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Following a devastating typhoon, reporter Sakai (Akira Takarada) hears that a local entrepreneur Kumayama (Yoshibumi Tajima) has bought a gigantic egg that washed ashore for his company. Along with his partner Torahatta (Kenji Sahara), they plan to exhibit the egg for profit but are visited by two tinny twin women, the Cosmos, (Emi and Yumi Ito) who reveal the egg belongs to Mothra. Seeking shelter with Sakai and friends Prof. Miura (Hiroshi Koizumi) and Junko(Yuriko Hoshi), the group promises the egg’s return to The Cosmos and their island home. Godzilla appears, drawn by the egg, and Mothra arrives to drive him off until it’s struck a fatal blow. While the military deals with Godzilla’s advances, the women and their friends prey for the egg to hatch and the larval caterpillars swim off to deal with Godzilla once and for all.

“Mothra vs. Godzilla...

Ten years after the success of “Godzilla”, it became more than evident that the popularity of the kaiju was nowhere near the end and had arguably only just begun. With the commercial acclaim of both “Mothra” and the ambitious “King Kong vs. Godzilla”, producer Toho would continue the franchise with now one more entry per year, staring with “Mothra vs. Godzilla”, which saw the giant reptile with the star of Ishiro Honda’s movie just a few years prior. While the feature also shows the technical advances when it came to shooting these kinds of movies, it also stayed true to the themes which Honda and co-author Takeo Murata had introduced in the first movie of the franchise, namely the battle of man vs. nature and the danger of nuclear technology, with the director’s skepticism seemingly have grown over the past decade if the story is any indicator.

Buy...

Mill Creek again dips into exotic Japanese sci-fi fantasy, and this time scores with the desired language choices and subtitle configurations for these spectaculars from the beginning of Toho’s strongest period. The H-Man is a stylish gangster-horror melange about a radioactive slime that cheerfully transforms Guys ‘n’ Dolls into living goo. Then, a Battle in Outer Space is the result when a two-rocket expedition to the moon uncovers an imminent alien invasion, and flying saucer vs. rocketplane dogfights break out in low Earth orbit and in the skies over Tokyo. Was matinee moviegoing ever better than that? CineSavant writes, uh, at length about all the fan concerns over this disc.

Toho Double Feature

The H-Man & Battle in Outer Space

Blu-ray

Mill Creek

Color / 2:35 widescreen / Street Date June 9, 2020 /

Cinematography: Hajime Koizumi

Director of Special Effects: Eiji Tsuburaya

Produced by Tomoyuko Tanaka

Directed by Ishiro Honda

Here’s how a...

Mill Creek again dips into exotic Japanese sci-fi fantasy, and this time scores with the desired language choices and subtitle configurations for these spectaculars from the beginning of Toho’s strongest period. The H-Man is a stylish gangster-horror melange about a radioactive slime that cheerfully transforms Guys ‘n’ Dolls alike into living goo. Then, a Battle in Outer Space is the result when two-rocket expedition to the moon uncovers an imminent alien invasion, and flying saucer vs. rocketplane dogfights break out in low Earth orbit and in the skies over Tokyo. Was matinee moviegoing ever better than that? CineSavant writes, uh, at length about all the fan concerns over this disc.

Toho Double Feature

The H-Man & Battle in Outer Space

Blu-ray

Mill Creek

Color / 2:35 widescreen / Street Date June 9, 2020 /

Cinematography: Hajime Koizumi

Director of Special Effects: Eiji Tsuburaya

Produced by Tomoyuko Tanaka

Directed by Ishiro Honda

Here’s how a...

**Massive spoilers for every Godzilla movie, with the exception of the 2014 reboot, and Mothra follow**

August 6th and 9th, 1945 forever changed the course of history. When the first nuclear bombs were dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, World War II ended, but a new fear was born that dominated the thoughts of all men, women, and children for decades to come. The Cold War, atomic bomb testing, a cartoon turtle telling children to “duck and cover”, and this new technology that had the actual potential to literally end the world changed the perception of what was scary. Art reflects life, so cinema began to capitalize on these fears. Gone were the days of creepy castles, cobwebs, bats, vampires, werewolves, and the other iconic images that ruled genre cinema in film’s earliest decades. Science fiction was larger than ever and giant ants, giant octopi, terror from beyond the stars, and...