Alternate Titles: Godzilla vs. the Thing
Year: 1964
Director: Ishiro Honda
Special Effects Director: Eiji Tsuburaya
In The Suit: Haruo Nakajima

After hitting on the winning formula established by King Kong vs. Godzilla, Toho next considered pitting Godzilla against another famous monster, the one created by Frankenstein. This actually has its roots in the King Kong vs. Frankenstein script that eventually turned into King Kong vs. Godzilla, and once again Frankenstein is put aside. However, Toho won't give up on Frankenstein and they'll use the story ideas they were considering here for Frankenstein Conquers the World, with a new monster Baragon replacing Godzilla. For this movie, Toho instead turns to its own stable of monsters and pits Godzilla against Mothra.

Don't you mean "against The Thing"?

The movie opens with a huge typhoon that causes landslides and tidal waves. This storm will have two effects. The first is increased flooding at a new industrial plant at Kutata Beach, with the local assemblyman arranging to have the area drained with giant machines. Reporter Ichiro Sakai (Akira Takarada, who played the lead character from the first Godzilla film) and newbie photographer Junko Nakanishi (Yuriko Hoshi) are on the scene to report the flooding, and Ichiro discovers a strange object that Junko considers quite beautiful, so they pack it away and take it along with them.

Definitely not a radioactive giant toenail.

The second effect of the storm is a giant egg washing ashore at a fishing village...

...and Ichiro and Junko head there as well to meet zoologist Professor Miura (played by Hiroshi Koizumi, who previously played the main pilot in Godzilla Raids Again and the linguist in the first Mothra movie).

Professor Miura is initially not interested in talking to Ichiro and Junko...

...but they wind up all taking the same side when it turns out that the fishing village has sold the rights to the egg to a sleazy entrepreneur named Kumayama. He's paid the villagers based on the going price of the weight of an egg.

Kumayama intends to set up an amusement park around the egg under the name of Happy Enterprises. And he's funded by a Jiro Torahata (Kenji Sahara, the lead from Rodan).

Mothra's Fairies show up and declare that the egg is Mothra's, and ask that they please return it to Infant Island.

Torahata and Kumayama respond by attempting to capture the fairies and add them to their show. But the fairies escape and instead meet up with Ichiro, Junko, and Miura. They tell the good guys that the egg is Mothra's and must be returned to Infant Island. The characters recognize Infant Island as the location where they did nuclear testing, but never heard of Mothra and they start asking each other if they believe any of this. But it turns out that - surprise! - Mothra is standing right there.

Hiya! Didn't see me?

You can't need any more proof than that.

Also, this is a world where Godzilla is known to exist. They're going to draw the line at giant moths?

It's interesting that these guys haven't heard of Mothra. According to the Wikipedia page, the Roliscian government was going to be in earlier scripts of this movie, so the idea seems to have been that this takes place in the same "continuity" as the first Mothra movie. In that case, you'd think a giant caterpillar rampaging through Japan before destroying Tokyo Tower and then flying to Roliscia to devastate its airforce would have made the news. The nature of this egg also has complications. The Fairies say that the egg has laid underground for many years, and had reached full size at last before the typhoon hit Infant Island and washed it away. Since when do eggs continue to grow after they've been laid? But we saw Mothra in the previous version hatch from an egg into larval form and later become an imago. If we go by release date that was three years ago, not long enough to quality for the "many years" specified by the fairies. So is this egg actually a sibling or cousin of the current Mothra? But the message from the fairies in this movie is that Mothra doesn't really ever die, she is just constantly reincarnated through the eggs. So is there just always another egg waiting for Mothra to be reincarnated?

Back to the plot! The good guys go to Happy Enterprises and dispute the idea that they have the rights to the egg. But they are waved off ("Do you have power of attorney for Mothra?") and then the bad guys offer to buy the fairies off of them.

Once again, the Japanese government, who you'd think would have an interest in a giant egg arriving in Japan, are completely absent from this conversation. Miura will later say going to them would be too slow. It may be a little unclear if this movie is meant to take place in direct continuity with the first Mothra movie, but Godzilla is definitely not a new phenomenon in this movie and his previous attacks should be enough to merit concern about a giant egg. If nothing else, the "power of attorney" comment actually has some merit; you'd think that the good guys could take the fairies to a lawyer and put in a claim for Mothra.

The other thing is, what's Happy Enterprises' end game here? Do they think the egg will just never hatch? When i first said that Kumayama was being funded by Torahata, i thought maybe Torahata had some bigger plan in motion that involved him taking control of the Mothra larva. But nothing like that is in the movie. And without some larger evil scheme, this is the third movie in a row (after Mothra and King Kong vs.) where the plot is that the bad guys are putting some supernatural thing on display that endangers Japan.

In any event, the good guys are stymied by Happy Enterprises' refusal to turn over the egg, so they sit and discuss their limited options. (Professor Muira: "An eye for an eye is how i feel, but I don't think we can win by physical fighting."). Seeing this, the fairies sneak off and head home with Mothra, basically saying that it's not going to be their problem when the egg hatches and the larva comes out looking for food.

Ichiro and Junko go back to their newspaper where Jun Tazaki is playing the role of Murata, the editor in chief...

...and there's also Jira Nakamura, the hilarious secondary reporter who's always eating eggs (played by Yu Fujiki from King Kong vs Godzilla and Atragon). We just call him "Egg Guy".

Murata berates Ichiro for giving up on turning the public against Happy Enterprises. They then get a call from Professor Miura saying that he needs Ichiro and Junko to come over right away. We next see them in a decontamination chamber, and when they ask why (only after they get out, mind you), Miura says it's because of the weird object Junko found, which has turned out to be radioactive (what about the clothes they were wearing when they found it? There's a radioactive washing machine somewhere in Japan right now.). No one ever actually says it's a Godzilla toenail or whatever, but of course that must be what it is. No one seems too concerned about the fact that Junko must have been carrying it around for a while before they gave it to Miura and who or what therefore might have been exposed to radiation. They're also still not too worried about the radiation coming from the scale since Muira opens up the container that it's in so they can all stick their face in.

But they are taking the radiation situation somewhat seriously, since we next see them with a group of scientists waving a big flag with a radiation symbol and wearing hazmat suits and combing the area where they were de-flooding for the industrial complex. However, when they find that the entire area is indeed highly radioactive, they don't make any attempt to chase the locals away. The local assemblyman comes out to complain that they're interfering with their new development, but all this noise wakes up Godzilla, who comes bursting up out of the de-flooded ara.

What is all this *noise*?! Some of us are a little hung-over here!

I feel your pain, Godzilla. That's what i'm like first thing in the morning, too.

Now, the last we saw of Godzilla, he fell into the ocean by Atami Castle during an earthquake. He's now waking up a little south of that, on Kutata Beach near Nagoya Castle (which we'll see in a second). That is just a bit further south down the coast from Atami, so i guess he got knocked out fighting King Kong and got pushed south before/while getting buried. It's close enough that it's pretty clearly a continuation of the previous movie, and when he awakes he's identified right away as Godzilla (compare to the fact that no one seems to believe in Mothra). He's gotten a little more adorable in this movie.

Ok, who's hungry? *This* guy, that's for sure! What's for breakfast?

Now, the only way to understand the rest of this movie is to realize that Godzilla is waking up with a giant hangover, and he is confused and not feeling good and maybe just needs a little breakfast. He's got an upset stomach...

...and all of this is just making him feel worse. He gets his tail stuck in a tower and just basically stumbles around.

I don't know how anyone can look at this and think he's being malicious.

For the most part, he is just incredibly clumsy and not familiar with the terrain (oh dear, unlevel surfaces, i told them about that, it's a tripping hazard)...

...and he is totally sorry about all of this, you guys.

Actually that scene above with Godzilla falling into Nagoya Castle was an accident; the actor in the Godzilla suit (Haruo Nakajima) really slipped and fell, but special effects director Eiji Tsuburaya liked the scene and kept it. The fall also damaged Godzilla's teeth, making them wobbly for the rest of the film, but Tsuburaya liked that too.

Godzilla is just soooo clumsy and definitely hung over.

So so hung over...Or he's possessed by The Falling Down Girl from the last movie.

With the military unable to stop Godzilla's "rampage" (cereally), the egg-eating reporter suggests asking Mothra for help. It means eating their pride since they weren't able to get Mothra's egg back, but Ichiro, Junko, and Miura agree to go to Infant Island. Meanwhile, Editor Murata wants to know what the egg guy is doing back from the location of Mothra's egg, where he was assigned. Egg Guy tells the Editor that everybody ran away because Godzilla was approaching the area. The Editor asks if the egg ran away. Min liked that line. Ha! I did! After admitting that eggs don't have legs and can't run away, Egg Guy goes back to report on the egg, regardless of the danger.

Ichiro, Junko, and Miura are dropped off near Infant Island on a raft, and they row there wearing hazmat suits. They find Infant Island to be a radioactive ruin.

That turtle skeleton is actually "alive" or at least its head moves back and forth. It's worth noting that Infant Island is in much worse shape than the previous movie, and its unclear if the situation there has worsened (and if so, is it due to more nuclear testing or because Mothra is weakening and can't aid them?) or if we really are just in a new continuity for the Mothra side of the story.

At least this time, the natives aren't in blackface. They're instead in a kind of orange-face, covered in the berry juice that protects them from the radiation. Ichiro, Junko, and Miura's hazmet suits come off, revealing impractical dress clothes underneath, and they are compelled to drink the berry juice for their own safety to drive away the "evil spirits". The natives are not sympathetic to the fact that Godzilla is rampaging in Japan ("Godzilla is your own fault for playing with the devil's fire") but our protagonists are drawn further into their cave to an oasis where the fairies are singing. The fairies say that this part of the island is the "only place sustaining the natives".

Our protagonists make a special appeal to the fairies, saying that they know that when many people live together there are many problems and they know that they live in a world without trust, but they will continue to try hard. The fairies acknowledge that they have a personal stake in the matter, too, since Mothra's egg is in Japan, but the protagonists don't press that point and instead make a kind of appeal for worldwide understanding (Oh, sure. When you want something...). It seems to work and Mothra lets it be known that she will fight Godzilla, even though the fairies say that Mothra is old now and she'll be fighting with her last strength.

By the way, the female pronoun is definitely used in this move (at least for the Japanese subtitled version, not for the English dub, where Mothra is still "The Thing").

Even though Mothra is dying, it's said that new life will be born from the egg and so Mothra never truly dies.

Back in Japan, during Godzilla's rampaging (He's not rampaging! He just has a headache! And you people keep shooting at him!), the two main human villains get into a bloody fist fight in Torahata's hotel over financial issues. Kumayama winds up getting shot dead but then Godzilla coincidentally (or is it fate!?) crashes into their hotel, and Torahata is killed too. Godzilla is about as confused about this as everything else so i don't think he personally had any stake in killing the bad guys (Totally an accident, you guys! Sorry!). It's odd that the hotel wasn't evacuated, though. It's not like people didn't know he was lumbering in that direction.

But Godzilla eventually finds something of interest. BREAKFAST!!!!

Oh yeah, when he sees that egg he starts looking around like, "Is this a set up?, Can i be that lucky?", and then just starts sniffing...

...and finally uses his tail to clear away the shelter that was built around it and just stares at it in a funny scene that just jumps back and forth between the egg and Godzilla's lusty expression.

However, that's when Mothra arrives.

Mothra attacks Godzilla with her wing-generated wind powers and just by landing on his head and clawing at him, but Godzilla is less interested in a fight than he is in securing his meal. "It's mine! I saw it first." He turns his back on Mothra and goes for the egg...

...so Mothra grabs his tail and drags him away.

Godzilla responds with a barrage of breath weapon attacks, but it's totally random, not really aiming in any particular direction. Even though i don't think he's fighting to his fullest,...

...Mothra is weakening, and eventually she's seen spraying Godzilla with a golden dust. The fairies say it's Mothra's "final weapon" which the others liken to the "powder of the poisonous moth".

She dies after administering the poison.

But ven that doesn't defeat Godzilla. And now he's mad.

"Worst... day... ever."

It's not clear why Godzilla didn't eat the egg, or Mothra's carcass for that matter.

The Japanese Defense Force (In nifty blue hats!), meanwhile, has a plan to stop Godzilla (no you don't). It's an intricate, three part scheme. Part A has an electric fence, similar to the plan from the first Godzilla movie and King Kong vs. Godzilla, except the electricity actually shoots "artificial lightning" out of the little towers instead of requiring Godzilla to brush into the wires.

Even though i've seen this movie a thousand times, there's always the one brief moment when i see the guys in these beekeeper suits and hope that Plan B involves releasing a swarm of bees to attack Godzilla.

Plan B: Release the bees!

But Plan B is really just a lot like plan A except with nets.

Those are very impressive binoculars. And totally necessary for spotting 150+ft tall lizards.

I honestly don't know what the beekeeper suits are about ("Make fun all you want, George. When you all come down with radiation poisoning, I'll be the one laughing."). Godzilla gets out of it because the army uses too much voltage, plus he just flame-breaths the towers. Bees would have worked better, guys.

Plan C involves digging a huge pit and filling it with gasoline, while also pouring gasoline into the nearby rivers and setting them on fire to drive Godzilla towards the pit.

There is nothing good about this idea.

They chase Godzilla with tanks, something that you know they couldn't have done if he were fully awake. Godzilla kind of senses that something's going on but he does fall into the pit. Of course it doesn't stop him and he comes out of it all like, "WHAT is your problem??!?!".

I also have to acknowledge that the Japanese Defense Force manages to hit Godzilla with their shots a fair amount of the time. I'd put their hit rate at something closer to 50% instead of the usual 5%. We continued to see a lot of repurposed footage, some of it from the last movie, i think (it starts to blend together after a while).

While the army is fighting Godzilla, the fairies are singing to the Mothra egg (it weirdly jumps between night and day as we switch from the Godzilla fight to the song), and eventually it hatches, and we get two larvae this time.

Godzilla's rampage takes him to a nearby island (there's an inconsequential subplot about a teacher with schoolchildren trapped on the island), and the larvae follow him there...

...and engage in a pincer maneuver.

While one larva distracts Godzilla by attacking his tail...

Let go! You're gonna die!

...the other begins hitting him with cocoon silk.

Soon both are spraying Godzilla with silk (they seem to have an endless supply).

Godzilla is covered up in the stuff, but is still admirably blasting away with his flame breath.

However, he's unable to stop them and he soon tumbles into the sea.

The fairies soon say goodbye and apparently ride back to Infant Island on the backs of the larvae.

As they leave, it's said that "The only way to thank them is to make a better world." "Yeah, free of distrust." Or at least you could stop bombing their island.

Content wise, this movie is the first to have an English version without major editing. But one big revision is the title and the name of Mothra. The movie was released in the US as Godzilla vs. the Thing and Mothra is referred to as "the Thing" throughout the movie, although at least once as "Mothra, the mighty Thing". It's also referred to with a male pronoun. The fairies are also a little more bloodthirsty, and tells us that "Godzilla must die", which, of course, he doesn't.

There's also one additional scene that was filmed along with the rest of the movie but not used for the Japanese release. It has the US (definitely the US and not the Roliscian government)...

...trying out a new type of weapon called the Frontier Missile against Godzilla. They're described as the newest and most powerful weapon that the unit has ever developed. Their destructive power so tremendous, they hold off on using them until they can get Godzilla to an unpopulated area. And here are the missiles...

...but they all miss! Huge explosions all around Godzilla but they are completely ineffective because they can't seem to hit their target.

Kinda useless, guys!

Godzilla Drinking Game
	Someone thinks it's a good idea to drag a giant monster across the ocean on a raft (giant eggs count).
	Attacking planes fly directly at a monster, with no possibility of avoiding a crash even if the monster didn't swat them down.
	People refuse to believe in the existence of a giant monster even though they've already acknowledged that Godzilla exists.	Giant egg washes up on shore? Nothing to worry about.
	A submarine explodes.
	Teens have a dance party on a boat. Two drinks/head smacks if they get attacked by a monster during the party.
	The government is completely ineffective when faced with a corporation doing something illegal.	Happy Enterprises can do whatever it wants. All the government can do is mobilize the military once it's too late.
	A humongous lumbering monster manages to sneak up on someone. Two drinks/head smacks if it's the army and they're supposedly using radar.	Everyone fails to see the giant moth sitting a few feet away while initially talking to the fairies. And later Godzilla tramples a hotel that is barely evacuated in time.
	A scientist suddenly figures everything out with little-to-no information and explains it all to everyone.	Actually very few scientific declarations in this movie.
	A monster suddenly grows in size just because.
	People expose themselves to major amounts of radiation with no concern.	Maybe a little concern but not as much as i would hope for in real life. Hey, this whole area is highly radioactive. Stick around and let's talk about it!
	Everyone suddenly knows a monster's name. Two drinks/head smacks if everyone else nods appreciatively and repeats it.
	Army missiles can't seem to hit a 150+ foot monster and instead explode harmlessly around it.	I did compliment the Japanese Defense Force for their hit rate but then the Americans had to go and ruin it with their Frontier Missiles.
	A woman falls down for no reason.
	Bad dinosaur science. You have to give a little leeway for the time period, but pretending a children's picture book is a scientific journal is always worth two drinks/smacks.

Monsters Appearing: Godzilla, Mothra