Mothra vs. Godzilla

***Mothra vs. Godzilla***  (モスラ対ゴジラ,   *Mosura tai Gojira*?) is a 1964 tokusatsu kaiju film produced by Toho, and the fourth installment in the Godzilla series as well as the Showa series. The film was released to Japanese theaters on April 29, 1964, and to American theaters on November 25, 1964.

*Mothra vs. Godzilla* marks the first crossover between two of Toho's own monsters: their flagship character Godzilla and the giant moth deity Mothra, introduced three years prior in her own film. When Mothra's egg washes ashore in Japan following a typhoon, greedy businessmen Kumayama and Jiro Torahata claim it as their own property and plan to exploit it for revenue. To make matters worse, Godzilla reemerges and begins rampaging across Japan, making his way straight for the egg. It's up to Ichiro Sakai, Junko Nakanishi, and Shunsuke Miura to travel to Infant Island and plead with the dying Mothra to return to Japan and battle Godzilla to save both her offspring and the millions of innocent people threatened by Godzilla's rampage.

## Plot

A news reporter named Ichiro Sakai and his photographer Junko Nakanishi take pictures of the wreckage caused by a typhoon. Later on that day a giant egg is discovered on the shore. The local villagers salvage it and scientists come to study the egg.

While Sakai and Junko try to ask Professor Miura questions about the egg, an entrepreneur of Happy Enterprises named Kumayama scurries the scientists off and explains that he bought the egg from the local villagers. Instead of letting scientists study the egg, Kumayama wants to make it into a large tourist attraction. Sakai, Junko, and Professor Miura are disgusted and believe that Kumayama has no right to keep the egg.

While the three are discussing the egg at a hotel, they discover Kumayama checking in. Sakai wonders aloud if somebody else may be working with Kumayama and investigates the matter. Kumayama walks into the room of Jiro Torahata, the head of Happy Enterprises. As the two are discussing the billion-dollar tourist attraction, two tiny twin girls, known as the Shobijin, interrupt them. The Shobijin explain that they are from Infant Island and that the egg belongs to a monster named Mothra who lives there. Torahata and Kumayama ignore the girls' pleas and try to capture them.

The Shobijin escape the room and meet with Sakai, Junko, and Professor Miura outside the hotel. The girls beg them to bring the egg back too and the three promise to try as hard as they can to bring the egg back to Mothra Island. The girls explain that if the egg is not returned, a larva will hatch and will cause great destruction to its surroundings. Sakai tries to write editorials but "...public opinion is powerless against the law."

The girls soon leave and even though they could not get the egg back, they thank Sakai, Junko, and Miura for their kindness. Later, while the three are testing for radioactivity in an industrial area, Godzilla suddenly pops out of a beach and begins to attack Nagoya and the other surrounding cities.

The editor of Sakai's newspaper believes that the military cannot do anything against Godzilla and discusses it with Sakai and Junko. Jiro, another reporter who loves to eat eggs, walks in and suggests that Mothra might be able to defeat Godzilla. Sakai and Junko are skeptical that the island would agree because atomic testing had destroyed most of their island, and they had failed to return the egg to them.

The two go to Infant Island anyway with Professor Miura. They are captured by the local villagers and are brought to the tribe’s chief. The three ask for assistance but, as expected, are turned down because of the atomic testing that destroyed their island, and Japan's failure to return the egg.

The Shobijin are heard singing and everyone walks towards them. Sakai, Junko, and Miura ask the Shobijin for Mothra's assistance but they are also turned town. Junko then pleads to all the villagers that not everyone from Japan should be blamed for what happened to their island. She argues that Godzilla is killing both good and bad people in Japan, but that all people have a right to live. Sakai then adds that "we're all human" and that everyone is connected and must help each other. Mothra's screech is soon heard and the Shobijin ask everyone to follow them. They convince Mothra to help Japan but the monster is weak. After the monster will fight Godzilla it will have no power to return to the island.

The next day, Kumayama barges into Torahata's room and demands Torahata to give him his money back that Torahata had recently swindled from Kumayama. The two get into a fistfight and Kumayama knocks Torahata down. Kumayama crawls into Torahata's money cabinet and begins to steal the money from it. Torahata wakes up and sees Godzilla approaching the hotel. He then grabs a gun and kills Kumayama. Torahata tries to escape with his money but Godzilla destroys the hotel, crushing the greedy head of Happy Enterprises to death.

Godzilla walks towards the egg and tries to destroy it until Mothra shows up. The two fight a tough battle where Mothra seems to have the upper hand. While on the ground, Godzilla fires his atomic ray at Mothra and badly burns one of her wings. Mothra dies with her wing resting on top of the egg. Godzilla walks away. The Shobijin then explain to Sakai, Junko, and Miura that the egg can be hatched today. The tiny twins soon begin to sing.

Meanwhile, the military tries to fight Godzilla by electrocuting him with "artificial lighting" but fail. The Shobijin continue singing and the monster egg finally hatches with not one, but two Mothra larvae. The Mothra larvae follow Godzilla to Iwa Island and use silk spray on Godzilla to wrap the giant monster up in a cocoon. Godzilla struggles as he becomes fully wrapped up and plunges into the ocean. The Mothra larvae celebrate and return to their island.

## Staff

* Directed by   Ishiro Honda
* Written by   Shinichi Sekizawa
* Produced by   Tomoyuki Tanaka, Sanezumi Fujimoto
* Music by   Akira Ifukube
* Cinematography by   Hajime Koizumi
* Edited by   Ryohei Fujii
* Production design by   Takeo Kita, Akira Watanabe
* Assistant directing by   Koji Kajita
* Special effects by   Eiji Tsuburaya
* Stock Music by   Hiroshi Miyagawa
* "Mothra's Song" composed by   Yuji Koseki
* Assistant Director of Special Effects   Teruyoshi Nakano

## Cast

* Akira Takarada   as   Ichiro "Ichi" Sakai, newspaper reporter
* Yuriko Hoshi   as   Junko Nakanishi, newspaper photographer
* Hiroshi Koizumi   as   Professor Shunsuke Miura
* Yu Fujiki   as   Jiro Nakamura, newspaper reporter
* Kenji Sahara   as   Jiro Torahata
* Emi Ito and Yumi Ito   as   Shobijin
* Jun Tazaki   as   Arota, Sakai's editor
* Yoshibumi Tajima   as   Kumayama, owner of Happy Enterprises
* Kenzo Tabu   as   Prefectural assembly member
* Yutaka Sada   as   School principal
* Akira Tani   as   Amimoto, head villager of Shizunoura
* Susumu Fujita   as   Head of JSDF task force
* Ikio Sawamura   as   Shinto priest
* Ren Yamamoto   as   Sailor at the dock
* Kozo Nomura   as   JSDF member
* Yasuhisa Tsutsumi   as   Police officer at the dock
* Mitsuo Tsuda   as   JSDF officer
* Shin Otomo   as   Police chief
* Senkichi Omura   as   Shizunoura fisherman
* Yoshio Kosugi   as   Infant Island chief
* Miki Yashiro   as   Ms. Kobayashi, teacher at Iwa Island Branch School
* Koji Iwamoto   as   Shizunoura fisherman
* Terumi Oka   as   Hamakaze Hotel waitress
* Wataru Omae   as   Happy Enterprises employee
* Shiro Tsuchiya, Takuzo Kumagai, Koji Uno, Yutaka Nakayama   as   Shizunoura fishermen
* Toshihiko Furuta, Hideo Shibuya, Koji Uruki, Ken Echigo   as   Reporters
* Yukihiko Gondo, Koichi Sato   as   Happy Enterprises employees
* Hiroshi Akitsu   as   Shizunoura fisherman
* Tadashi Okabe, Haruya Sakamoto, Seishiro Kuno   as   JSDF members
* Hiroshi Takagi   as   Happy Enterprises employee
* Keisuke Yamada   as   Police chief
* Shinjiro Hirota   as   Happy Enterprises employee
* Shigemi Sunagawa   as   Fisherman
* Ikuo Kawamura   as   Transport aircraft pilot
* Rinsaku Ogata   as   Transport aircraft operations assistant

### *Godzilla vs. The Thing*

* Harold Conway   as   Weapons expert on Frontier Missile Cruiser
* Robert Dunham   as   U.S. navy sailor
* Osman Yusuf   as   Journalist
* Bernard Grant   as   Ichiro Sakai, newspaper reporter (voice)
* Paulette Rubenstein, Terry Van Tell   as   Shobijin (voices)
* Larry Robinson   as   Jiro Nakamura, newspaper reporter (voice)
* Bret Morrison   as   Kumayama, Owner of Happy Enterprises (voice)
* Jack Curtis   as   Jiro Torahata (voice)
* Peter Fernandez   as   Villager (voice)

Template:Col-end

## Titles

* Godzilla Against Mothra (English Japanese poster title)
* Godzilla vs. The Thing (United States; England)
* Godzilla vs. Mothra (Singapore; Revised U.S. Title)
* Godzilla Against Mothra (Godzilla contra Mothra; Mexico)
* Mothra Against Godzilla (Mothra contre Godzilla; France; Mothra Contra Godzilla; Portugal)
* Godzilla Against "The Thing" (Godzilla contre "La Chose"; French Belgium; Godzilla tegen "Het Ding"; Dutch Belgium)
* Godzilla and the Prehistoric Caterpillars (Godzilla und die Urweltraupen; Germany)
* Godzilla Against the Monsters (Godzilla contra los monstruos; Spain)
* Watang! In the Fabulous Empire of Monsters (Watang! Nel favoloso impero dei mostri; Italy)
* Mothra Meets Godzilla (Mothra möter Godzilla; Sweden)
* Panic in Tokyo: Godzilla and Monster Mothra (Paniek in Tokyo Godzilla en het monster van Mothra; Netherlands)
* Godzilla Against the Sacred Island (Godzilla Contra a Ilha Sagrada; Brazil)
* Mothra Fights Dinosaur (魔斯拉鬥恐龍 Mósīlā dòu Kǒnglóng; Taiwan)

## Foreign releases

### U.S. release

American International Pictures originally released *Mothra vs. Godzilla* in the United States under the title *Godzilla vs. The Thing* in September of 1964, and it opened in New York City on November 25, 1964. Mothra's appearance was kept out of promotional material, which hinted that Godzilla's opponent would be a hideous tentacled creature and referred to it only as "the Thing." *New York Times* film critic Eugene Archer reacted to the film and its title: "Well, there are three things, not counting the movie. One has wings and looks like a big bee. The other two are hatched from the first Thing's egg, after quite a bit of worshipful kootch dancing from a pair of foot-tall native goddesses...".

In American video releases in the 1980's, the film was titled simply *Godzilla vs. Mothra*. However, Mothra is still repeatedly called "The Thing" in the dub, confusing many viewers who thought "The Thing" and "Mothra" were two separate monsters. Because of this, when TriStar released *Godzilla vs. Mothra* in the U.S., they re-titled it *Godzilla and Mothra: The Battle for Earth* so that it would not be confused with this film.

### United Kingdom release

Warner-Pathe brought *Godzilla vs. The Thing* to UK theaters in 1965, as part of a double feature with *The Time Travelers*. It received an X rating from the British Board of Film Censors, preventing children under 16 from seeing it. Sony released the Japanese version of the film on Blu-ray in 2019 as part of the The Criterion Collection's *Godzilla: The Showa-Era Films, 1954–1975* box set.

## Box office

In the original April 29th, 1964 Japanese release of *Mothra vs. Godzilla*, the film had 3,510,000 people attend. The first re-issue of the film, on December 19th, 1970, had an attendance of 730,000. When the film was re-released again on March 15th, 1980, it got 2,980,000 people attend and made ¥1,550,000,000, or $7,000,000. All releases put together made a gross of ¥2,330,000,000, or $10,000,000, and had a total attendance of 7,220,000.

## Reception

*Mothra vs. Godzilla* is often considered by both fans and critics alike as being one of the best in the Showa series of Godzilla films.

## References

This is a list of references for **Mothra vs. Godzilla**. These citations are used to identify the reliable sources on which this article is based. These references appear inside articles in the form of superscript numbers, which look like this: [1]

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Template:Cite book
2. ↑ モスラ対ゴジラ｜ゴジラ　東宝公式サイト (official Godzilla.jp page)
3. ↑ Monsters From An Unknown Culture: Godzilla (and friends) in Britain 1957-1980 by Sim Branaghan – Part 1

## Gallery

*Main article: Mothra vs. Godzilla/Gallery.*