind of furry. So, I mean...

There is a very nice touch the fur vibe with Mothra as well. I didn't think about the furriness. You are right there. Yeah, more texturally pleasing than most of the monsters in the Godzilla series, which are often quite spiny and scaly looking.

But also, Mothra vs. Godzilla is the last film of the original Toho run to make Godzilla a bad guy. You could argue that Godzilla is more or less the villain, or if not a morally culpable villain, at least a threatening and destructive force to humans in the first four movies. So I think maybe we should run through those really quick to...

figure out how we get to Mothra versus Godzilla. So you've got the original Godzilla 1954. This, as we've talked about in the past, is a dark, haunting, somber tale about a monster created by nuclear weapons testing, which rises up out of the sea and attacks Japan. The first movie,

was inspired in part by some events in the real world. You can obviously think about the events of World War II and the atomic bombing of Japan, but then also there were more recent events that I've read were a major influence on Japan

on the original Godzilla. One of these was the so-called Lucky Dragon 5 incident, which happened earlier the year Godzilla was released. This was when the crew of a Japanese tuna fishing boat called the Lucky Dragon 5 were exposed to high levels of radiation as a result of the Castle Bravo hydrogen bomb test at Bikini Atoll.

And you can see the influence of the anxiety caused by this event in the way the movie articulates anti-nuclear and anti-militarist themes. A lot of Godzilla fans trained on the silly, sometimes themeless monster suit wrestling matches that you would get in later movies, I think will be quite shocked by the dark and serious tone of the first movie.

Yeah, the original Godzilla, black and white Godzilla, is an absolute destroyer and a thing that arises out of

like humanity's atomic age sins really yeah uh and now this first movie was directed by ishiro honda the same as the director of mothra versus godzilla so it's not a question of like totally different creative inputs we have the same main creative force behind these two movies but we can talk about reasons they might be different across time

But the first movie was by Honda and it was a huge hit for Toho. So in this movie, Godzilla is not a protector. I don't know if it makes sense to call him a villain, but he certainly has. I think he's pretty close to a villain in the first movie. Certainly a destructive force of nature or a destructive force of nature having been twisted by human sins and technology. Yeah, I think that's the way to look at it. Like, yeah, it's not like...

He has much of a persona beyond that. I mean, he is like some sort of dark anti-God that has been summoned by human technology and human advancement. Not here to help. Yeah. Then after that, so that's 54. Then after that, you've got Godzilla Raids again in 1955. This was a fast-paced

follow-up movie to capitalize on the success of the original Godzilla. This one not directed by Ishiro Honda, but by Motoyoshi Oda. Mostly gone in this one are the anti-war, anti-nuclear themes. I haven't actually seen this movie, but from what I've read, it

It's described as kind of a fast-paced adventure where Godzilla ends up fighting another giant monster, I believe based on an ankylosaur model. It's like a quadrupedal dinosaur covered in spines called Anguirus. Hmm.

Worth noting here that the Godzilla of this movie was not supposed to be the same individual as the original Godzilla, who died at the end of the first movie. It's just another giant radioactive reptile. Yeah, yeah. At the end of the first movie, Godzilla is destroyed. And there's just kind of, there's this warning. It's like, if we don't change our ways, there could be more Godzillas. Yeah. And, yeah, it came to pass. Here they come. Yeah. Yeah.

And then after this, there actually would not be another Godzilla movie for eight years. But Toho did not abandon the kaiju, the giant monster format. Instead, they introduced new monsters in their own films, such as Rodan in 1956. This is a movie about a giant flying pteranodon, basically. This one is also directed by Ishiro Honda.

And then Mothra in 1961, again by Honda, about a giant moth worshipped as a god by the people of a remote island. And I think you could argue that Mothra was the second most popular original Toho kaiju after Godzilla. Yeah, that seems to be the case. Yeah.

I was reading a bit about this in Godzilla, the Showa-era films, 1954 through 1975, which is the book-slash-Blu-ray collection that the Criterion Collection put out, with the textual parts written by Steve Reifel, who is, as far as I can tell, the main English-language authority on Godzilla films. I've heard him on Fresh Air with Terry Gross before talking about Godzilla films.

We were just talking about this off mic, but we both just ordered this Criterion Collection disc set, and it's a magnificent collection. Yeah, the book that comes with it is excellent. Yeah, it is a testimony to just how beautiful physical media can be for films.

But but one of the point I'll keep coming back to some of the things that rifle has to say about these about these movies But rifle points out that during this this period this was like a golden age of Japanese cinema Japanese film studios were really cooking a lot of great serious films were coming out But also in these other buckets of content there was like a lot of innovation people were trying new things and I think that's part of what we're seeing here is like Godzilla was a success and

but they were trying, they were expanding what Kaiju could be as well. So it's like, they weren't going to rest on their laurels necessarily and just put out Godzilla films. Um,

though they will eventually kind of return to form with this. Like, let's come back to Godzilla and maybe we'll bring in some things that we learned and some creatures we created from these other pictures. That's right. And so here we finally get to that in 1963 with King Kong versus Godzilla. They got the rights to King Kong or at least got some kind of rights to King Kong. Yeah.

So this was a sort of appointment meat slam between, as the poster said, the two mightiest monsters of all time. From what I've read, by the way, I think King Kong was one of the inspirations for the original Godzilla. Like there was a producer at Toho who had been thinking about King Kong, which had just been made in the 1930s, but I think had just been recently re-released internationally. Yeah.

And then I think there were also some other creative inspirations, maybe the beast from 20,000 fathoms. But anyway, so here we finally get to mash the flavors together. King Kong versus Godzilla. It continued the giant monster conflict theme. I believe it is in this movie that we really start to see the first signs of conflict.

moves taken from professional wrestling and the monsters start to act a bit less scary and more funny and anthropomorphic. Yeah.

Yeah, and Reifel says that Honda was not a big fan of this sort of treatment of Godzilla, and certainly some of the stuff we see in some subsequent films where Godzilla is essentially dancing and doing pratfalls. I think he makes a strong point that when Honda is on board for a picture, you're going to see more of a move towards Godzilla.

capturing something serious about Godzilla and maybe leaning a little bit more into social commentary than some of the other pictures are. Though some of the non-Honda pictures, like the Hetero picture, are actually quite serious in their own right as well. Yeah, yeah. I mean,

I don't take it to be that Ishiro Honda was against having a silly fun time. I think it's more like that, you know, he made the original movie and he made it with serious themes in mind. This was an like anti-nuclear weapons, anti-war film. Yeah. And, uh, and now this same creature is just out here, you know, doing touchdown dances and stuff. Yeah. Like he did, he seemed to be opposed to, uh,

ignoring the legacy of Godzilla and what Godzilla originally meant. You can certainly drift and evolve the brand, but you don't want to abandon some of like the, the, the key principles of the thing. Yeah.

But anyway, so you have King Kong versus Godzilla. And then finally you get to the movie we're talking about today, Mothra versus Godzilla in 1964, where contrary to our expectations trained on the later movies, there is a protector monster, but it is Mothra, not Godzilla. Godzilla is on the loose again, smashing things up after being awoken from the dirt. And in the story, the people of Japan must, it's interesting what Mothra,

what they have to do to defend themselves. It is essentially to humble themselves before nature and before the gods, uh, to, they have to humble themselves in like go to an Island and ask the people there to allow them to petition their, their great God, like moth deity to come to their aid. Uh, and, uh,

And the moth does come to their aid, but not before making them feel bad about their greed and arrogance. And they should feel bad. Yeah. We'll discuss.

But remember, I started talking about these four movies in order because this is the last time in this original run, at least, that we really see Godzilla as the antagonist, the villain, as opposed to the protector. After this movie, Godzilla starts his long face turn, repeatedly being called upon to battle more evil and more destructive monsters, essentially to attack.

to himself do what Mothra does in this movie. I believe Godzilla wouldn't really get to be the villain again until some films later in the 70s and 80s. Yeah, when they essentially are relaunching Godzilla and going back to its roots to some extent.

But anyway, since we've been going backwards through time through this series, I wonder, are we eventually going to work our way back to the 54 original? Yeah, I think we should. It's interesting to think about all of this in comparison to the way I think most of us have consumed Godzilla media.

Like most of us have probably not seen them. First of all, most of us have not seen all of them. And most of us have certainly not seen them in order. I know growing up, it's like I would catch Godzilla movies on television exclusively. I don't know that I had ever rented a Godzilla movie growing up. Maybe one of the later, one or two of the later, you know,

from the 90s or something. But for the most part, it's just Godzilla movies came on. You might not catch all of them. You might just catch parts of them even. You didn't know where in the order they fell. And then you're just continually making new discoveries about what a Godzilla movie can be. Wait, do you remember what the first one you saw was?

Ooh, that's a tough one because, you know, there were some... There was one Godzilla movie in particular I remember seeing on Mystery Science Theater 3000 as a kid. But then there were some others that they would just play on various Turner broadcast stations. I want to say that it was...

Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster. I think that was the one, the one with the big crab monster. I think that might have been the first one I saw. Abira? Yeah, yeah. It was also released as Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster. I'm not sure this is the earliest one I saw, but my earliest memory of seeing one was a TV broadcast of the one that's now usually called Godzilla vs. Actually, not Godzilla vs., just called The Invasion of the Astro Monster.

It's the one where Godzilla fights an alien kaiju called Monster Zero. I remember the scene on the other planet where there's a big, I don't

In my memory, it was like a football field on the surface of another planet. I don't think I've seen that one. Yeah. But, uh, but yeah, obviously I'd love to hear listeners tell us what their experience was with the Godzilla franchise. What was the first Godzilla film you saw? And then what was your, what subsequently did you get into? Like, where did you go from there? Did you move forward in time or backwards in time?

I'm sure there are some listeners who haven't even seen any of the Showa era Godzilla films. You might be more familiar with some of the current big Hollywood blockbusters that feature Godzilla. Yeah. You know, I don't know where's the best place to talk about this in the episode, so maybe I'll just say it here. One thing I was thinking about was how it feels like you can really detect...

a zeitgeist shift from the post-war fifties to the mid sixties in Godzilla 1954 compared to Mothra versus Godzilla in 1964. Like I was thinking about how in the original Godzilla, uh,

The main human hero the main human heroes are scientists and especially one scientist who bravely sacrifices his own life to carry out a scientific plan to defeat the rampaging monster while also not bringing into being a weapon that would you know potentially be abused by all humanity.

In Mothra, the main human heroes are, by contrast, journalists. There is a scientist, too. There's like a professor who tags along with them, but the main two are journalists.

And their real struggle is resisting capitalistic excess and greed, not by performing heroic acts themselves, really, but by acting as representatives of humanity or at least of the nation of Japan and humbling themselves before nature and traditional religion to like ask the embodiment of these forces to have mercy on them.

And the difference is also there's so much in the environment, like the kind of haunted, diminished, destroyed kind of environment of the original movie is so different in Moth Reverses where the environment feels like it's just bustling and full of...

public works and things being built and industry and moneymaking. Yeah, yeah. The world of Mothra versus Godzilla was a world on the move, a world on the grow. Everyone is very distracted with the capitalist exercise here. And that's kind of the whole point of it is that Godzilla is going to happen again. But if we are just too greedy and too bound up in chasing riches and

and growing everything, we're not going to be in a place where we can resist him again when he attacks. In fact, as we'll discuss, it's like all of this greed is getting in the way of various preparations that could have been made to prevent this sort of thing from occurring. Yeah. But the great human sin lying behind the original Godzilla is actually a horrible, deadly, destructive, collective project of humanity that

Whereas the human sin in Mothra Versus is individual acts of greed and selfishness. Yeah, yeah, that's a great point. But the solution, again, is getting out of that and getting into more of a collective approach towards problems. Yeah. All right, well, let's go ahead and listen to just a little splash of the trailer here. This is, I believe, from the original Japanese trailer. Oh, no!

The scientists who have set out to the mysterious island of Infant Island are here to borrow the power of the Mothra. We will not let you borrow the power of the Mothra! The Mothra is here! Will the great monster of the century, Godzilla, win? Will the Mothra win?

All right. If you would like to watch Mothra versus Godzilla, you should be able to get a hold of it. To be clear, though, this is Mothra versus Godzilla, not Godzilla versus Mothra. This is Mothra versus Godzilla.

because Godzilla vs. Mothra is the name of a later Godzilla film that features both of these kaiju. It's a mistake that you would be forgiven for making, and if you make this mistake, you're still going to get to watch a Godzilla movie. So, you know, it's no big deal. But this is Mothra vs. Godzilla. Put the year in there, 1964. That'll do it for you. Yeah.

Yeah, you can get it a number of places. Again, the Criterion Collection, Godzilla, the Showa-era films, 54 through 75, Blu-ray set is amazing. Hardback, beautifully illustrated book.

has no fewer than 15 Godzilla films on Blu-ray in there. If you're looking to stream, Criterion Channel currently offers this among many other Godzilla films, and there may be other places you can get it as well. I streamed it on the Criterion Channel before my discs came in, and it looks great on their transfer as well. So the streaming option there is really good.

But yeah, apart from this Criterion release, I noticed that this movie is hard to get on a good Blu-ray. I think there's one that's out of print or maybe some, at least in the U.S. region. Yeah, I noticed a Japanese Blu-ray that was being sold as well. I watched it on Blu-ray, but I also had the pleasure of seeing it on the big screen at Atlanta's Historic Plaza Theater a week or so ago as part of the Silver Screen Spook Show series. It was pretty great. It was a packed...

uh, crowd. Like, the entire theater was packed out. A very enthusiastic bunch. There were people in their Godzilla and Mothra jackets, uh, that people were wearing Mothra merch. There were some big Mothra fans there. They had a big Mothra puppet that they paraded around before we watched it. Uh, the,

A whole lot of fun. I got to see it with my kid. And if you're interested in the Silver Screen Spook Show series, they're going to be showing 1977 Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger in July. Oh, man, I grew up with the VHS of that one. Oh, wow.

So we might come back to that one on Weird House. We'll see. From what I recall, it's a hoot in terms of story and acting, and it has some really, really great stop-motion monsters in it, particularly a Minotaur robot. It's like a bronze or gold Minotaur robot called the Minotaur. Hmm.

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All right, let's roll through the folks involved in this picture. I'm not going to hit everybody. There are going to be some that we may come back to later to credit who the actor was, but I want to hit the major points. So starting with the director again, it's Ishiro Honda, who lived 1911 through 1993, legendary Toho film director who helmed 1954's Godzilla, and then he was the director of the film Godzilla.

The movie that started it all. He directed 44 pictures in total, eight of those Godzilla films culminating in the 1975 film Terror of Mechagodzilla, which according to Steve Reifel kind of comes back and serves as a proper cap to a lot of the silliness. You know, coming back and making maybe a little more serious and a little darker look at the Godzilla world.

He also directed Rodan, The Mysterians, The Human Vapor, Matango, Frankenstein vs. Baragon, The War of the Gargantuans, Space Amoeba, and more. He was a friend of director Akira Kurosawa and served as director, counselor, or chief assistant director on Kurosawa's 1985 epic Ron. And his name continues to appear in the credits on Godzilla movies and in other homages to the Godzilla franchise.

According to Steve Reifel, Honda started out directing more like sort of like lower budget, thoughtful films about about youthful characters and sort of, you know, the challenges of growing up.

But then, you know, ends up getting thrown into this world of Godzilla. And this, you know, comes to define him as a filmmaker. And, you know, he kind of stuck to his guns as much as possible about the seriousness of the original Godzilla picture. And so when his name is attached to it, yeah, there does seem to be this pivot back towards the darker roots of the being.

All right, so that's the director. Writer once more is Shinichi Sakazawa, who lived 1920 through 1992. Frequent collaborator with Honda and scribe of many Godzilla movies, beginning with 62's King Kong vs. Godzilla. Their Godzilla credits stretch from here all the way up to 1989's Godzilla vs. Batman.

Biollanta. That's just the story credit, but still, that's kind of like the full saga of their credits with the Godzilla franchise.

Speaking of tone and seriousness, I think another one of the things Rifle mentions in that book is that there were a number of writers who contributed to this early run of Godzilla films. And Sekizawa, I think, is the one more often associated with a somewhat lighter tone and more openness to comedy, which is there in Mothra, to be clear. Like this one is...

I it's not as silly as some of the later movies, but it does have a lot of comedy. Like the villains are very clownish in it. Yes. The human villains. Yeah. Uh, yeah, it has some great human comedy. Uh, the, the monsters are mostly treated with, with abject seriousness, but there's some very silly human antics in there as well. Yeah. Yeah.

And also the guy who just is always eating eggs. Oh, yes. We'll get to him in a second. But yeah, so we'll start with talking about the humans here and the monsters. I want to start with the forces of liberty, progression, and also eggs. Yeah.

We mentioned that the leads, the main characters here are journalists, and our main hero journalist is the character Ichiro Sakai, played by Akira Takarada, who lived 1934 through 2022. Cocky but honorable journalist.

A little tough to love at first. He comes off a little rough around the edges, but you grow to realize that he really cares about the truth and about doing what's right in the world through his journalism. Yeah. He, from the beginning, has integrity. He's not as likable in the beginning just because he's kind of bossy and he's demanding of respect from people around him. I don't know. Maybe they're not giving him enough respect. I don't know. Yeah.

But yeah, you come around to him throughout the movie. So Takarada has the top billing here, but he actually appeared in different roles in numerous Godzilla films, including 54's Godzilla, Invasion of the Astro Monster in 1965, Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster from 66, as well as 1992's Godzilla vs. Mothra and Godzilla Final Wars from 2004. Yeah.

He's also in King Kong Escapes from 67. That's one I haven't seen yet, but it's always been on my list because it features not only King Kong in kaiju form, but also a Mecha Kong called Mechani Kong. And so he's in that. And then Takarada is also in the 1955, I believe, Yeti horror film Half Human. Yeah.

All right. So he's our lead journalist. But then his photographer is the character Junko Nakanishi, played by Yuriko Hoshi, who lived 1943 through 2018. She also appears in Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster from 64 in a different role.

as well as in Godzilla vs. Megagurus in 2000. Her other credits include 1968's Kill and 1996's Night Trains to the Stars. This was a supporting role that earned her a Japanese Academy Award.

In this movie, she plays a character who is sometimes kind of impractical or overly concerned with the artistic side of life. Certainly for her boss at the paper here, who's like, you're not doing art. Just snap the pictures and move on. Yeah, you don't have to focus your camera. Just take a picture of it. But she's also really kind of the conscience of the movie. Like, she gives a speech on the island of Iwa that says,

That is sort of like what motivates the people to say, okay, Mothra can come to your aid. And she in multiple points along the film is kind of the voice of reason and conscience when other people are doing wrong. Yeah.

Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. She's no mere sidekick here. But she's also amusingly pushy. Like there's one part where Ichi, the other reporter, is like trying to get a question with this professor and the professor is like, I don't have time for this. And then she butts in and she's like, wait, one question. And then he's like, okay, what is it? And then she just steps aside and is like, okay, ask him.

All right, so those are our journalists, but we do have a scientist in the mix, Professor Mura, played by Hiroshi Kozumi, who lived 1926 through 2015. He'd also played a scientist character in Mothra, the previous film to feature this monster, and returned playing the same professor character in Ghidorah, the three-headed monster.

His other films include Atragon, 1963's Matango, Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla, Godzilla Raids Again, and Ikiru from 1952. Oh, the Kurosawa movie? Yeah, it's kind of a... When you start looking at the actors in Godzilla films, it's pretty typical to see that, okay, they've been in various other Godzilla and Kaiju films from Toho, and they also have bit or supporting roles in various Kurosawa films. Okay, okay.

So that's a trend that we'll continue to see here. One thing I didn't realize is that this character also appeared in the standalone Mothra film, which came earlier. Well, the actor did, but not the character. Yeah. I see. Okay. But he does. The confusing part is he does return apparently playing the same character in a later Godzilla movie.

Okay. Okay. Well, because there's a point where the, these like the fairy twins in this movie show up and start talking about Mothra and it's kind of like, Oh, Mothra. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, you know, they probably made headlines, right? Yeah. Okay, we mentioned the comic relief character. This is Hiro Nakamura, played by Yu Fujiki, who lived 1931 through 2005. He's pretty great here. Again, he is a comic relief character. My favorite thing about him is that, as you mentioned, he's always eating eggs, and he has an egg cooker on his desk at work.

Smells good. I love egg cookers. I think it and the rice cooker are two of the most fabulous unitasker devices that have been developed for the kitchen. But the idea of having one on your desk at work and making the whole office smell like boiled eggs is just in and of itself comedic. Huh.

So I'm a big fan of the rice cooker. I love my rice cooker. I use it all the time. I've never used a dedicated egg cooker. I don't even know. How does it work? Is it hard boil or? Well, you can do hard boiled and to some degree softer boils. They're like different levels that you fill the water up to.

But then there's still kind of, you still have to catch them at the right moment and then ice them down before they finish cooking. So we've had one for ages and I'm still refining exactly how to use it the best way to try and get those, you know, those precious runny eggs for, you know, for, you know, to go in ramen and so forth.

Oh, yeah. I do love a soft-boiled egg. But this guy eats so many of them in the movie. He's always just munching on a soft-boiled while they're talking about a big alien egg or monster egg. Right. And sometimes the solution is right there. He's the first one to realize that the solution to a problem might be egg-based. Yes. By the way, just unpaid product endorsement. The Zojirushi rice cooker, that's got to be one of my top brand loyalties. I love that thing. Makes me happy every time I use it.

Well, maybe one day we'll come back and discuss 1967's Branded to Kill. That's another Japanese movie, and that one prominently features rice cookers. Oh, nice. All right, let's see. I'm going to skip over to the newspaper editor. We may come back to him. I will point out that the actor that is generally credited with playing Mothra in one form or the other here is Katsumi Tezuka, but...

Born in 1912, his death date is not apparently known. He played various monsters in different Toho films alongside Nakajima, our main Godzilla actor. He apparently served as an assistant to Nakajima.

And then we have the twin fairies, the Shobajin, and they are played by the Peanuts. The Peanuts were a singing duo, a twin singing duo, Emi and Yumi Ito. Here they are reprising their roles from the earlier Mothra film.

Even if you haven't seen one of these movies, you've probably seen clips or stills. They are two tiny, identical Japanese women who sing to Mothra, sing for Mothra. It's kind of like a form of worship, really. That's the way I interpret it. That Mothra is a divine being and Mothra must be awoken and appealed to through some sort of worshipful song.

But also they are kind of divine beings, which is interesting. They're like the intercessors on behalf of regular humans are these two tiny humans, doll sized humans who who like pray to Mothra for us. Yeah, they're kind of intermediaries between us and the gods between us and Mothra.

And maybe in a sense, too, they are Mothra. There's a lot to chew on here. So Emi lived 1941 through 2012 and Yumi lived 1941 through 2016. Both were born in Nagoya, which will be important because that's the main city where everything happens in this picture.

They have a string of credits before 1961's Mothra, and apparently were already a sensation in Japan, in America, as well as parts of Europe, I believe especially like Germany and Austria. And their subsequent credits include not only this 1964 film, but also Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster. Mothra shows up, so the twins need to show up. A handful of musical comedies followed, and they performed on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1966.

They retired from performing in 1975, but their music seemed to have been, again, quite a hit. It ranged from folk songs, like Japanese folk songs, to covers of various Western hits. They toured quite a bit. And if you look them up on Discogs, you can find all sorts of amusing songs.

album covers both from Japan and also various international releases did we mention that they not only sing songs to Mothra but they also speak all of their lines together in unison yes it's a it's a striking effect

Yeah, I was reading that that's apparently that was one of the appeals of their act, too, is that their voices were essentially identical. And so it made for some some great vocalizations. It's by turns funny and creepy in the movie. Yes. So so it works out well.

All right, let's get into the forces of corruption and destruction here. First of all, we have the character Kumayama. He's the greedy guy with the mustache, played by Yoshifumi Tajima, who lived 1918 through 2009. Another regular Toho performer with credits that include various monster films,

with also some bit parts in Kurosawa movies sprinkled in as well. He is a comical villain in this who shows up to just beam with greed. If greed was embodied, it's like in the way this guy plays the role. He has...

Not a Hitler mustache, but it's in the ballpark. It's like a shrunken. What I would say is it's like if you imagine a handlebar mustache, but then you shrink it down so that it only takes up about a third of the width of his upper lip. Yeah, it feels I'm not sure if this is this is something that would have resonated at the time within the intended audience, but it feels like a very carny mustache, you know? Yes. Yeah.

So he's just always behaving crudely and greedily. It's like, you know, the director told him in every scene, just think about, I want to get money. And that's what he's doing. Now, his financial backer is the character Yuro Torohata, played by Kenji Sahara, but

Born 1932, and as of this recording, I believe, still out there. He actually played the dad in All Monsters Attack and was also in Atragon. So he's a Japanese actor who has the distinction of being, I think, in the most Godzilla films, 13 of them, in addition to numerous other Toho pictures.

He was in the first Godzilla movie, pops up as a newspaper reporter, and then I think a party guy in a boat as well. So he's all over the place. His last Godzilla film was 2004's Final Wars, and it looks like he was last active around 2011. Also, I believe he was the star of Mighty Jack, the Japanese television series that MST3K fans should know about.

Now, there were some things about this character I didn't fully understand. He is like the secret partner of Kumayama. Was it implied that he's involved in crime or something? He's got like a big cabinet full of money and he's being like sort of kept secret. Like Kumayama is the public facing owner of the egg and this guy is like his secret backer, but is also scamming Kumayama.

Yeah, I didn't get as much a sense of organized crime here. I feel like if that had been the case, there would have been more obvious tells to that effect. But it did feel like there are sort of two sides of crime.

the core, the, uh, the capitalist problem as perceived at the time in Japan. You know, it's like one guy is the more obvious, greedy, uh, you know, cash fisted individual and the more overt, corruptive force. And the other side is like standing back and saying like, Oh, I'm, you know, I'm not the idea man here. I'm just the guy with the big, um, locker full of cash, you know, like they're, you know, he's, he's prospering. Yeah. Yeah.

But I agree. His role in everything is maybe a little more cryptic to figure out, you know, at least, you know, from our standpoint as viewers. Yeah, yeah.

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There are places on Earth where science and mystery collide, and Skinwalker Ranch is one of the most fascinating examples.

Oh, and then we got to come back to Harunaka Jima playing Godzilla again. We've mentioned him on the show before. He lived 1929 through 2017, played Godzilla in 12 consecutive films. He was also in Mothra and War of the Gargantuas, as well as Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai in a bit role, not as a giant monster. And he was also in the movie,

And he's generally considered an absolute legend when it comes to monster suit performers. And I have to say, his physicality in the monster suit in this movie is especially good. There's kind of a wild abandon to the way Godzilla moves as he stumbles, tumbles, sprints, and lurches through the landscape. Godzilla really feels...

angry and full of rage in some of his scenes. I'm thinking of the scenes later on when he's getting silked up by the grubs and he just looks furious at what's happening. Yeah. Like when he destroys Nagoya Castle, which I've seen in real life. I've been to Nagoya. Yeah.

But when he destroys it, as we'll get to, it's kind of like trips and falls into it and then is mad at it. It's kind of like when you stub your toe on a coffee table and you're like, what is this coffee table doing here, you dumb coffee table? Yeah, there's a lot to unravel there about Godzilla the menace in this picture and how I believe others have commented on this. Maybe it was Steve Reifel that was writing about this, that

While Godzilla is definitely the threat and the villain and the monstrous antagonist of this picture, there's also a sense that maybe he's like a little less of a vehicle of vengeance compared to the original Godzilla. You know, like he's maybe more akin to a natural force here. Yes, that he's he's not nice, but it does feel a little bit more like he's doing these things kind of accidentally or at least recklessly. Yeah.

Though he does, I think, get mad at Mothra. He does. There is some heat between these two. Yeah. And then finally, getting to the music, we have legendary Japanese composer Akira Ifukube, who lived 1914 through 2006. Not only did he give us the incredible Godzilla theme music, which is just at its best in this picture, but he also created that signature roar.

Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, it was apparently achieved by rubbing a resin-covered leather glove across the loosened strings of a double bass. Oh, okay. It's hard for me to picture how that all comes together because I'm so used to hearing Godzilla's roar. It just, it feels organic. It feels like that's just the sound Godzilla makes. Yeah. The sound Mothra makes in this movie is great, too. That high-pitched metallic chirp. It's great. Yeah, it's piercing.

Yeah. And that again, his music is just an inseparable part of the true Godzilla franchise. Um, his other films include Atragon, Space Amoeba from 70, uh, 1956 is the Burmese harp. That's a non Kaiju film, but his theme music here for Godzilla, especially Godzilla's key theme is just incredible. Um,

And if we didn't have this theme, we wouldn't have that really awesome Pharaoh Monk track, Simon Says, which heavily samples not only the Godzilla music, but the specific Godzilla music from this movie. So if you're a hip-hop fan, old-school hip-hop fan, you know this track. It's conspicuously used. Yes. In an amazing way. I think, dare I say, a loving way. But yes, in general, Ife Kube's music for the Godzilla films is wonderful. I loved...

uh i think we've talked about this before but one thing that really got my blood going for for shin godzilla when it was coming out is the way that it used the like the old sounding theme from the original film but with the new movie footage you know that minor key theme oh man it's so good

But also his original music for Mothra itself or for Mothra versus Godzilla is a whole new ballgame and it's wonderful. Yeah, the Godzilla theme music, I kept thinking about this. It has a lumbering feel to it. Like it feels like the great footsteps of a titanic monster. But then there's also this sense of rising. And it just works so exceptionally well with the visuals of pretty much anything Godzilla is doing on the screen.

All right, you ready to talk about the plot? Let's get into it. So we begin with, as expected, that gorgeous, familiar mid-century Toho Scope logo, which I love. Every time I've said this before, every time I see it, it makes me happy. It makes me think of precious gems. You know, when it comes on screen, it's like I've been kind of scratching through a bunch of gravel and I come upon a cache of emeralds.

I have to admit, I loved it watching this live. There was thunderous applause for the Toho logo alone. So I love the enthusiasm of that.

So during the credit and title sequence, you've got lead-heavy doom horns, that great score we were just talking about, playing over a dark shot of the open sea in a typhoon. And rain is hammering down, the waves are huge, lightning flashes in the clouds in the sky. And as the credits wrap, we cut from the black mid-ocean to somewhere along the shore where waves are crashing against a seawall.

And then we get a close up on a sign that says in Japanese, congratulations, Karate Coast Reclamation Project complete. I think there's supposed to be some humor here contrasted with the weather and the fact that the music is still in like death of the universe mode. And we pan over to a pier beside the sea.

There's a bunch of stuff set up for a party. There's like a tent pavilion and streamers and picnic tables. And we watch all this stuff just get buffeted by winds and eventually swept away. And the waves surge over the seawall and tear down a bunch of power lines. We see a boat washed ashore and it crashes into everything. It's a monster storm.

The next day, there are blue skies overhead as hundreds of people gather at the coast we just saw. And the beach is now piled with rubble washed ashore by the typhoon. And we get an interesting effects shot, I think done in miniature, of the seawall with a long row of giant yellow pump stations in operation. I assume draining water out from behind the wall and blasting it back into the ocean of these pipes that look like cannons.

So a visual metaphor for civilization and technology reestablishing dominance over the forces of the natural world with a kind of violence implied because the pumps look like gun barrels. Mm-hmm.

As I mentioned earlier, greatly in contrast to the haunted, diminished Japan of the original Godzilla, this movie takes place in the middle of what feels like an economic and industrial boom. There's just capitalistic exuberance. Everything's under construction. Everybody's making money. Businessmen feel like gods and they just cannot be resisted.

And here in the crowd at the coast, we meet a couple of our major characters. We meet Ichiro Sakai, Ichi, a reporter for the Maicho Times. And when we first meet him, he's very impatient, focused, strictly business. And also Junko Nakanishi, his photographer assistant.

Again, more flighty and kind of contemplative as she's observing the scene. She says she's trying to come up with a theme for her photo spread. And Ichiro tells her, your theme is typhoon. Come on.

Now we see Ichi confronted by a clownish local politician who is angry at the fact that he wrote an article about the destruction caused by the typhoon. The assemblyman here does not like that Ichi has been reporting on the destruction. He insists that their coastal reclamation project will be the best ever. It's going to happen on time. How dare you write about this?

And nearby Junko is setting up for a photograph of all the garbage washed up on the shore. And she realizes one thing in the frame is a weird shimmering blue green object, kind of like a giant scale. Wonder what that is. But here's one of the scenes where Ichi is telling her, like, don't waste time with light meters. Just start clicking that shutter. This is not high art.

But I think Junko just feels differently. She has more of an artistic sensibility. She's like, we should do this right. Yeah, yeah. And I think he takes her craft for granted here. Yeah. So back at the newsroom, we meet a few more characters. We meet Ichi and Junko's boss, the news editor who is...

I don't know. I figure like he comes off as kind of brusque, but then later maybe reveals a kind of practical wisdom, would you say? Yeah, yeah. Like he's a very busy man and he has no time for silliness. He's got to get that paper out, you know, very much a cliche in many ways, but ultimately does care about the truth and is really behind journalism's, you know, key principles in the world.

Right. And then there's also this comic relief character, the reporter who's eating soft boiled eggs. Yeah. Such as he's always doing it in a scene where they're talking about giant monster eggs. For example, this scene, because the editor gets a call on the phone and it is revealed that the next big news event is a giant egg has been spotted off the coast of Japan at a place called Nishi Beach. Yeah. And it is a big one.

It's big. It's like a blimp. It's a big blue-green, blue-green-white oblate spheroid floating in the water. And we go to the local fishing village, which is portrayed as full of...

somewhat sympathetic but also easily frightened bumpkins who are first possessed by terror and then gradually by greed they decide that since fishing has been bad lately it's been a bad catch they're going to go out and claim the egg as the prize of their waters by right do they have a whole discussion about it they're like wait whatever comes out of that water fish or egg belongs to us so this is an egg it's in the water it's ours and

Yeah, there's actually a lot here that you could unravel. You could do a whole Shin Mothra movie based on this conflict. Oh, just the court cases about who the egg belongs to? Yeah, who does the egg belong to? The parties here or some of the parties that are going to be revealed here in a bit? Let's have a meeting about it and maybe a few depositions. Yeah. Yeah.

So the villagers take their boats out and they bring the egg ashore where it is transported to the beach. And we see shots of astonished crowds forming this cautious circle around it. Afterwards, Ichi and Junko arrive on the scene and they meet a new character, the scientist, Professor Mura, who is taking samples to better understand the giant egg. And this is the scene where

At first, the professor doesn't really have time for them, but Junko is pushy enough to get a question on the record. And the question that Ichi asks is, is this egg dangerous? The quote is, could it explode or release toxins? And the professor is like, well, that's what I'm trying to find out.

But they don't get a chance to find out. They are interrupted in the middle of that research by the arrival of the new big head guy in charge. This is Mr. Kumayama, a vain, greedy businessman, the proprietor of Happy Enterprises. I love the choice, the name of the business there. It feels apt. There's something sinister about the banality of it.

Yeah. Yeah. It's like, you know, don't you want to be happy? Yeah. How can you be opposed to happiness? So it turns out Kumayama has bought the egg from the local fishermen. It is now rightfully his. And there's a funny scene here where he explains how much he paid for it, like how he arrived at the price. And it was by multiplying the cost of a chicken egg.

by the size difference between the chicken egg and the giant egg. Oh, that's just logical. Yeah. Yes. Now the reporters protest. They're like, wait a minute. Should this egg maybe not be thought of as private property? Isn't this kind of a, kind of a wonder of nature? Maybe it belongs to all of humanity or none of us. Uh, and, uh, Kumayama is like, well, that's why we're going to let everybody come look at it. We're going to watch it incubate and hatch and everybody can come see for a small fee, of course.

So he's trying to go for the King Kong thing, right? He's going to take this wonder of nature and he's going to put walls around it and sell tickets. Yeah, they have a whole map. They have everything planned out, how it's going to work. Everyone's going to come and see the egg and maybe there'll be some additional rides. Who knows? This is going to really remake the whole area. Also the plot of Gorgo, remember? Oh yeah, that's right. And I guess kind of the plot of King Kong, right? Yeah.

Yeah, that's what I was just saying. Yeah, King Kong. And then sort of Jurassic Park, too, though. Jurassic Park has the cloning element. That's a little different. But yeah, this is a spectacle. People will pay to see this. But Kumayama taunts the reporters and the scientists for their ideals. He offers to pose for a picture for Junko, and then he just blows cigar smoke in her face when she raises the camera. What a jerk. Yeah.

And then later at the nearby hotel, Kumayama is revealed to have this secret business partner, this creepy guy named Torahata, who lent him the money for the deal. Torahata has this giant file cabinet full of cash, just cash money. And it's I don't know why he has that, but.

The idea is they're going to build this amusement park based around the egg, which they are now going to be keeping in this steel enclosure. I think presumably so if it hatches, whatever hatches can't get away. Yeah, or to some degree they might be incubating it a little bit. Yeah, they're doing that to the appropriate temperature and so forth.

But the two businessmen are interrupted in their scheming by something quite strange. Two tiny women the size of dolls who appear in their hotel room as if by magic and start chanting in unison about how they must return the egg and how it doesn't belong to them. These are the fairy twins. Again, these are the musical act, the Peanuts. Is that what they were called? The Peanuts. Peanuts, yes. How are they dressed here at the beginning? They...

They look kind of like cupcakes. They've got like a white fur and then a white hat with pink things on top. So there's kind of an icing effect. And then they're wearing yellow and pink dresses below that. Yeah, they're wearing something to be interpreted as like a traditional garb.

They are, in a way, they are their voices and representatives of the old world and not this new world of hyper activity and progress. It's like literally building things around an egg, which in and of itself is an interesting scenario. You're building permanent structures around this thing that is by its very nature impermanent.

and is going to lead to like some other different form that needs to be free. But they're like, nope, let's build it. It's all about right now. Yes, an egg is made to be broken out of and you build a cage around it. Yeah. Yeah. So obviously the business guys do not heed the message. Are they going to be like, oh, okay, we'll give you the egg back? No, instead they try to capture the fairy twins. They're like running around the hotel room trying to get them under a coat. There's some fun hijinks here. I think one of...

it's always important to drive home with a good kaiju movie that, yeah, kaiju movies have great scenes where monsters battle each other. But the best kaiju movies are also very enjoyable when the monsters are not on screen. And it takes a long time before we get to the monster battles here. But,

For my own money, I was never like missing the monster battles when we hadn't gotten there yet because there was just plenty of fun hijinks with, you know, these miniature, these maximized sets for these miniature characters and the comedy with the Eggman and the social commentary that was going on regarding like greed and corruption. Plenty to chew on here.

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You might think you need a team of people and fancy tech skills, but listen to me when I say you don't. You just need GoDaddy Arrow. I'm Walton Goggins, an actor, and I like the sound of starting my own business, Walton Goggins Goggle Glasses. But I couldn't do this on my own.

There are places on Earth where science and mystery collide, and Skinwalker Ranch is one of the most fascinating examples.

So after they fail in appealing to the businessmen, the fairy twins appeal instead to our heroes, to Junko, Ichi and the professor. I think this happens in the woods outside the hotel. I forget how they get out there.

Um, but they, uh, they let the heroes know that the egg actually belongs to the giant godlike being of Iwa Island, Mothra. And it was brought here by the storm. Uh, they say there's great potential for disaster when the egg hatches. So they must help the twins return the egg to Iwa Island where it belongs.

Yeah. Yeah. One of the interesting things about the twins is when they make themselves known there at first, you just hear them like a voice of one's own conscious, you know, urging you to make the right choices in life instead of the greedy path you're following. That's right. Yeah. There are a lot of scenes of them talking in unison and the characters are like looking around and yeah. Now, where's that coming from?

Uh, now at this point, I think maybe I'm going to skip more lightly over some of the machinations in the middle of the movie, but I'll summarize what happened. So the, the two evil greedy businessmen, uh, keep scheming. Uh, we see them counting money and trying to scam everybody, including each other and being possessive over the Mothra egg. Ichi Junko and the professor tried to expose the corruption of happy enterprises, but they don't seem to be able to stop them. Uh,

Uh, suddenly there is a shift in the middle of the movie. Remember that blue green scale found in the rubble after the typhoon? Well, turns out the professor has some news about it. It's radioactive and Junko and Ichi touched it. There's a cool scene where we see them getting like D rate. I don't know. They're getting decontaminated. They're standing in these purple pink, uh, kind of chambers, uh,

And that's not a good sign because what else is radioactive? It's Godzilla, baby. So nearby, suddenly Godzilla starts to rise up out of the earth from out of this desolate field of mud. Do you remember what the field was? Was it a construction site or something else? Yeah.

You get the sense that it's like reclaimed, maybe a mix of reclaimed sea and also the damaged area from the typhoon. Because you see like, you know, there's like a boat wreck in there and so forth. And also that's the idea that like Godzilla has been returned to Japan via the storms.

But this scene where he rises up is pretty amazing. We get that great theme song and people are like, oh, goodness. It's happening again. It's happening again. It's happening again. And here he is. He attacks Japan once again, wandering into cities, smashing up buildings and infrastructure. So we see him, I think, knock over like a TV tower and attack a castle. Any highlights from this rampage here? Oh, well, yeah.

There's some great physical movement of Godzilla here. I love that he's at times lumbering, other times kind of scrambling. Again, that sense of rage you referenced. When he destroys Nagoya Castle, well, even when he destroys that antenna tower,

He kind of, it's almost like he does so accidentally and it falls on him and it makes him even more angry. And then he kind of like trips and falls into Nagoya Castle. Like he didn't really mean to destroy it, but then he's mad at it because he fell on it and then he just bashes it the rest of the way.

I was re-watching this particular scene with my wife, and she was like, well, why is Godzilla so dumb in this movie? And I'm like, no, he's not dumb. Don't insult Godzilla's intelligence. But there is the sense, it's almost like he's been thrown out. He wasn't prepared for this. He didn't want to go on a rampage today. He was slumbering. Now you've woken him up. He's cranky, and he's going to destroy stuff. It's not necessarily what he wanted to do with his day, but it's happening. Yeah.

Exactly right. We're here now. Yeah. So the Japanese self-defense forces, they try to fight Godzilla. But since when is that done? I should note that in the U.S. version of this of this picture, which is, I think, what titled Godzilla versus the thing.

They actually, instead of it being just the Japanese Self-Defense Forces, they actually call in the U.S. military. And so the scene, instead of having the scene where it's the Japanese Self-Defense Forces having a meeting about how to attack Godzilla, it's a meeting between the Japanese Self-Defense Forces and the U.S. military. And the U.S. military does like a missile strike on Godzilla, which of course doesn't work. Yeah.

So finally, our heroes come up with an idea. I think they're in the newsroom, I believe, when they come up with this. Right. So they're like talking to the editor and stuff.

The idea is, what if they request help from Mothra? Rob, do you remember how they arrive at this idea? I believe the Eggman is the one who points it out. He's like eating an egg back there, and he's like, hey, I've got an egg-related idea, and I think this is our solution. And they're like, well, you know, actually, that's it. We should roll with that. So the reporters and the professor make the journey to Iwa Island to speak with the people there for the idea. The idea is they're going to beg Mothra to help defend them from Godzilla. But...

When they arrive at Iwa Island, they discover devastation. The island has been used for nuclear weapons tests. Yeah, and it is ravaged. It does not look good. You might be forgiven for expecting it to be like a tropical paradise that they're traveling to, and it probably was.

But now it is just devastation. Should we mention Skeleturtle? Oh, yeah. What was Skeleturtle's deal? Because at first I thought it was just the skeleton of a turtle, but it moves a little. Yes. Yeah. This is a thing that Godzilla fans have talked about for years, actually, that

So we see all these bones on this desolate beach where the nuclear tests have happened. It's supposed to be scoured of all life. And we see like the giant rib cage of some huge animal. Don't know what it is, but also a turtle and its bones. It's like a skull and a shell and vertebrae.

But it's moving around and there's no, no attempt to address this. No explanation. I don't know why it's moving around. I don't know if it's moving around by accident. If it is supposed to be a skeleton that is somehow still alive, the characters don't comment on it, even though it's right there in front of them. So I don't, it's one of the most mysterious things about this movie. What is meant by the skeletal? It's a haunting image, actually. I mean, it kind of suggests a living death, but

It is. Yeah, it really does. Yeah, like the nuclear testing has been so evil, in fact, that it has doomed these animals to a kind of hell existence where they're like dead, but they're still there somehow. Yeah, yeah. It doesn't seem to be played for comedic effect, and it's not elaborated upon, so...

Anyway, so they go to the people of Iwa Island who worship Mothra as their god. The local chief is initially not sympathetic to their pleas for help. They're like, wait, you're from the outside world that stole Mothra's egg and wouldn't give it back and does nuclear testing on our island and made skeleton turtles here? Why should we help you now? Yeah, they're like, yeah, that's true. We would love your unconditional support now in our battle against Godzilla. Yeah.

Creature that we are also responsible for. Yeah. Yeah. But Junko makes a plea. Basically, she's like, yeah, there are bad people out there. There are bad people everywhere. Bad people in Japan who took the egg. But there are innocent people there, too. They didn't do anything to hurt you. They're worth defending. And then she makes the point, you know, even bad people don't deserve to be killed by Godzilla. So please help us.

And this lands somewhat. Yeah, I mean, it lands with the local people who are hearing the message. It also, I think, lands with the audience. I mean, it's as potent a message today as it ever was.

So the fairy twins appear and they get a whole musical number here. Like they sing for a long time. Uh, and the singing, uh, they're singing a song to Mothra to enlist her aid. So I think we're getting Mothra on, on the team now. Mothra is going to happen. But again, Mothra has to be appealed to through song and worship. Um, and,

And then once that message is received, action can take place. Now, back on the mainland, we got to check in with our two greedy businessmen. They keep double-crossing each other until one finally kills the other one and tries to take all the money for himself. But then I think he dies pretty much immediately because Godzilla crushes the building he's in. Yeah, they're scrambling over a pile of money and shooting at each other while Godzilla is approaching visibly in the distance, looming like a great siege tower.

moving in on their headquarters. And yeah, so they both face fitting destruction here under the heels of Godzilla. But eventually, uh-oh, Godzilla's rampage sends him in the direction of the egg enclosure. That's right. And this is where you get a sense that, you know, Godzilla's violence towards, um,

The infrastructure of Nagoya may be more or less accidental. Like, he's here, he's going to rampage. He didn't ask to be here. But when he sees that egg, I don't know, there's a sense that, like, he knows this is kaiju business. Maybe he even knows what Mothra is, to some extent. He sees this as an enemy, and there's this sequence where Godzilla stares down the enclosure. And this is about the same time that Mothra is physically arriving. And...

And, oh my goodness, the look that Godzilla pulls here. Just absolute daggers for eyes. Yes. They just gave me the chills as he decides, as he starts destroying the egg facility. I mean, why would you mess with Godzilla here? I mean, this look, I included a still for you here, Joe. It's just, oh my goodness, the most intimidating Godzilla stare I've ever seen. Like, we're seeing mostly the whites on the underside of his eyes, or his pupils are kind of rolled up, and he's got his head hanging down just like,

utter contempt and destruction. Yeah. So Godzilla starts smashing the egg incubation building by side whipping it with his tail. We see metal crunching, steel beams are falling, but then, oh, intervention. Here comes Mothra. The mom is, the mom is here. So at this point, somehow Ichi, Junko and the gang are back. They're on a, they like run to a hilltop nearby to watch the battle. I think I may have skipped over. However, they got back.

You know, I want to throw in this about the battles that take place between, especially between Godzilla and adult form Mothra here. I think one of the reasons that I long avoided Godzilla versus Mothra is that I didn't, in

in my youth, see the potential of the physical battle. Like I was more about like the goofy fun of one Kaiju battling another, of two dudes in rubber suits, uh, wrestling on a minute on a set with a bunch of miniatures. Can you suplex them off? Yeah, I think that was part of it. I was like, I just kind of imagined like the hokiest version of this battle where it'd be a puppet on a stick versus a guy in a costume, but they do such a great job. It never feels like that here.

Mothra never feels like a rough puppet. I mean, obviously, Mothra is created in large part through puppetry, but it's done superbly. And I just completely bought into the combat between these two entities. Absolutely agree. This is one of the best monster battles in the series. Yeah, and it doesn't, I think I've seen other folks, maybe it was Michael Weldon pointing out that like this one doesn't get wrastly and

And therefore, it doesn't have as much silliness. It's out there. It has a lot of crazy kaiju weaponry, for sure. But it's a lot of fun. So I think I said this earlier, but one thing I really love here is the sharp metallic ping of Mothra's call. It's like a...

I don't know. It sounds like a, like a dagger piercing the air somehow. Yeah. Uh, and so we hear that and Godzilla is still busy, like smashing up the buildings, trying to get to the egg, but Mothra begins furiously flapping her wings. And that generates this humongous gale, which pushes Godzilla to and fro. And it also though knocks over the rest of the building. And now the egg is exposed and,

and Godzilla attacks. And ooh, the attack on the egg is actually kind of scary. He's like striking and clawing at it, blasting it with the radioactive breath, and just thinking like, oh no, poor egg. Yeah, again, Godzilla is portrayed as very much the aggressive beast here. So there's a real

frenzy to his movements that I really liked. But Mothra intervenes. She grabs Godzilla by the tail and drags him away from the egg. I know we said it's not too wrestling-y, but this is kind of like... He gets a little wrassly. Yeah. This is like when a wrestler drags another wrestler out of the ring by his leg. Mm-hmm.

observing from afar by the way the professor asks what's that yellow powder and the fairy twins are there and they're like it is Mothra's final weapon and they explain that it's a kind of poisonous pollen so she's like coating Godzilla in this like yellow pollen powder yeah like an aerial bombardment of the stuff so they fight some more and at one point Godzilla gets the upper hand he blasts Mothra with his breath and

And Mothra starts to look more and more ragged as she's beaten up in this battle. Oh, I didn't mention this, but we were told earlier by the twins on the island that Mothra is, she's sort of like near the end of her life cycle that she's dying and,

And so she flies away from battle back to the beach toward the egg. And the fairy twins remind us that Mothra is near the end of her life. So she glides down to land beside her egg and then she dies. And Godzilla does here kind of do a wicked gloating victory dance of sorts, but not a silly dance. Right, right. Yeah.

Now here, the military resumes fighting Godzilla. Is this going to do much? Of course not. They shoot some rockets and bombs. We see planes flying around. There is one part here that I will also say that this is better than the average military bombardment of Godzilla scene because there are some effects that are actually kind of visceral. Like there's one part where Godzilla's head catches on fire.

and it looks awesome, but Godzilla just kind of shakes it off. He also gets into a tussle with some high-voltage power lines. They also try a big net dropped from a formation of helicopters. Yeah, they drop like three nets on him, and it looks like it might work, but of course it's not going to work. Godzilla, he hates this, and he proceeds to breathe on and melt a bunch of tanks.

Meanwhile, down at the beach, the fairy twins are doing a musical number. They have gone down to Mothra's egg and they are singing a song to it, I believe imploring it to hatch. Yeah, yeah. And to bring Mothra back into the world again. Mothra is apparently a divine entity of continual death and rebirth.

And this is intercut with shots of the people on Iwa Island also doing a dance for the egg. And then suddenly, at the climax of the song, lightning flashes and the egg hatches. And you know what? It's not just one baby Mothra, but two Mothra.

It's twins, just like the fairy twins. Yeah, two larval Mothras emerge. And so now they have the numbers advantage over Godzilla. I'm not sure if Godzilla realizes this, but this is really the point at which he's cooked. Yeah, but so to emphasize, it's not like two little moths with wings. It's grubs. It's like two caterpillars, larval mothras.

Mothra is, and there are hilarious shots of these two like giant red brown grubs humping through the ocean toward the island after this. Yeah, it's kind of like they're...

they're sea serpents or something, you know, or, but also kind of like water buffaloes. Yeah. Yeah. They're going through the water because, uh, we learned there's this whole subplot, uh, about like, there were some school children on Iwa Island and they're still there. And then Godzilla starts going toward you, Iwa Island. And they're like, Oh no, the school children, they're in danger. And almost as if to protect them, the, uh, the grubs like chase after Godzilla through the water, uh,

And they go to the island. The three human protagonists go there as well. And they sort of get busy rescuing the schoolchildren while Godzilla fights these two little moth grubs. And this fight is funny. And I think it is meant to be like one bites Godzilla on the tail and he starts whipping it all around to get it off. But in this battle between Zilla and two, two grubs, who's going to win and how? Well, I love the final way they defeat him. The.

The moth larvae start blasting Godzilla with their silk. They shoot like spider silk, but they're, of course, you know, these little grubs and they essentially cocoon him alive. They're spinning more and more silk, throwing it over him. He's furious. He's breathing radioactive breath. He's whipping all around.

but he eventually gets wrapped up and incapacitated and just breathing all over in random directions, furious, and he finally falls to the ground, rolls down over the edge of a cliff, and into the ocean, sinking out of sight. It's a glorious way to defeat Godzilla.

I think it's clear that Godzilla is not killed. You know, it's like he is just defeated for now. He will probably be back and hopefully humanity can get it together. Maybe avoid some of their greed and self-interest in order to better prepare for his eventual return. Yeah. And we see the grubs swimming away. We can hear the fairy twins yelling goodbye in unison. I guess they're going with them. I don't think we see them.

And then the humans watch the baby Mothra is leaving. And one of them says, shouldn't we thank them? But then Ichi says, the only way to thank them is to build a better world. And the professor says, that's right, a world based on mutual trust.

Uh, it's a little, uh, a little direct there. It's not super subtle, but you know, I, I appreciate the sentiment. They're right. That, that is, you have plainly stated the moral of the film. Well, you know, I, I, I like it. Yeah. Firmly stated. It serves for us to be reminded.

Because we'll inevitably forget and build a world that is highly susceptible to Godzilla's attack. Yes, it will happen again in Ghidorah, the three-headed monster. I forget what the precipitating event is in that one, but something's going to happen.

All right. Any other business about Mothra versus Godzilla before we wrap it up? Oh, just to say that I think it's absolutely solid. It has a great message. Again, the monster battles are amazing, but everything else is also richly entertaining and at times intentionally hilarious. Looks great. Sounds great. I would be inclined to say, again, I can't pretend to be a Godzilla completist myself.

I haven't even seen all of the Showa-era films. I certainly haven't seen all of the Godzilla films, period. And I haven't seen the recent ones, which I'm to understand also feature Mothra. But I would say if you've never seen a Godzilla film before and you're open to watching films from previous decades, Mothra vs. Godzilla is...

a pretty good place to start. I mean, if you're not going to start with the original one and, uh, in the original Godzilla film, uh, this is, this is really good. You get, you get heel Godzilla, you get beautiful Mothra, you get, uh, you get amusing performances and a nice message. What more can you ask for?

I would say this is the most Godzilla film of all the Godzilla films I've seen. It has all of the core elements in their most perfect form. Right, right. And you might enter into this film being a Mothra skeptic like I think I used to be, but you will be won over by Mothra and you will realize that she is indeed the queen of monsters. All hail.

All right. We're going to go and close out this episode of Weird House Cinema, but we'd love to hear from all of you. We know you have thoughts on this Godzilla film and many other Godzilla films. We'll remind you that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. But on Fridays, we set aside most serious concerns to just talk about a weird film here on Weird House Cinema.

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Weirdhouse Cinema: Mothra vs. Godzilla

Stuff To Blow Your Mind

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Weirdhouse Cinema: Mothra vs. Godzilla 01:20:07 Share

Stuff To Blow Your Mind

Shownotes Transcript

Weirdhouse Cinema: Mothra vs. Godzilla