King Kong Vs Godzilla/King Kong Escapes
by Ishirô Honda
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DVD details
Actor: Ichirô Arishima, Jun Tazaki, Kenji Sahara, Tadao Takashima, Yû FujikiDirector: Ishirô Honda
Writer: Bruce Howard
Writer: George Worthing Yates
Writer: John Beck
Writer: Paul Mason
Writer: Shinichi Sekizawa
Writer: Takeshi Kimura
Writer: Willis H. O'Brien
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language)
Format: Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 187 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2005-11-29
Audience Rating: G (General Audience)
Studio: Universal Studios
DVD Reviews of King Kong Vs Godzilla/King Kong Escapes
DVD Review: A Pair Of Forgotten Cross-Cultural Gems
Summary: 4 Stars
I won't get into the technical side of this review because, A) I'm not a technically-oriented person, and B) I'm simply amazed I even have a DVD player at all. Pretty much EVERY DVD I've ever watched has better sound and picture quality than any single VHS tape I've seen. That having been said, it's time for me to expound on what I have found to be one of the most intriguing reinventions of the Eighth Wonder of the World ever committed to celluloid, if not necessarily grandiose.
KING KONG VS. GODZILLA
The third Godzilla film - and the first one in color - picks up some time after the little-seen "Godzilla Raids Again": our favorite fire-breathing reptilian bursts out of his Arctic entombment thanks to a clumsy submarine crew and heads back for Tokyo to do some exercises just as (surprise, surprise) King Kong surfaces on Faro Island and, through the means of a typically-greedy businessman, ends up making a beeline straight for the Big G.
Now you don't go into a movie like this, let alone any "Versus" movie, expecting gut-wrenching physical drama on the order of ABC's Wide World of Sports; what you should expect is pure and total fanboy's-dream absurdity of premise and relentlessly-high camp in execution (see "Freddy vs. Jason"). Never mind how Kong came back to life after plummeting to his death, or how he ended up on a Japanese island or even how he grew an extra 350 feet in the interim - if you're one of those people whose brain will be racked trying to figure those things out, this is NOT the movie for you. Admittedly, the film looks its age, but then most of the best of these movies are visibly dated anyway. And to be honest, there's a fair bit of satire in KKvG that holds up within the campy context of the film: Big Business looking for the next ad sensation, advocacy for smoking and drinking and loud pop music, the sly underpinnings of Kong and Godzilla chasing the same young woman, military intelligence suggesting that a big hole full of dynamite can stop a living four-hundred-foot-tall nuclear bomb. No kid is going to care about this stuff, but that's O.K.; the monster sequences are some of the most technically ornate in the series' early history.
Having said all of this, the film does have two significant weaknesses, which are the same in pretty much every Godzilla movie but here are more heavily accentuated: A) the emphasis on the human drama rather than the slugfest, and B) an "over-Americanization" of the film. I'll get to the latter in a moment, but first, the human angle doesn't suit the picture as well as it should. There's some attempt at soap opera drama involving a brother and sister living in Tokyo and her boyfriend, but it never really goes any further than the setup. Which in this case is a shame, since as gleefully cheesy as the movie is already, this could have made it a real riot. The more detrimental problem with this film is the aforementioned "over-Americanization" of the film, which in this case involves both erratic dubbing AND inserting U.S.-filmed footage, a la Raymond Burr in the original "Godzilla". However, it doesn't work here. Firstly, because it's presented under the banner of the United Nations News Network (they sure haven't been the same since Catwoman, Joker, Penguin and Riddler vaporized the Security Council) so as to create a false sense of "ringside commentary", and secondly, because in addition to American actors, you have English-speaking Latin Americans and Asian-Americans figuring into the mix as well. Having an Asian-American speaking more impeccable English than most present-day Caucasians may have been intended to bolster the film's credibility, and to that end Toho deserves credit, but when the rest of the movie involves badly-dubbed Japanese actors, it kind of disrupts the narrative flow.
Lastly, there's the stars themselves. Godzilla looks great in this one; Toho obviously took great care to make sure their biggest star looked his best in color. The opening defensive against Godzilla may be one of the best miniature sequences in the early films. And while the character has embryonic hints of silliness in his performance, he's still a mean mofo and it largely comes through whenever he's on screen. By contrast, Kong is the more comedic of the two, and everything about him suggests a more cartoonish approach, even the suit. This ape suit is easily among the worst ever filmed, but it might have been cut a little more slack if not for a truly awful Kong head used for close-ups. This second mask, I'm guessing, was meant to make the character more expressive than the mask on the "stunt" suit would allow, but at least there Kong still looks reasonably menacing. Had they just stuck with the "stunt" mask, that might have made this representation of the Kong character less overly goofy; as Captain Kirk once said, too much of anything is not necessarily a good thing.
All in all, though, KKvG is likely to provide a good time for those of us weaned on Saturday-night Creature Features. For its efforts, it's still entertaining to watch.
KING KONG ESCAPES
Now this one is a true rarity. I've only ever seen this movie once before on cable. It was apparently Toho's attempt to branch their new version of Kong out into his own series of films, to little avail. But it still is fun to watch for as much as any Japanese monster mash is. In a nutshell, this one involves Kong (now on Mondo Island rather than Faro - apparently they ran out of soma berries) becoming the subject of the mad desires of the scientist Dr. Who (again, no relation to the famous Time Lord - how the distributors of this movie avoided a lawsuit, I don't know). Crazy old Dr. Who needs super-strong Kong to dig through his mines looking for a powerful radioactive substance for Who's mysterious benefactor (the lovely Mie Hama, who got additional exposure to American audiences around this time as Kissy Suzuki in the 007 outing "You Only Live Twice" and as Teri Yaki in "What's Up, Tiger Lily?"). To achieve this end, Who kidnaps Kong's new human friends, Commander Nelson and his crewmates Susan and Jiro, to try to coerce him to obeying Who's orders when the usual mind-control ploys fail. When Kong escapes, and Nelson's team right behind him, Who sends out the ultimate super-weapon to bring Kong to his knees...(wait for it)...MECHANI-KONG!!! Yup, the 'giant monster's evil robot twin' gag starts right here, even before Mecha-Godzilla.
The movie itself, like all such fare imported from Toho, is grade-A cheese, yet that's part of its charm. And unlike KKvG, it's completely unfettered by American-filmed sequences, even though the American actors at some points do end up dubbing themselves over (maybe the distributors saw the discrepancies in KKvG?). In terms of pacing, it's also a much faster movie than KKvG, something that ultimately worked to these movies' favor as time went on.
The characterization here is much stronger than KKvG, even if doesn't make a whole lot of sense on a couple occasions (as when Madame X predictably switches sides because she's got the hots for Commander Nelson). As for the monsters, Kong starts out perfectly in line with where we last left him in KKvG, and ultimately ends up becoming a big kid who will follow lovely Susan around anywhere (you have to give Toho credit on this score too: at least their version of Kong still has that weakness for the ladies). Mechani-Kong is the real weak link in this chain, since he's simply a big remote-controlled toy for Dr. Who, but he proves nasty enough to leave a memorable impression.
The monkey suits here are a bit of an improvement. Mechani-Kong, being an armor-plated robot and genuinely cool-looking at that, really doesn't qualify for comparison to the quality of the ape costume in KKvG, but with Kong in this one at least the heads are consistent. Toho apparently tried to correct the proportions of the suit in relation to those of a real gorilla, which would almost work if not for the fact that the stuntman in the Kong suit - Haru Nakajima, Godzilla's portrayer for the better part of Big G's series - doesn't really employ many ape-like mannerisms in his performance.
KKE is, in many ways, a better film than KKvG. Which is saying a lot for movies as wonderfully corny as these.
The bottom line: come for the Big G, stay for the evil robot twin. There are plenty of worse ways to spend your Saturday nights.
Description of King Kong Vs Godzilla/King Kong Escapes
It?s King Kong to the rescue when a giant robot threatens to destroy Tokyo in the gripping King Kong Escapes! The action begins when the conniving Dr. Who builds a robot Kong in order to retrieve a highly radioactive element for his mysterious benefactor, Madame X. When the robot proves less than reliable, the devious duo scheme to kidnap the real Kong from his remote island home of Mondo. But interfering with their plans are the heroic trio of U.S. Cmdr. Carl Nelson, Lt. Jiro Nomura, and Kong?s current crush, Lt. Susan Miller. It?s up to them to outwit the greedy ape-nappers in this sci-fi adventure that takes Kong to unprecedented heights of excitement.The two mightiest monsters of all time battle in the thrilling adventure classic, King Kong vs. Godzilla. When an underhanded pharmaceutical company goes to a remote tropical island to steal King Kong for advertising purposes, they get more than they bargained for when the gigantic ape attacks an unsuspecting village and an enormous octopus. Meanwhile, far below the sea, a submarine crew unleashes reptilian terror when they melt a block of ice and release the ferocious Godzilla from his icy lair. When both destructive monsters descend on Tokyo, it?s a fight that holds the future of mankind in the balance in this knock-out film that was the first theatrical release to bring its larger-than-life contenders to the big screen in glorious color.
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