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 A Japanese expedition checks out an island that has been radiated by an atomic
blast and find "two beautiful twin girls called Ailenas." These girls are six
inches high and guard a "sacred giant egg." One of the expedition members
returns to the island later and steals the girls so that he can exhibit them.
The
giant egg hatches and the really big larva "wreaks havoc on downtown Tokyo."
The larva turns into a giant moth. "Will the Earth survive?" They call this
film a "science fiction classic!" 1961, 91 minutes, VHS
This giant monster epic from Toho is in the words of the immortal philosopher
Crocodile Dundee (Mick to his Aussie pals) "better than average." That was a
bit of a surprise considering that I had seen the new versions released in the
mid to late nineties and found them to be inane juvenile pablum, in spite of all
the cutting-edge bad special effects taking the place of the old-school bad
special effects. This first Mothra film, released a few years after the first Godzilla flick, takes a much more serious tone and casts Mothra in the role of avenging
angel as opposed to her later position in the Toho pantheon as a
Godzilla-battling do-gooder. Having an origin distinct from that of Godzilla
and his ilk sets Mothra apart and gives her her own mythos separate from all
the rubber suits that hang out on Monster Island. It all began on a deserted
island in the Pacific where some atomic testing had been done. At least
everyone thought it was deserted until some rescued sailors that had been
shipwrecked there talked about how some natives helped them out and that they
were able to drink some special juice that allowed them to not get radiation
poisoning (that sounds an awful lot like a Long Island Ice Tea to me). All the
scientists are kind of thinking that maybe they a-bombed the wrong island and
you can practically see the lawyers salivating at the thought of the class
action lawsuits that will surely result from this snafu. The Japanese decide
that maybe they ought to go out and see just what in tarnation all these
natives are doing on their atomic bomb test range. For reasons that I was
apparently day dreaming during there is some foreign government involved as
well (maybe it was their bomb and the Japanese were just curious because they
had a few sailors hanging out on the island). This government is one of those
made-up movie governments so that viewers in America, I mean where ever this
place was really supposed to be wouldn't be turned off by the fact that even
though the Japanese lost WWII, they were still trying to make us look bad,
because of our atomic testing. Part of the team that is going to investigate the island is Dr. Chujo. Chujo
is an expert in the field of strange islands that have been irradiated by atomic
material, but still contain mysterious natives. You would expect the hunky
Chujo to be the star of the show, but I think you'd have to give that honor to
the nosy (Is there any other kind?) reporter who goes by the name of Bulldog.
He's called Bulldog because he doesn't let go of a story or because he always
tries hump your leg or some reason and he's a fairly unattractive, tubby fellow
that seems to get himself mixed up in all this, all the while not actually
reporting any of it to his paper. Tubby, I mean Bulldog, is joined by a female
photographer, but her role is a lot less involved than you would have expected
and she mainly stays on the sidelines while Bulldog does all the heavy lifting. Bulldog and the photographer go to Chujo's house and try to get an interview
with him about the upcoming trip to the island. There's a rather dubious scene
involving Chujo holding a newspaper up over his face because he doesn't want
his picture taken and then there's his little brother's pet mouse running loose
and as soon as that fat little turd comes barreling down the stairs looking
like an Asian version of Larry Mondello from Leave It To Beaver, you start to
break into a cold sweat worrying that the movie is going to be surrendered to
some
dumb little tyke inevitably named Kenny. His name is actually Shiro and he
gets involved in things to some extent, but never becomes the sole focus of
things. Bulldog wants to go on the trip with the scientists, but the press is
barred from doing so. Bulldog somehow manages to sneak on board as a janitor
or cabin boy or something and proceeds to snoop around the bad guy's cabin.
The bad guy is named Nelson and he's from this fake foreign country. I was
never sure what qualified him to be involved in this operation, because later
in the movie, the only thing that he would do is to display a couple of fairies
(not Bulldog or Shiro) all over Japan like a modern P.T. Barnum. He didn't
seem to be a scientist or any kind of government official, but he was placed in
charge of the entire operation and everyone had to clear all their research
data and its release through him.  Bulldog gets himself busted by Nelson while ransacking Nelson's cabin (probably
for a cheeseburger or something) and he holds him at gunpoint before Chujo shows
up to diffuse the situation. They decide, in their infinite wisdom, that
Bulldog should be made a member of the crew which means that he won't report
anything he sees to his paper (I'm sure the editor that is paying his salary
appreciates that). They must have one of those strange sense of honor things
going on over in Japan, like being the member of a crew means there is some
type of special brotherhood where everything that happens on a voyage stays on
a voyage. That's how it always was when I travelled on Lynard Skynard's tour
bus back in the mid-seventies. Can you imagine Connie Chung agreeing to that?
Actually, I can imagine her agreeing to it, I just can't imagine her honoring
the agreement (Just between you and me Mrs. Gingrich, what does your son really
think of Hillary?). They land on the island and everyone goes looking around.
Chujo gets himself lost and finds a cave with mysterious plants. One type of
mysterious plant looks like the ones that the shipwrecked sailors must have
been drinking from to ward off the affects of the a-bomb. Another type of
mysterious plant looks like those man-eating plants that always seem to inhabit
these jungle movies. Chujo gets himself tangled up in this plant and is about
to be choked out when he gets rescued by these two foot tall, twin fairies.
Everyone finally shows up and Chujo gives a shout out to the fairies for saving
his bacon. Nelson eyes them, sizing them up for a cage in his "Secret Fairies
Show" that is suddenly set to premier just as soon as he can make it back to
the island to kidnap these two. When they return from the trip, Bulldog and
Chujo have a pow wow about what a big jerk that Nelson is. Bulldog theorizes
that Nelson is really just some kind of tomb raider and he knows this because he
found an old chart in Nelson's room. Chujo pulls out some piece of paper with
all this strange writing on it and says that he never trusted Nelson so he
didn't show it to him, but that he's managed to translate it (because it's
really just an amalgamation of a bunch of different Polynesian dialects and you
know what an easy language Polynesian is) and there's a lot of babble about
something named Mothra.  Nelson, recognizing the vacuum that exists in the freakshow marketplace for a
pair of fairies that sing and dance, returns to the island with some of his
cronies and proceeds to murder a bunch natives and steal the two little chicks.
The natives that are left start worshipping a giant egg that is laying around
the island. The fairies are a bit distressed that Nelson has booked them on a
10
city, 12 day tour without giving them a cut of t-shirts or concessions so they
do a lot of singing about Mothra and send out a bunch of telepathic messages to
the egg (Soft boiled please!). Well, as gigantic eggs are want to do in films
about giant bugs stomping Tokyo like some type of insectoid Enola Gay, this one
starts to crack open and what comes out of it? A giant moth? Heck no, morons!
We all know that before you get to have a super-sweet moth with multi-colored
wings and stanky super-breath, you need a giant caterpillar. Little Mothra
inches its way out of the egg and swims off to find its fairies. Apparently
Mothra is the protector of the fairies and will do whatever it takes (though
it usually involves something along the lines of destroying lots of model
tanks, dams, and power lines) to get them back. Nelson continues to display the
fairies all the while reports of a gigantic caterpillar tearing up the
countryside with a sign reading "Secret Fairies Tour '61 or Bust!" taped to
its ass roll in. Bulldog and Chujo figure out that maybe this caterpillar is
related to the imprisonment of the fairies and also that they must be
telepathically telling the big worm where they are at, because other than being
displayed on TV all the time, the fairies have kept a pretty low profile. They
devise some type of tin foil cover to block the telepathic rays but I don't
think Nelson figures anyone will pay to see a cage wrapped in tinfoil (after all
this is Japan, not Arkansas) so he refuses to take any precautions against
large monster guardians showing up to rescue the fairies. About this time,
that little fat kid tries to rescue the fairies and gets himself all trussed up
like one of those giant Japanese hams we enjoy so much every Easter. The army
battles this caterpillar and figure they have beaten it once the caterpillar
spins a cocoon and they roast the cocoon. The fact that once they roast it,
all that happens is that the cocoon looks a bit singed don't seem to dissuade
them
from the belief that they could punk Mothra with greater ease than they could
any other of the variety of other gigantic monsters that continuously run
roughshod over every model plane in the Japanese military. There must be some
kind of psychological reason relating to the war why all these movies have
important Japanese cities getting razed constantly by these invading monsters.
We never seemed to make those kinds of movies in the post-war era. Of course,
we were busy putting our own neurosis of the time period up on the big screen
with all those alien invasion and body snatching movies.  Finally, in the last third of the film, Mothra makes her big debut, swooping
around, blowing crap up. Nelson's government finally gets fed up with all the
bad press he's giving them as well as the fact that a monstrous moth is winging
its way in their direction (Nelson has fled Japan for home) and put him on that
John Walsh fugitive show (Are they ever going to cancel that low-rent True
Detective-style garbage? That thing is like a zombie, lumbering across
Saturday night, year after year, unstoppable in spite of it's bad re-enactments
and Walsh's self-important jabbering about the importance of narc-ing out your
neighbors.). Nelson gets into a shootout with the cops and is killed. Mothra is
still flying around pooping on people, so Chujo, Bulldog and the rest of their
rag-tag team of fairy-helpers come up with a plan so crazy it just might work!
One of them has figured out that Mothra might respond to a bunch of church
bells ringing and they get some symbol painted on a runway. Sure enough, as is
the case with last-ditch plans, Mothra majestically lands her funny-looking,
psychedelic body on the symbol! Chujo and Bulldog are on the jazz! They
return the fairies to Mothra and they get on board (somebody check their
shoes!) wave, blow kisses, moon everyone, and fly off into the sunset until
Mothra came out of retirement for a PPV match with Big G hisself in 1964. Bad
effects, bad dubbing, and fat kids didn't detract from my enjoyment of this
feature. They seemed to concentrate on trying to tell an actual story with
this movie, as opposed to so many of the sequels to this and the Godzilla sequels where they just simply tried to find an excuse to team up as many
monsters as they could. Mothra wasn't really a monster here so much as an
over-protective friend and was only provoked into action because of the
selfishness of humans. This isn't simply a rehash of the old Godzilla plot
where an atomic blast wakes up the big lizard thus allowing the whole "atomic
weapons are dangerous" cautionary tale. Here, you have something along the
lines of "respect other cultures and don't exploit them." I look at this film
and can't help but be struck by the fact that the bad guys in this aren't the
Japanese, but are some other government. In fact, the Japanese in the movie
are trying to help the fairies out (though Nelson has about two Japanese
cronies). The bad guy has a distinctly American name and is an arrogant fool.
Is it reading too much into the film to say that this is some sort of pot shot
at the occupying Americans in Japan following the end of the war? There are
comments about how the fairies just want to go back to their island and be left
alone. Couldn't that apply to the war-weary Japanese, shamed by their defeat
and traumatized by having a couple of a-bombs dumped on them? All
psycho-babble aside, this is one the strongest entries in Toho's giant monster
genre, well-paced with a monster whose motivations aren't typical monster-fare.
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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