Mothra

Released 30th July 1961, Mothra follows a journey to Infant Island… and the subsequent consequences of the expedition. Continuing from the success of 1954’s Godzilla, this film identifies as a kaiju film; this is the specific sub-genre applied to giant monster movies and already felt formulaic back in the 1960s. One strong weakness that this film has is that it lacks any actual Kaiju until the final half where the monster action fails to feel particularly weighted (with the exception one action sequence). Due to the lack of monsters, there is a strong emphasis on the human characters and the result of this is a human narrative which tackles corporate greed, slaving and elements of corruption. At the forefront of these themes is Jerry Ito’s Nelson; a narcissistic businessman who wishes to use the mystical Shobijin for profit despite taking them away from infant island.

It is from this action that we see the wrath of Mothra with Nelson being too corrupt to surrender the twins. Ito’s character is fine; Nelson is just extremely one-dimensional and Ito does the bare minimum to bring him to life. Hiroshi Koizumi operates as the protagonist, Dr Shin'ichi Chūjō, with what is probably the best performance of the film. He reacts appropriately to other characters and has enough of a presence in the story, albeit that his character is just a generic scientist archetype. Everyone else is either completely irrelevant to the wider story or have abhorrent acting. Michi Hanamura is a reporter who already fails to justify his presence across most scenes; Frankie Sakai manages to make him more obsolete with a performance of melodrama thus sucking you out of any scene he appears in. Meanwhile Kyōko Kagawa gives a decent enough performance which is overshadowed by her being entirely unnecessary to the plot of the film.

The highlights of the cast would be Yumi Itō and Emi Itō as the Shobijin, otherwise known as the ‘small beauties’. What is interesting about the Shobijin is that they mostly communicate through song; this feature subsequently utilises the Itō twins’ singing background to deliver beautiful melodies and, for its time, decent performances. Yūji Koseki’s soundtrack is also really entrancing and underscores the film really well. While I do rag on the action scenes themselves, the effects used across the film are great for their time with certain blue screen moments being especially well implemented. However, much like the rest of Mothra, Mothra herself is rather corny in her ‘moth’ design and the overall lack of Mothra across the film hinders its quality.