Mothra vs. Godzilla (1964)

When Criterion announced their Blu-ray collection of the original fifteen Godzilla movies, my inner twelve year-old smiled, but the more practical middle-aged part of me said no, because I’d honestly rate only five of them as being worth a darn, and that’s a big price to pay for five movies. Then Criterion had a flash 50% off sale and I was told I’d have a bonus coming at work and I’ve got an eight year-old kid who absolutely loved the original, which we saw at the Silver Scream Spook Show in 2018. A boy should have Godzilla movies. I figured we’d watch and blog about the other four that I enjoy over the course of the next few months, and he could enjoy the other ten at his own pace.

He surprised me yesterday by asking to watch the worst of the ten first, so we put on the infamous All Monsters Attack, aka Godzilla’s Revenge, which is a 70 minute cheapie that reuses half of its monster footage from two other movies and tells a kiddie tale about a bullied latchkey eight year-old foiling some bank robbers. He certainly liked it, but this morning, we put on something more impressive.

Mothra vs. Godzilla is the fourth to feature Godzilla, and the last where he’s unequivocally a threat and a menace. It’s a story of newshounds and scientists pitted against two greedy businessmen, and shows that things were just as crappy in the world fifty-six years ago. Newspapers have a critical need to provide information, corporations are unethical and run by monsters, nuclear radiation kills the fields of verdant islands, all that. These movies are only ever as good as the human stuff, and the human stuff in this one is great to watch. I especially like the fellow they cast as the prefecture’s alderman, who looks precisely like he stepped out of an editorial cartoon. His heart may be big, but his civic pride is wrapped in Coke-bottle glasses, buck teeth, and a stringy mustache.

But the wow factor comes with the enormous soundstages and incredible miniature work, and the bizarre spectacle of using a moth prop about the size of a Cadillac and dropping it repeatedly on the head of that poor fellow in the Godzilla suit and never once seeing a line or a wire holding the huge thing up. There are a couple of unfortunate seconds of sped-up film, and that’s the only quibble I’d make with Ishiro Honda and Eiji Tsubaraya’s amazing direction and special effects decisions. And even that makes sense because this movie depicts Godzilla as slow, tired, and clumsy as he stumbles around before the first fight. Mothra’s only advantage is speed. Overall, the special effects are completely astonishing. Sure, we’re at an age where we understand how every shot was done; it’s not a case of wondering how they did it, it’s marveling at knowing how much resources and work were required to make it all happen.

The kid agreed. He thought All Monsters Attack was great fun, but he liked this morning’s film better. “There was more Godzilla getting totally really mad and wanting to destroy stuff. Basically there was more destroying stuff.” He is at the age where the monsters are the prime attraction and the people get in the way, of course. That’s fine. More cities will be knocked over for him soon enough.

Image: Criterion