Cons: Waste of potential,Kong's suit,US footage,score repla..etc
The Bottom Line: KKvG is an unintentionally hilarious movie that disappoints on so many levels. It had the potential to be classic, but the best it can do is a drunken laugh.
flash-hammer's Full Review: King Kong Vs. Godzilla
Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.
Released in 1962, King Kong vs. Godzilla was a huge hit, but despite that, it's often looked down on by fans of both series. Directed by Ishiro Honda, with American footage provided by Thomas Montgomery, King Kong vs. Godzilla brought together two of the greatest monsters in cinema history, but how would it actually turn out?
The movie's plot picks up as icebergs in the sea off Japan have been floating along and melting, and the sea is an unnaturally high temperature. A submarine is despatched to find out what is happening, and it becomes clear when Godzilla emerges from the iceberg, destroys the sub and starts to make his way towards Japan.
Meanwhile, a doctor has discovered a rare breed of Berry on Faeroe Island, a berry that could help advance chimotherapy, but the natives are reluctant to give it up, because it is used to keep their mysterious monster-god at bay. Upon hearing this, the head of a company, Mr.Taco (Ichiro Arishima - The Lost World of Sinbad) sends two of his men out to Faeroe to bring back this monster, because he wants it to boost his TV ratings.
The two men, Fujita (Kenji Sahara - Mothra) and Furue (Yu Fujiki - Godzilla Vs. Mothra(1964)) leave, and upon arrival have to bribe the tribesmen with ciggarettes and a radio so they don't throw them off the island. After exploring the island looking for the monster unsuccessfully, they retreat to the village one evening, only for disaster to strike in the form of a giant octopus arriving and trying to steal the berry juice. The commotion from the ensuing struggle brings down the people's god, King Kong, who disposes of the octopie, before being put to sleep by the natives combination of berry juice and drum beat.
The two men take advantage of this, and start to ship him back to Japan, being towed on a raft behind their ship., but he awakens and busts loose, only to make his way to Japan. When there, he briefly falls for Fujita's sister Fumiko (Mie Hama - King Kong Escapes), only to be coaxed to sleep via gas and ampilfied Bongo drums. Her boyfried Sakurai (Tadao Takashima - Atragon) has developed a super strong steel wire that can hold any weight, and the army use it to airlift Kong to Godzilla's position, the Japanese army figure that they can't defeat them both, so the best thing to do is pit monster against monster, king against king, in a battle to end all battles.
First things first, I have only seen, so therefore am writing about, the US version of the movie, (the late 90s/Early 00s Goodtimes DVD edition to be precise), which includes new footage of American actors, including UN Newsman Eric Carter (Michael Keith - Bikini Bistro) and 'expert' Dr.Arnold Johnston (Harry Holcombe - Foxy Brown).
First of all, while the basic plot of the movie is decent enough, and just really an excuse to get the two titular titans at each other's throats, the parts of the plot their to carry it along are mostly quite terrible. You have to wonder exactly what the point in building the giant gate on Faeroe island was, when Kong is not only much taller than it, but easily rips it apart, you also have to wonder why the natives allowed a handfull of outsiders to tie up their god and try to sail away with him. The less said about the scene where Kong is airlifted, via balloon, the better.
To make it a fair fight, given that in their original incarnations Godzilla was over double the height of Kong, and sported atomic breath...and was nigh invincible, whereas Kong was a big ape killed by bullets, Toho took Kong up to Godzilla's height at the time (about 150 ft I think), and made him electrically charged. Yes, as a lame way of getting him back into the fight when Godzilla is winning, Kong is 'supercharged' by lightning, and gains the ability to produce it from his fingertips. Just no.
While changes would have to be made to the characters to make the fight more equal, this electricity nonsense came not only completely out of the blue, but is pretty stupid overall.
The thing is most sad about the movie, is that it's based on a Monster Love story in King Kong and a nuclear comment monster movie in Gojira, and even it's americanised form of Godzilla: King of the Monsters, yet for god-knows what reason, Toho decided to turn it into some sort of slap stick comedy. This hurts it twice as much due to the fact comedy will always be lost in the change of language, and the fact that each nation and culture has it's own humour. The scenes in the move that do come off as being funny seem more to be the ones that are unintentionally so, Kong ramming a tree into Godzilla's mouth is oddly side-splitting, and the scene where he throws a rock but follows through and smashes his head off a mountain had me in stitches. Godzilla's peculiar habit of turning around mid-fight also caused amusement. But the clear comedy relief character, Taco, didn't really conjure up much of a reaction.
The American footage is, for lack of a better word, bollocks. I cringed every time it was made clear we were going to the UN Newsroom, (the movie telegraphs where it is going in every scene, UN Newsroom: a shot of the outside of the building, changing from the island to Japan, better show the scene of a Japanese street(the same one every time). In it, they remark as if this is Godzilla's first appearance, despite him being where he finished up in his last movie, and the fact they instantly recognise him, but while this may also be the case in the Japanese version, I doubt they have a character like Dr.Palmer, who claims to be an expert on the monsters after watching them for about 10 minutes. He declares that Godzilla has a tiny brain, that fossils of his kind have been found in Japan, and makes out that a dinosaur that looked like a T.Rex with stegosaurus spines actually existed (!), the subject of the A-Bomb and mutation isn't even mentioned. Apparently dinosaurs and Gorillas are also natural enemies, despite the fact that they have never shared the Earth.
While I can understand starting Kong from a new slate, he was killed at the end of his picture, if starting Godzilla anew, as some sort of natural dinosaur that just happens to be huge and breath flames, was indeed something the Japanese version does, I fail to see the point, especially in providing continuity with the previous entry.
The ending being different in the Jap version is, I have researched this, a myth. While Kong does is the last monster seen, swimming towards Faeroe, the Eastern version apparently features Godzilla roaring as the end comes up, hinting that it isn't over, the fact that Kong could actually come out on top after falling off a cliff into the sea is stupid enough, yes, the big monkey comes out better underwater than an amphibean.
There was only one scene I felt really stood out, and it was the end, where the force of Kong and Godzilla falling into the sea caused a Tsunami. This was a fairly realistic, both in terms of plot and execution, point, that I wish had appeared in a better movie.
While I don't want to write this in every review of a foreign movie I watch, as I have said in previous reviews, I don't like being too harsh on dubbed or subtitled actors, because what they do with their voice is an important part of a performance. Most of the actors seem to do ok though, although Ichiro Arishima, a comic actor, does seem to be over the top.
2 actors I have no qualms about ripping into are Keith and Holcolmbe, both coming accross as smug and cocky, and putting little towards bringing their characters to life other than making them 1 dimensional and annoying, and to think people complain about Raymond Burr's inclusion in Godzilla's debut.
Naturally the dubbing isn't all that great, and while it isn't the worst dub I've heard, some voices do lack emotion, and the phrasing they choose is incredibly off. eg. when the guy calls Taco a "dumb *three second pause*bell" and his constant whining about his corns.
The music is a strange point. For god only knows what reason, Universal, US distributors, saw fit to remove the original score by Japanese maestro Akira Ifukube and replace it with the music track from Creature from the Black Lagoon! While this is a fine soundtrack to a great monster movie, it really doesn't fit this type of monster movie at all. It plays the music used for the scenes designed to shock viewers of the Creature, at suspenseless moments, like Kong and Godzilla throwing rocks at each other. Given his track record, I can only assume Ifukube's score was superb, so why this change was made does nothing but baffle me.
The special effects are...eh, pretty decent apart from Kong, but more on that in a minute. The miniature cities and tanks and such are accomplished ok, even if it isn't Eiji Tsuburaya's best work, and Im not really a fan of the Godzilla suit used for this movie, which has a longer, more crocodile-esque mouth. The matte work can be pretty bad, but for the time it's acceptable.
What isn't is King Kong. Toho had two options here, make the battle in stop-motion, as Kong's previous movies had been, or using Suitmation, a technique more familiar to Godzilla. The lower cost, and probabley the fact all of the crew were more familiar with it, lead to suitmation being chosen (although there is one stop-motion scene of Godzilla kicking Kong). Kong's suit is diabolical. The arms are too long, the fur looks like a rug and the less said about his chest, which looks like he has rocks stuck in his fur, the better. His face, when seen in close up, particularly when drinking the juice, is so bad you cannot help but laugh.
On the whole, King Kong vs. Godzilla is without a doubt the most disappointing movie in all history. Here was the meeting of two iconic characters of cinema history, and all that Toho, and full strength toho at that, could muster was this sub-standard garbage attempt at some sort of comedy.The Honda/Tanaka/Ifukube/Tsuburaya director/producer/composer/effects team concocted some absolutely epic giant monster movies, why they failed on the one that should have been the best is anyone's guess.
This was Godzilla's third picture, and Honda's return to directorial duty after his absence for Godzilla's second outing, where he faced off against his first foe, Anguirus, this was Honda's first try at dealing with dueling titans, maybe he just wasn't ready for it yet. Maybe the American investors forced elements upon them, who knows, but what is for sure is that this is a definite blot on the CV of all involved, including Kong and Godzilla.
Toho actually tried to remake this in the early 90s, but sadly those in possession of the rights to Kong's name weren't prepared, so the project was scrapped. The sad part is that they were willing to give the rights to Peter Jackson for what is shaping up to be a horrendous remake of King Kong, when Toho, who were at the time producing arguably their best Kaiju movies, were going to make what probably would have been a duel that King Kong vs. Godzilla deserves.
In fact, this movie is really a tale of scrapped projects, it began life as a movie by Kong's originator, Willis O'Brien, named King Kong vs. Frankenstein, when no one took him up on it, the story was bought by an American film maker, and a script was written, but no one was willing to buy except Toho, who made it into 2 movies, this, and Frankenstein Conquers the World. With all the times the script changed hands, the movie credits about 6 writers.
Who knows, maybe the release of Jackson's King Kong may spur on a new remake, although the sad thing is that I could see it using his Kong and Dean Devlin's Godzilla.
After this movie, Toho made another King Kong film, King Kong Escapes, in which the monster took on a robot clone of himself. Godzilla's next outing was to take on Mothra, and the rest is history, with him having starred in countless movies now.
While it may seem a little harsh, Im giving this movie a single star. While I realise that it is probably worth 2 on merit of the film's quality, the fact that I was so excited about seeing these two clash, that the unmeasureable dissappointment of the whole thing brought it down to minimum marks. It does score a Yes in the way of recommendation, mainly due to the unintentional comedy of it. Once I got over the initial disappointment, I realised that the film is actually pretty comical, although none of it seems to be intentional. When people talk about Godzilla movies being so bad they are good, I assume they mean this entry, because it's definitely the worst, or best depending on how you look at it, example of it.
So, who would I recommend this to?, fans of the two titular monsters, purely to see how not to make a movie featuring them, and those looking for a bad/good movie to laugh at for it's poorness. Those looking for any sort of serious good movie are going to be incredibly disapointed, so I would steer clear of it.
When people ponder why it took so long to see movies like Freddy vs. Jason and Alien vs. Predator, I can't help but think that this film put icon crossovers into suspension for years, with film-makers fearing their picture would turn out like this.
Year: 1962
Titles: Kingukongu tai Gojira
King Kong Vs. Godzilla
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