Mothra (1961) Review

Mothra (1961) Review

 

Most giant monster movies feature angry, fearsome daikaiju hell-bent on destruction, but Toho created perhaps the most friendly-looking and peaceful monster of all, and that is the giant moth goddess of Infant Island known as Mothra. Many people know her primarily from the Godzilla franchise, having first squared off with Big G in Mothra vs. Godzilla in 1964, but she actually made her big-screen debut in her own solo film three years earlier.

The plot borrows heavily from King Kong. Explorers arrive on an unknown island, encounter the native population who worship a giant deity, which turns out to be a giant monster, and the monster makes it to civilization and wreaks havoc. These similarities aside, Mothra is still pretty unique amid Japanese monster movies of the era for being more fantastical and spiritual and less a science fiction tale of nature gone awry, as previously done in Godzilla and Rodan. This isn’t about a monster flattening an entire city and pointing out the folly of man, but it does still rely on the age-old themes of nuclear concerns and humans messing with things they really shouldn’t be messing with.

Everything the monster Mothra is known for got its start here. There are the miniature twin fairies no bigger than Barbie dolls who chant Mothra’s song and have a psychic connection with her, there’s Mothra’s giant speckled egg form that she starts out in, which hatches into the brown segmented larvae form that spews silk, and the larvae makes a cocoon on Tokyo Tower, where she hatches into her final winged form. The special effects for Mothra and the destruction are all on-par with the best effects of the time, but some effects are weaker in a couple other areas. There are many shots with poor compositing, and a couple shots with miniature army men that literally look like plastic army toys.

All the destruction and action occurs in the second half. It uses a slow build-up like the original Godzilla, but doesn’t feature the monster in as much capacity early on. It’s slow to start, but once Mothra’s egg is revealed, it starts to pick up. The human drama isn’t boring and the characters are pretty good, though the human villain is pretty cliché and over-the-top.

Mothra’s debut film doesn’t feature the same kind of destruction or quantity of said destruction as seen in the Godzilla series, so keep that in mind if you decide to give this a watch. It’s definitely worth checking out if you’re a Toho fan or even if you just want to see where Mothra got her start. She went on to star in several Godzilla films throughout the years, and even got her own trilogy in the 90’s. Mothra is undoubtedly the queen of the monsters.