if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Investigating the mysterious survival of a shipwrecked crew who had been exposed to radiation, an expedition (including the usual 'resourceful reporter' characters) lands on an ostensibly uninhabited tropical Island only to find a native culture who worship a deity called 'Mothra'. They also encounter two miniature women, who as it turns out, are fairy acolytes of the native god. The villainous capitalist Clark Nelson (Jerry Ito) who sponsored the expedition returns to the island and kidnaps the fairies, bringing them to Tokyo where they are forced to perform in his" Secret Fairies Show". The girls warn the reporters that they have a psychic link with Mothra, who will come to rescue them. Sure enough, an immense caterpillar appears and lays waste to much of Tokyo before cocooning in the wreckage of the Tokyo Tower but Nelson, who has escaped to his homeland of "Rolisica' (presumably a conflation of Russia and America), ignores pleas to return the girls to their home. The caterpillar expupates as a giant moth who continues to search for the girls, ultimately leading to Nelson's well deserved comeuppance and a happy ending (if you ignore billions of yen in property damage). "Mothra" (and her sequel 1964's "Godzilla vs the Thing") are among the best of Toho's daikaiju films. Similar to the creature in "Gorgo" (which came out the same year) Mothra is presented as a sympathetic character and the destruction that she brings about is not wanton or mindless, but a response (albeit overwhelming) to an injustice. The movie is very well done with a strong story and good human characters (admittedly somewhat stereotypical) supporting the titular monster who, in both her forms, is imaginative, engaging, and very well executed. The scenes of mayhem and destruction as Tokyo, and later "New Kirk City" in Rolisica are destroyed, are excellent, especially the scene of the larva spinning its cocoon against a backdrop of a ruined Tokyo. The two fairies, who in some form or another accompany Mothra in most of her movie outings, are played by the singing twins "The Peanuts" (Emi and Yumi Ito) who also star in "Godzilla vs the Thing" and "Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster" (1964), and (IMO) are the best of the various singers who have played the roles over the years. The film's score is excellent and introduces the iconic "Mothra's Song", which is heard in many of the later Mothra outings. The benevolent giant moth is one of Toho's most popular and enduring kaiju characters and appears in twelve more films (as of this writing), generally as a friend, ally, or guardian (except, or course, when her brain is taken over by malevolent space aliens). This, her debut film, is an outstanding example of Toho's skill in producing kaiju eiga and is well worth watching by anyone willing to suspend their disbelief long enough to watch a film about a colossal moth and just enjoy the spectacle and the story.

It was inevitable that that jerk would steal those tiny little women and use them in some two bit show of his. What he didn't realize was that they were in a kind of symbiosis with Mothra, a flying creature what would protect them if necessary. There are some pretty good scenes, where these men, lacking conscience, murder their way into the jungle and set everything in motion. The weapon that the caterpillars have, the ability to shoot out a kind of sticky thread, is pretty creative. The girl singing is quite tiresome. But, ultimately, we have creature that is normally non-threatening, doing its thing. I was once told by a fellow viewer that if they wanted to really destroy Mothra, they needed to create a giant screen door with a big light behind it, or, better yet, an enormous wool sweater. These are food for thought. I did find this more enjoyable than many of the subsequent offerings, using the same creatures.

Ishiro Honda directed this wild but imaginative film that sees Japanese scientists investigating reports of unusual activity on a mysterious remote island that had been exposed to atomic testing. They find a primitive people and good-hearted "Twin Fairies", two women a foot-high who are kidnapped by a greedy foreign industrialist to be exploited for their unique size and singing ability, which is really a cry for help to their legendary protector: a giant prehistoric moth that attacks Japan, trying to rescue them after being taken to Tokyo. First film appearance of Mothra proved an entertaining effort, with nice model work. Mothra would return in the Godzilla series, in "Mothra Vs. Godzilla".

I will state this out front, Mothra is one of my least favorite Toho monsters. I always find when she attacks a city it is so slow paced and boring when she is a caterpillar and monotonous when she flaps her wings as a moth. Other people seem to love her, but me my favorite is Godzilla. Which should be no surprise, but I like most of the bad guys better than Mothra. I just can not think of any monster I like less right off hand. This film is all Mothra and of course the twins who are always getting kidnapped by some greedy person or persons because little tiny twins are bound to make you a lot of money. What happens you ask? The usual, people try to get twins back if they can not then Mothra comes marching slowly into the city and takes forever to do anything and then spins a cocoon and then still does very little compared to other monsters, gets said twins then she is off. It is sad when the parts of the movie focused on the people is more interesting than those of the monster of the title of the movie, but that is how it is in this movie for me. I always enjoyed Godzilla, Mothra King Gidorah All Out Monster Attack, because Mothra got totally toasted by the king of all monsters Godzilla.