GHIDORAH, THE THREE HEADED MONSTER: If Mothra, Rodan, and Godzilla All Cooperate

Ghidorah, The Three Headed Monster (Japanese, 1964; American, 1965) – The 5th Godzilla Movie – Directed by Ishiro Honda – Starring Yosuke Natsuki, Yuriko Hoshi, Hiroshi Koizumi, Akiko Wakabayashi, Emi Ito, Yumi Ito, and Haruo Nakajima.

GHIDORAH, THE THREE HEADED MONSTER is an excellent movie, but it’s the first time in the Godzilla series I wish Ishiro Honda had broken with his strong desire to tell a human-driven story and instead just gone balls out with monster mayhem.

I understand that I’m going rogue on this, that one of the most detestable things a sequel can do is simply over-indulge on the signature moments from an earlier film, but there’s such an awesome set-up here of having Mothra, Godzilla, and Rodan team up to take on Ghidorah that I could have forgiven Honda and Toho if they’d simply gone, “F*ck the story, how many cities can we destroy in 90 minutes?”

The plot here is almost irrelevant to the mayhem, yet that is what gives the Honda/Toho films such strength. Even though the human portions of the film aren’t nearly as awesome as the monster portions, they’re actually more compelling. It’s a fascinating approach to storytelling and movie making – the humans are used to tell a gripping story while the monsters are used to deliver the action. Imagine if Die Hard had sent 2/3 of the film telling Holly’s story and then the last 30 minutes showing John McClane and Hans Gruber punch and kick and shoot each other.

But yeah, the real selling point of GHIDORAH is the big battle between four monsters and six heads.

Without question, the single best moment of the film and one of the single greatest scenes you will ever see comes deep into GHIDORAH where the Shobijn (Emi Ito, Yumi Ito) and the humans are watching Mothra (in caterpillar form) try to convince Godzilla and Rodan to stop beating the crud out of each other and team up to defeat Ghidorah. What’s amazing about the scene (beyond the simple awesomeness of watching a camera cut between an upright lizard, a flying dinosaur, and a slug nodding their heads at each other) is that the Shobijn translate the discussion for the humans standing with them.

It’s amazing.

A.

MAY.

ZING.

It’s utterly insane and bizarre and incredibly humanizing to hear the Shobijn translating all of these screeches and grunts into normal conversation: “Mothra is trying to get them to help but Rodan and Godzilla don’t want to. They say humans hate them.”

What? Godzilla has feelings?

Brilliant.

Madly brilliant.

The chat goes on forever, too, so the movie wants you to know these aren’t just GODZILLA SMASH styled mindless monsters. They’ve got actual intellects, so even though the Kaiju typically appear in a movie because the humans have unwittingly uncovered them, there’s more going on in their brains than we’ve seen. Even given that the Shobijn are putting the monster talk into human talk (and it’s a further translation given that I watched the English language version because that’s what Netflix streaming defaults to showing), it’s a mindbendingly awesome sequence.

I love the human sidebars, too, where they become increasingly frustrated that Rodan and Godzilla refuse to help. Detective Shindo (Yosuke Natsuki) laments, “these monsters are as stupid as human beings!” and that’s the entire film series brilliantly boiled down to a single line. The best line, however, goes to the Shobijn, who during their translating refuse to repeat one of Godzilla’s lines and instead offer up, “Oh Godzilla, what terrible language!”

I haven’t said much about the human plot of GHIDORAH because it’s kinda bland this time around. There is a solid subplot with an escaped Princess (Akiko Wakabayashi) who thinks she’s a Martian and can predict the future but it doesn’t gain a lot of traction with me. I kept thinking that there’s four big monsters coming, let’s get to them quicker for a change and integrate the human plot with the destruction instead of setting up the destruction. This is the fifth movie in the Godzilla series and I wouldn’t have minded if they’d altered the formula.

GHIDORAH is a step down from MOTHRA VS. GODZILLA, but it’s still a fine addition to the franchise.

MOTHRA VS. GODZILLA: Or Godzilla vs. The Thing, Or Godzilla vs. Mothra, or Godzilla Against Mothra

Mothra vs. Godzilla (Japanese release, 1964) – The 4th Godzilla Movie – Directed by Ishiro Honda – Starring Akira Takarada, Yuriko Hoshi, Hiroshi Koizumi, Yu Fujiki, Emi Ito, Yumi Ito, Yoshifumi Tajima, Kenji Sahara, and Katsumi Tekuza.

What’s most impressive about the GODZILLA movies to me through four films is not just their versatility, but their willingness to make you wait for what you came to see: monsters crushing monsters.

There is a real attempt to give you a story in these opening GODZILLA films, and what’s incredibly interesting about MOTHRA VS. GODZILLA (or whichever of the four names you prefer) is that it’s Godzilla who feels like he’s entering Mothra’s universe more than the reverse, but ultimately it feels like both monsters are intruding upon contemporary Japanese society.

Which is pretty impressive since it keeps happening.

Ishiro Honda expertly blends the two monster worlds together with modern Japan, merging the fanciful aspects of Mothra’s first movie with the darker aspects of the Godzilla films, and still keeping humanity’s story at the center.

MOTHRA VS. GODZILLA opens with an oceanic storm, and in all of the resultant damage, a giant egg washes up on the shore. Local businessman Kumayama (Yoshifumi Tajima) and Happy Enterprises do what local businessmen do best and attempt to profit off the egg. Our protagonists for this go-round repeats the journalist/scientist dynamic from MOTHRA. Journalist Ichiro Sakai (Akira Takarada) and scientist Professor Miura (Hiroshi Koizumi) attempt to investigate the massive egg, but Happy Enterprises shoos them away, telling them that they have bought the egg fair and square from the locals and will not allow anyone else access.

Kumayama is just the face for Happy Enterprises, however, as company head Jiro Torahata (Kenji Sahara) is overseeing the operation. While these two are scheming, the tiny female Shobijn (Emi Ito and Yumi Ito) show up to tell the businessman that they’re from Infant Island and the egg is from Infant Island and if the egg isn’t returned to Infant Island, there’s gonna be lots of monster smashing because the egg belongs to Mothra.

The Shobijn are annoying, but they’re important to Mothra’s story and so it’s nice to see them kicking around this movie, too. The real joy about this egg-hatching angle, though, is that the baby Mothra isn’t going to smash Japan because it’s evil but because when it hatches it’ll be a newborn desperately searching for food. It’s not going to destroy anyone out of malice, but out of a primal need for food.

Happy Enterprises isn’t interested in anything the Shobijn is selling, so the tiny ladies turn their attention to Sakai, Miura, and Sakai’s photographer Yoka Nakanishi (Yuriko Hoshi), where they find a much more receptive, but powerless audience.

Into all of this comes Godzilla, who’s been displaced by the same storm and decides to attack Nagoya because he’s f*cking Godzilla and that’s what Godzillas do. Look, I know that there’s a dude in a rubber suit (Katsumi Tekuza) smashing models, but it’s awesomely rendered. I could watch Godzilla smashing stuff all day and not get tired of it because Tekuza, Honda, and the effects team are at the top of their game here. I will say that Godzilla does feel like an interloper at times and almost unnecessary until we get to the point where Godzilla turns his attention on the egg and we get the big Godzilla versus Mothra throwdown.

This is a great monster vs. monster sequence. Mothra gets the upper hand but then Godzilla kills her with his atomic breath. Mothra dies on top of the egg in a very motherly, tender display, and Godzilla is off to stomp and roar elsewhere. The Shobijn help hatch the egg with their singing and two little Mothra appear to go double team the attack on Godzilla, and they defeat him by tying them up with their silk spray.

MOTHRA VS. GODZILLA is another good installment of both the Godzilla and Mothra series. Honda paces his films to build tension and work the narrative to a point where the monster battles mean something more than just active destruction. When I started watching these Godzilla films, I thought I’d get a kitschy kick out of them, but I am honestly and truly really enjoying them, so far. If you’ve never seen them, I highly recommend checking out these early movies.

MOTHRA: A Monster to Rescue the Girls?

Mothra (American Release: 1962) – Directed by Ishiro Honda – Starring Frankie Sakai, Kyoko Kagawa, Jerry Itou, and Hiroshi Koizumi.

I love MOTHRA as much for what it represents as I do for the film itself.

Growing up, Kaiju movies were, for me, nothing more than the occasional Saturday afternoon diversion from Red Sox games. I watched enough of them to know who most of the famous Kaiju were, however, but not enough to understand the differences between them. Meaning, I had no idea what made someone like Mothra unique beyond her appearance.

Only a handful of watches into this extended Kaiju marathon, however, I already recognize what makes Mothra unique. Gone is the dark, deeply political, philosophical, and cultural meanings of the classic GOJIRA/GODZILLA and the pretty solid RODAN. In contrast, MOTHRA is like a big piece of colorful bubble gum for us to enjoy and our resident monster is much more a “monster.”

Similar to earlier films (and how quickly has Ishiro Honda gone from a director I’ve never heard of to one of my all-time favorites?), MOTHRA is about guilt. In GOJIRA, it was cultural guilt about atomic testing. In RODAN, it was cultural guilt about industrialization. In MOTHRA, it’s cultural imperialism. Clark Nelson (Jerry Itou) pays for a scientific expedition to an island that’s been thought to be inhabitable thanks to atomic tests from the nation of Rolisica (a seemingly dual stand-in for Russia and the United States). There was a shipwreck on that island, however, and there were survivors who return perfectly healthy. Nelson pays for the science expedition, and he’s cut from the Norman Osborn cloth – a well-dressed businessman with questionable ethics and a willingness to do whatever he needs to do to get ahead.

In this case, that means stealing two tiny women away and bringing them back to Japan to perform in a theater show.

I don’t mean these are short women, either, but the Shobijin, as they are called, are women who appear to be no more than a foot tall. There’s a human-sized population of, native islanders who aren’t keen on seeing the women get stolen, and after the science expedition initially convinces Nelson to leave the island without the women, Nelson simply returns later with some armed henchmen and take the women and mow down the islanders in a hail of gunfire. A surviving islander goes to their holy temple and prays to a giant egg.

It’s hard to not love these movies, isn’t it?

While this is happening, our human protagonists are back in Japan keeping the existence of the Shobijin secret. Zen-Chan (Frankie Sakai) is a journalist who snuck on board the expedition to see what was going on. Zen-Chan is a great character and Sakai imbues him with a wonderful sense of decency that evolves thanks to his experience on the island. Nicknamed “Bulldog” because he’s a reporter that never lets go of the story, we see him using some questionable tactics to trick the reclusive scientist Shinichi Chujo (Hiroshi Koizumi) into letting his guard down so his sidekick photographer can snap a picture.

As the expedition continues, however, Zen-Chan becomes less the bulldog and more the concerned citizen. He objects to taking the Shobijin and never files a story, which makes his editor furious. He explains to the editor that keeping the secret was more important, and when the editor tells him of Nelson having returned with them on a subsequent trip, Zen-Chan teams up with Chujo to try and do what’s best for the women – which is to return them to the island.

One thing I already love about the Kaiju genre is how little these movies have to do with the monster. Yes, the monster usually gets the film named after them, and yes, the monster is typically a stand-in for cultural guilt, but Mothra herself plays a decidedly small role in the film until the last 20-30 minutes when the action kicks into monster gear.

MOTHRA is much more about Zen-Chan, Chujo, and Nelson. Critically, the desires of Zen-Chan and Chujo mirror the desire of Mothra – to return the Shobijin to their island home. Like Mothra, they’re willing to break a few laws and smash down a few doors in their attempt to get the Shobijin back home.

I really love the concept behind Mothra. While she represents cultural guilt and while she smashes up a couple cities, she’s also a bit more complicated than Godzilla and Rodan in that while she comes into existence because of the ill-advised actions of humans, she’s also birthed from her egg because of the prayers of humans who want her to help them reclaim what has been stolen. The Shobijin know she’s coming and sing to her to lead the creature to them. The trail leads to New Kirk City (a stand-in for New York) where the crowd turns against Nelson, demanding he returns the Shobijin. Now, the crowd is doing it because they don’t want Mothra to tear up their city more than any actual concern about the tiny women, but it does shift the narrative energy of the movie into Mothra’s corner – the crowd wants Mothra to have what Mothra wants.

There’s also a wonderful sense of escapism in MOTHRA. Yes, bad things happen, but the movie plays out like a wild contemporary fantasy where the monster is actual an agent of justice or revenge. I love the subtle twists with the character – Mothra emerges from the giant egg as a giant caterpillar that transforms into a giant moth. The look is fantastic and Mothra’s journey across the ocean as a swimming caterpillar and then across the ocean again to New Kirk City as the moth is a pretty good use of building up the character and using the transformation to raise tension.

I really love MOTHRA. Fun, bright, escapist, and containing a great message, MOTHRA is a fantastic movie.