Japanese Title: "Mosura Tai Gojira"
AKA: "Godzilla vs. Mothra"; "Mothra vs. Godzilla;" "Godzilla vs. The Giant Moth;" Godzilla Fights the Giant Moth"
Rated: <unknown>
Released: April 29, 1964 (Japan)
Sept. 17, 1964 (U.S.)
Length: 89 min. (Japan)
90 min. (U.S.)
What could be better than watching a floating egg? Why, watching a bunch of people fight over who owns it, of course! Yes, that is one of the major plot points in this movie. But before we get to the argument, we are treated to a view of the "ocean" in a storm. The storm was supposed to be a hurricane.
Then we jump to a reporter (named Sakai) and a chick photographer named Junko(?) that are at a devastated industrial site near the sea. For some reason, she can’t just point and click…instead she must stand there and think or something. Anyway, she discovers a pretty piece of melted plastic. They take it somewhere to be studied, but I don’t think they ever explain what it is. However, if you put two-and-two together, it would seem to be a Gojira scale.
Soon thereafter, a giant egg is found in a harbor. The people living there claim it and sell it to Kumayama, who’s some kind of entrepreneur. He works for some other weird guy (named Torahata) that seems to be a CEO of "Happy Enterprises." Here’s something to look for: When Kumayama goes to the CEO’s hotel room, you can see an odd looking pink phone in the background. What’s up with that? Is this guy into "Barbie" or something!? Then, in a later scene, the CEO is talking into a purple phone…what happened to the pink one???
Well, Mothra’s twin fairies are upset. Why? Because the egg is Mothra’s and it got washed away in the storm. Of course they want it back, but Mothra is too stupid to just take it. She can battle Godzilla for a while, but she can’t take the egg. And why is the egg almost the same size as Mothra anyway? How did she lay it?
Now we jump to a lab and find our intrepid heroes in some kind of steam room. We soon find out that they were radioactive and the steam washed it away. What caused the radiation? No, it wasn’t their microwave! It was that piece of colorful plastic. So they head back to the industrial site for a test. There, Sakai gets into an argument with some guy and Yuka looks through her lens at the ground. Then she sees that the ground is moving! Yow! A giant greenish-black worm explodes from the ground. And then the "worm" is followed by our hero, Godzilla.
I’ll try and keep this short by listing some odd scenes:
 | Gojira manages to get his tail stuck in a tower of some sort and then pull it onto himself. This is kind of funny… |
| The reporters go to Mothra Island and try to enlist Mothra’s help in killing Godzilla. They see an albino turtle with what looks more like a buzzard head than a turtle head. (There’s also a group of red people there…embarrassed Japanese? Who knows!) |
| Mothra is known as "The Thing." Why? That’s a stupid thing to call your god!!! |
| The army develops artificial lightening…to see more of this stuff, watch Godzilla Vs. Biollante. |
| Kono, the coolest actor of Toho, from King Kong vs Godzilla seems to be one of the villagers that lays claim to the egg… |
| Godzilla gets himself blown…away by Mothra! (Ha! What did you think I meant!?) |
| Mothra picks up Gojira by the tail. This is really cool! |
| And then there’s the oddball jerky Mothra vs. Godzilla fight scene…odd… |
| Godzilla wants to munch "The Thing’s" egg right up till Mothra dies on top of it…then Godzilla gets interested in a little island full of school children. Yeah, I was going, "What the…???" too. |
| Are you sick of bullet points too? I thought so. Back to the review: |
So, Gojira loses interest in the egg and goes off to fight the army some more. They shock him with lots of electricity. They also drop multiple metal nets on him to help conduct the electricity. It works…for a little while. They also drop some fiery bombs on him and Godzilla’s head actually catches on fire! (I’d hate to be in that costume!)
It’s time for a segue! For some reason, we soon realize that whenever the fairies sing, Mothra obeys. I thought they worshipped IT, not tell IT what to do. Anyway, they sang to get IT to attack Gojira and to get the egg to hatch…
Anyway, Godzilla heads out for the aforementioned island. As he’s swimming, the egg hatches and two baby moth larvae emerge. They are da’ bomb! Watch as they swim faster than Gojira…they catch up to him in no time…Then one of them grabs the Big Guy’s tail. He doesn’t like that too well and you get to see a larva take a flying lesson. Wheee!
Finally, the babies take Gojira down by covering him with "silk" whilst they dodge rocks and the G-man’s breath. You’ll notice some odd looking melting effects here…I’m not sure if Gojira’s breath is melting rock or what, but it looks like plastic. Well, after getting mummified, the G-man falls into the water and disappears. Then the baby Moths head on back to Mothra Island (Note: It ain’t called, "The Thing’s Island!). I think that somewhere en route, one of the babies must die because there is never another movie with both showing up again.
This movie was OK. It has a plot, but it’s still pretty dull. If you like Mothra, then go for it! It’s got some interesting looking egg scenes and Mothra does have a couple of neat fight sequences.
I give it:
