Alternate Titles: Mosura
Year: 1961
Director: Ishiro Honda
Special Effects Director: Eiji Tsuburaya

This movie introduces (obviously) Mothra, the second most popular character in the Tohoverse. We begin with a small boat caught in a storm during a typhoon. It's said that they're caught between the typhoon and Infant Island, which is the "worst situation we could be in". It turns out that Infant Island has been used for nuclear bomb testing, and is suspected to be highly irradiated. However, when the survivors of the ship crash are rescued and brought to the National Synthesis Nucleus Center, they have no traces of radioactivity. They also say that they were helped by the natives of the island and given a red juice to drink (here's a shot of the juice from later in the film).

The fact that there were natives on the island is a source of controversy. The "Rolisican" government, which had been conducting the nuclear tests, assured everyone that the island was unpopulated.

The Rolisicans seem to be a stand-in for both the Soviet Union (Rolisican -> Russian) and United States (as we'll see later). The news of the survivors story is broken by the reporter Zen-chan (played by Frankie Sakai, a famous comedian in Japan at the time) and photographer Michi Hanamura (Kyoko Kagawa).

It's announced that there's going to be a joint Japanese-Rolisican expedition to investigate the survivors' claims. Zen-chan and Michi are sent to interview the linguist, Shinichi Chujo (played by Toho regular Hiroshi Koizumi, who we've already seen in Godzilla Raids Again)), that will act as translator on the expedition. There's some hijinx during the interview, since Chujo doesn't want his picture taken and also because Chujo's much younger brother has let his pet mouse get loose. But the intrepid Michi manages to get her photograph and no mice are harmed during the making of this film. It does indicate that the movies are becoming a bit sillier, though.

Oddly, there is always a big send-off for expeditions in these movies. We saw it in the first Godzilla, and we see it here, with hundreds of people waving and cheering as a band plays and the Japanese-Rolisican boat sets sail. Also on the expedition is Dr. Harada (Ken Uehara) from the National Synthesis Nucleus Center, and Clark Nelson (Jerry Itou), the evil Rolisican leader of the group. Zen-chan also makes his way aboard, and while he's nearly killed by Nelson, Chujo and Dr. Harada arrange to have him remain a part of the group as a security guard.

The expedition arrives at Infant Island and pushes past the rocky exterior to find a lush jungle further inland. Continued exploring reveals a cave full of a special mold that Harada says "must have" been the source of the native's anti-radiation drink.

Chujo is then captured by grabbing vines, and this triggers a special alarm that all the expedition members have on their suits. Before the "vampire" vines kill him, he's rescued by a pair of tiny women.

These "fairies", as they'll be called throughout the films (although the official word is Shobijin), are an important part of Mothra's backstory. It's never explained exactly what they are, and they are obviously different than the other inhabitants of Infant Island, who are of normal human size. In real life, the two women, Yumi Itou and Emi Itou were a pair of twin sisters that had formed a vocalist group called the Peanuts.

No one believes that Chujo saw a pair of tiny women, but he figures out that they reacted to the noise of his alarm, so he sneaks off in the middle of the night to use it again to attract them. The noise also brings the rest of the expedition, but this time they are around to see the fairies.

When the fairies initially speak, their voice is just a series of high pitched blips and bloops, but Chujo understands it (he is a linguist, after all!) and explains that the fairies were afraid that the expedition had come to detonate more nuclear weapons. Chujo assures them that this isn't the case, and things almost end peacefully, but that's when Nelson has a henchmen make a grab for the women. They are forced to release them due to the arrival of the natives (the "good guys" of the expedition, despite being armed with rifles, seem powerless to stop Nelson).

Everyone agrees to keep quiet about the existence of the fairies, even Zen-chan, to the dismay of his J. Jonah Jameson style boss at the newspaper, Sadakatsu Amano, played by Takashi Shimura.

Privately, Zen-chan and Chujo do some digging on Nelson, and come up with the following:

"In 1954, he made an expedition to the Amazon in search of beautiful women for use in entertainment. While this expedition failed, he is still known as an explorer."
"I think he's an international dealer in artifacts. Get it?"
"An artifacts dealer?"
"Digging up whatever ruins he finds and stealing artifacts."

Meanwhile, Chujo has been busy translating some runes that he found in Infant Island - a much slower process than understanding the random noise generator language of the fairies, apparently - and so far he's found one word repeated several times, depicted by a cross with energy coming out of it. He says the symbol is called "Mothra" but he doesn't know what that means.

Nelson takes a trip back to the island, kidnapping the fairies and slaughtering the natives, who may seem menacing but all they really do is slowly walk towards you banging rocks together.

The Polynesian natives in this movie are Japanese actors in basically blackface and i have to imagine that's pretty offensive. We'll see this in King Kong vs. Godzilla too.

This is so bad.

Nelson is really, really evil.

As Min says, the monsters are becoming more sympathetic in these movies, so the human bad guys have to become more cartoonishly evil.

The Fairies are pretty obviously little dolls in the scenes where they are handled by regular sized people.

Nelson's big scheme is to put on "The Secret Fairys Show", which forces the fairies to perform for an audience. The show opens with the question, "We now live in the atomic age, but are miracles a thing of the past?", and then has the fairies ride down on a tiny carriage on a string before launching into their songs. At first i wasn't sure why the fairies would agree to perform, but then i realized that the song that they are singing - Mosura-yah! - is actually summoning their ancient moth god to come and wreak havoc on the civilization that had dared to capture them and put them on exhibition. Odd that they can sing now, in Japanese and not their blippy little language. Also odd that people would cram into a crowded theater to squint at two tiny people sitting in a tiny wagon.

When Chujo and Zen-chan confront Nelson about his show, Nelson dismisses their concerns and says that the fairies are happy when they sing and anyway they are his property now and there's nothing they can do about it. Chujo, Zen-chan, and Michi do get to talk to the fairies and tell them that they are sorry they've been captured. The fairies tell them that they're not concerned about getting home, but (my interpretation) now that they see there are good people in this land, they're a little sad that they summoned Mothra. They say that their method for contacting Mothra is telepathy, which is defined as the ability to "communicate our feelings to places far, far away". However, Mothra "doesn't know right from wrong" and so it's not going to be too particular about what it destroys when it arrives. By the way, Mothra is referred to as a "he" at least in our translation of the movie, but later movies will correctly refer to her as a "she" (she lays eggs, after all!). I suppose it's possible that this incarnation of Mothra is male since in the next appearance it will be said that the egg that hatches had been buried for many years. But i suspect that even in this movie Mothra should be considered female and the use of "he" in the subtitles is a translation mistake - the dubbed English versions of even the later movies will continue to incorrectly refer to Mothra as "he". I delve into Mothra's gender because i think a lot of people don't even realize that Mothra is female, and it's significant that among the many kaiju in the Tohoverse, Mothra is the only lady (not counting very minor monsters like Rodan's mate). And in fact she's the second most popular character in the universe. Talk about a strong female character!

Back on Infant Island, the Natives dance around a giant egg...

...and soon it hatches, producing Mothra in her larval state, although that's still a creature 100 meters in length

A boat called the Orion-Maru is the first to fall to Mothra. The Orion-Maru may have been targeted because they were playing "The Secret Fairys Show" on their radio and Mothra may have gotten confused.

With the existence of Mothra no longer theoretical, you would think that the Japanese government would step in and force Nelson to give up the fairies. For that matter, you'd think that the fact that he's kidnapped two people, however small they may be, would be grounds for at least an investigation, but there's nothing. The Rolisican government is said to support Nelson's property rights, and Japan doesn't want to trigger an international incident.

After Mothra attacks the boat, Chujo and Zen-chan go back to talk to the fairies. Zen-chan engages in a Three Stooges-like routine to knock out all of Nelson's guards while Chujo talks to the Fairies. They are still unable to stop Mothra, though, and Chujo doesn't even consider the possibility of just walking away with the tiny twins. Instead he heads to Dr. Harada, who figures out an outlandish way to block their telepathy:

"What you see here is her brain waves. This is a synthetic material used in nuclear reactors. It blocks all forms of wave energy."

They make a box of the stuff to encase the fairies in and, um, give it to Nelson! I'm not sure if blocking the fairies from Mothra is a good idea. If s/he can't find them, won't she just go on a completely mindless rampage. Without the box, Mothra will just go straight to the fairies, Nelson will get his comeuppance, and then Mothra and the fairies will go home. Sure there will be plenty of destruction and risk to innocent lives along the way, but that is going to happen anyway as Mothra rampages around Japan. At least let the destruction be focused.

But that's not to be so instead Mothra re-emerges. "Target sighted!", as if Mothra had somehow disappeared since the attack on the Orion-Maru. How do you not keep track of a giant catepillar?

The Japanese government pulls out all the stops to fight back Mothra. They can't force one businessman to give up his captives but they sure can blast Mothra with bombs and depth charges.

The plan of attack seems to be to drop a lot of barrels of oil in the water around Mothra and then set the oil on fire. A very destructive and polluting way to repel the creature, but it is initially thought to be successful. Meanwhile, the Japanese police finally shut down Nelson's show (but do nothing about his prisoners). Michi shows up to announce that "Dam 3 is in trouble". Could it be Mothra!? Well, there aren't any other giant monsters roaming around.

Nelson begins to take all of this more seriously. He can chew the scenery when needed but when times are rough he boils his orders to his henchmen down to just nouns and action words. "Case!" "Car!" The Rolisican government eventually orders Nelson to let the girls go, but he's not taking orders from them either. Chujo's younger brother shows up to try to rescue the fairies but he gets knocked out (too bad; would have loved to see the fairies interact with his mouse).

Meanwhile, we have a drama at Dam 3, with a couple that has managed to put their lives onto the back of a hand-pulled cart but has forgotten to secure their baby. So as they're running off the bridge, their baby falls off.

Babies need to learn to save themselves. Slackers.

Oh boy. Luckily our hero Chujo is on the scene to rescue the baby before Mothra destroys the bridge. Linguists make the best action heroes.

The Defense Squad continues to deploy all of its weaponry against the Mothra larva. Toho has such wonderful toy tanks and missiles and such, and such great model buildings to destroy.

So much fun to watch these battles, even if the monster is pretty much oblivious to them. To be fair to the Defense Squad, they do a much better job of actually hitting their target than usual, but it's still just as futile.

Unlike our other movies so far, there is no real discussion of the monster. No scientific analysis, no speculation that the creature is a prehistoric moth larva or something mutated or awoken by radiation or anything else. It's just taken at face value that there's a giant caterpillar on a rampage.

It came from Infant Island. What more is there to say?

The villains are equally casual about the monster. Eh, monsters. So common these days, you know?

Mothra eventually makes itself to Tokyo Tower.

It's debatable if what follows is deliberate or just a happy accident on the part of Mothra. But she tries to climb the tower, which collapses under her weight, causing Mothra to land upside down and have to wiggle around for a while before right-siding herself. But then she starts spraying the tower with silk...

...and eventually encases herself in a cocoon that hangs off the broken tower.

Now, was that her plan all along or did she only decide it was a good place for the cocoon after it broke?

While Mothra's in the cocoon, Rolisica sends a specially developed Atomic Heat Cannon, along with an "Atomic Heat Ray Brigade" to operate it. The cannons look a little like the FAHPs from Mysterians...

...and the footage will also be reused in many future films, suggesting that after its donation by the Rolisicans it becomes a regular part of Japan's anti-kaiju arsenal.

The Atomic Heat Cannons are turned on the cocoon...

...but it only seems to incubate the larva inside and cause Mothra to hatch in moth form.

Congratulations, everybody. At best you accomplished nothing and at worst you sped up Mothra's incubation period and made her mad!

By this point, Nelson has returned to his ranch in the great land of Rolisica, with cows mooing loudly in the distance. Nelson is just so evil!

Min likes the decor in Nelson's house.

The wallpaper!

Mothra heads to Rolisica as well...

...and it's reported on the radio that "Rolisica's air force has been completely annihilated by Mothra. This report has come as a great shock to the Rolisican people."

Mothra's choice of rampage in Rolisica is "New Kirk City", pretty clearly an analogue to New York City although it's deliberately not as dead on as the New York we saw in Battle In Outer Space. But it's pretty close, and it's full of white people speaking English. I don't know why Toho didn't want to come right out and make Rolisica the United States if the message of film was about the US' arrogance regarding nuclear testing and its self-interested elevation of property rights and profits over all else. I guess they still wanted to sell the movie in the States.

Nelson flees his home and makes it to the streets of New Kirk City, where the cops make a pretty sad attempt at stopping him, to the point where Nelson even manages to steal an old man's cane. But he eventually get shot.

Ultimately, "it's all over for New Kirk City" as Mothra flies around using her powerful wings to create vortexes.

Someone asks if Mothra is causing all the destruction. No, it's just a magical hurricane!

We wind up with some crazy religious people talking about leaving it all to God. This does eventually give our protagonists the idea to paint the cross mark from the runes at the airport and also have the church bells play the Mothra song. The idea is that they will take the fairies out of their box and Mothra will know to go to the landing strip at the airport. As far as i understand the plot, this may have worked even without the cross and the bells since Mothra is supposed to be looking for the fairies. But for some reason the movie goes for these weird religious overtones, with even one of our main characters from Japan saying, "I'm no priest but we'll just have to rely on the will of God". When it's all done and they're standing around at the airport, they seem to have forgotten something. TAKE THE FAIRIES OUT OF THEIR BOX!!! Oh yeah. Ok, now Mothra is landing. She just kind of plops down on the runway since she's not really designed for standing.

Those poor fairies. They keep locking them in a box and carrying them around like luggage. They aren't even careful about not jostling the box. And there aren't any airholes! You people are monsters!

With that all settled, the good guys say, "And we promise we'll never disturb the peace of Infant Island." That promise will last perhaps as long as 3 years but as we'll see, it's broken before the start of 1964's Mothra vs. Godzilla. But for now it's a happy ending...

...although the fairies are set down quite a distance from Mothra and they have to run a looooooong way on their tiny legs to get to Mothra.

Assholes.

But they eventually make it and are taken home.

It ends with a Peter Parker-ish "I forgot to take pictures" from professional photographer Michi.

Not counting Moguera in Mysterians, this is Toho's second color kaiju film, and if nothing else, the colorful and fuzzy design for Mothra took full advantage of that. It's also great seeing Toho continue to experiment with non-rubber suit monsters, and the innovations seen here for both the larval and moth forms of Mothra are pretty good and since Mothra becomes popular we'll continue to see her in both forms in future movies, which helps add to the variety of the creatures included in those films. The movie also adds some mystical elements to the Toho milieu, to compete with radioactivity, space aliens, and lost underground kingdoms in the expansive Tohoverse.

Godzilla Drinking Game
	Someone thinks it's a good idea to drag a giant monster across the ocean on a raft (giant eggs count).
	Attacking planes fly directly at a monster, with no possibility of avoiding a crash even if the monster didn't swat them down.	I presume this must have happened to the Rolisican airforce, but it's off camera so it doesn't count.
	People refuse to believe in the existence of a giant monster even though they've already acknowledged that Godzilla exists.	As with Varan and Rodan, this gets a pass since there's been no intergration of the Toho films yet.
	A submarine explodes.
	Teens have a dance party on a boat. Two drinks/head smacks if they get attacked by a monster during the party.
	The government is completely ineffective when faced with a corporation doing something illegal.	Yep yep yep. Possibly we should rephrase this since Nelson isn't technically a corporation, but he's able to keep holding the fairies prisoner and running his little show despite it being pretty obviously illegal in its own right even before you add in the fact that it's causing a giant catepillar to come crashing through Japan.
	A humongous lumbering monster manages to sneak up on someone. Two drinks/head smacks if it's the army and they're supposedly using radar.	No specific mention of radar, at least, but the giant f-ing caterpillar/moth in this movie manages to disappear and then make surprise attacks a couple of times.
	A scientist suddenly figures everything out with little-to-no information and explains it all to everyone.	Chujo's ability to translate the fairies may possibly count, but they are magic. More definitively, we have the scene where the strange mold "must have" been where the anti-radiation juice comes from, after just the briefiest of looks, and the ability to quickly assume that the material used inside a nuclear reactor will block telepathic waves.
	A monster suddenly grows in size just because.
	People expose themselves to major amounts of radiation with no concern.	Quite the opposite in this one. Radiation is taken seriously and everyone arrives on Infant Island in hazmat suits.
	Everyone suddenly knows a monster's name. Two drinks/head smacks if everyone else nods appreciatively and repeats it.	I want to at least give partial credit for Chujo being able to identify a pictographical rune as "Mothra" even though he's unable to decipher any of the other runes, but it doesn't really count and the monster is properly named by the Fairies.
	Army missiles can't seem to hit a 150+ foot monster and instead explode harmlessly around it.	I'll admit that the Defense Squad does get some good hits in, but quite a few shots fly harmlessly past the gigantic catepillar. It's not as bad as, say, Varan, but it still counts.
	A woman falls down for no reason.
	Bad dinosaur science. You have to give a little leeway for the time period, but pretending a children's picture book is a scientific journal is always worth two drinks/smacks.	As mentioned above, there's weirdly no speculation on how Mothra may have come to exist. The mystical explanation from the Fairies is taken at face value.

Monsters Appearing: Mothra