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Fusa / Sono kido o tootte (1993, Kon Ichikawa)

その木戸を通って　（市川崑）

10/9/19

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All Hail the Queen (Mothra 1961)

After Varan in 1958, Toho took a few years off the kaiju scene before releasing Mothra in 1961, a milestone film that pushed the genre in a completely new direction. An outright fantasy film where all its predecessors had dabbled in sci-fi, Mothra can at times seem a bit ridiculous, and if you read a synopsis of it, with its tiny fairies and giant telepathic moths you would be forgiven if you came to that conclusion.

Under Ishiro Honda’s direction, Shinichi Sekizawa’s rather zany plot is treated with enough gravity that it rarely ever feels as goofy as one would expect it to. Sekizawa, who previously had written Giant Monster Varan, is clearly more in his element here, putting out a fantastical plot much more in line with what he became famous (or perhaps infamous) for.

I’ve seen Mothra quite a few times, and luckily for western audiences, it’s one of the few non-Godzilla titles readily available for purchase, owing to the titular monster’s popularity. There’s an Icons of Sci Fi DVD set that packs in Mothra along with a pair of Toho’s other sci fi films, as well as a steelbook blu ray put out by Mill Creek Entertainment.

Mothra starts off with a bang, as a group of sailors who shipwrecked near the irradiated Infant Island are brought back to Tokyo miraculously unharmed. This story catches the eye of reporter Zenichiro Fukuda (Furanki Sakai) and photographer Michi Hanamura (Kyoko Kagawa) who sneak into the facility where the sailors are being evaluated, overhearing their story about mysterious natives who fed them fruit that kept them from being harmed by the radiation.

The news of this garners the attention of the government of Rolisica, a country that is Totally Not America and was responsible for testing atomic bombs on Infant Island. A scientific expedition to the island is quickly founded, led by a real bastard named Clark Nelson, (Jerry Ito) who captures a pair of tiny women found living there (identical twins Emi and Yumi Ito, no relation) to use as a paid attraction. This arouses the ire of the island’s guardian deity, Mothra, who beats feet to Japan to get the women back.

Mothra, in effect, has a lot going on. Fukuda, better known in the movie as Zen, is the first of his kind in a Toho kaiju film, though not certainly the last - a tough yet goofy reporter who always follows his gut instincts. The Ito sisters are wonderful as the tiny fairies, known in the film as the Shobijin, whose haunting song summons Mothra to come protect them. Jerry Ito’s Nelson steals nearly every scene he’s in - it’s rare to see a human villain in a kaiju story, but Nelson is the gold standard, chewing on whatever bits of scenery that aren’t nailed down as he tirelessly attempts to exploit the Shobijin for profit. He’s the kind of guy you love to hate, and it doesn’t hurt that he speaks both English and Japanese, and is one of the few English speaking actors in a Toho film that doesn’t sound like he’s reading his lines at gunpoint.

The humans are all fine and good, but what we’re here for is the giant moth, and in that respect the film excels. Mothra is portrayed both as a larva and an imago, though it’s the larva that does most of the city wrecking. The larva had two different props, a small, hand-operated puppet and a massive 7-meter suit that required multiple actors to operate, while the flying imago is only ever a puppet. Both look amazing, and the city sets are some of the best you’ll see in a Toho production. Mothra rampages through both Tokyo and the Rolisican New Kirk City (tagline: The City That Never Gets Tired) in its search for the Shobijin. The maser tanks often seen in later Godzilla movies (those contraptions with a radar dish on them) also make an appearance here, shooting “atomic heat rays” at Mothra’s cocoon in hopes of destroying it before it can emerge.

There is nothing sci-fi about Mothra and the fairies, who are pure fantasy like nothing that came before. It’s implied that Mothra has always been part of life on Infant Island, and the fairies get no explanation at all. The nuclear subtext in Mothra, rather than creating a monster, simply represents the very real devastation that happened to places like Bikini Atoll, which no doubt served as inspiration for the film.

Mothra is much more of a family film than its predecessors, with a sort of Disney-esque style surrounding its production, which apparently Honda was going for. The singing fairies would become a staple of later Mothra films, though the Ito twins would only play them twice more, unfortunately. The antics of Zen Fukuda and co., in their efforts to save the fairies, never seem too dangerous no matter what kind of stakes are arrayed against them, and only the villainous Nelson ends up dead (in a surprisingly non family-friendly fashion).

Mothra isn’t, of course, without its flaws. The extras in brownface playing the Infant Island natives are particularly galling, and the plot has a bit of an airiness to it that makes it hard to believe the cast is ever in any danger. There are some weird artifacts as well, such as the Shobijin’s strange, droning language and the fact that Mothra is referred to as male.

That said, this is still a great introduction to kaiju movies, and worth seeing today. Mothra as a creature is great fun to watch, and starring in a solo film means that a certain giant lizard isn’t hogging the spotlight (he’ll be back soon though, trust me). It also helps that this one is available cheaply and easily all over the internet; if you’re going to watch one kaiju movie without the king of the monsters in it, make it this one.

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Film #  94      (SciFi Creature Classics Collection) Mothra  (1961) 101 minutes   Color   Unrated Directed by:  Ishiro Honda Starring:  Furanki Sakai, Hiroshi Koizumi, Kyoko Kagawa

After an atomic blast, members of a Japanese expedition explore the heavily radiated Infant Island. Much to their surprise, the scientists discover that life still exists there: two beautful twin girls called Ailenas. Standing only six inches high, they are the guardians of Mothra, a sacred giant egg. Later, Nelson, one of the explorers whose avarice has gotten the best of him, returns to the island to kidnap the Ailenas with plan to exhibit them around the world. Nelson gets more than he's bargained for, however. The giant egg hatches into a larva which grows to tremendous size and wreaks havoc on down-town Tokyo. Soon the caterpillar metamorphoses into a gigantic moth which the entire Japanese armed force can't stop. Will the earth survive? 

IMDb:  A giant, ancient moth begins to attack Japan when coming to the rescue of it's two, foot-tall worshippers who were taken by shipwreck survivors.