"King Kong can't make a monkey out of us!"
King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962) (キングコング対ゴジラ) is an Japanese kaiju film by Toho and directed by Ishiro Honda and is technically a direct sequel to Godzilla Raids Again (1955) and less so to King Kong (1933).
An American submarine gets caught in an inceberg that happens to be the same iceberg that Godzilla is trapped in and accidently awakens the kaiju from his slumbler. As the world becomes aware of Godzilla's reappearance, it's world leaders quickly try to figure out a solution. At the same time looking for something to boost ratings on a television program he sponsors, Mr. Tako the head of a pharmaceuticals company just confirmed the existance of King Kong on the tiny Faro Island. Tako sees this as an opportunity to stop Godzilla and boost ratings at the same time.
[Note: this review is referencing the English-dubbed, American cut of the film.]
The overall story of this film isn't bad. It's actually very similar to Mothra (1961) and shares a lot of the same themes and character moments as that film. I also enjoyed our protagonists' story/journey here, not the most original, but the characters are likable and they definitely give you something to root for.
One of the coolest things about this story is that it actually works on its own perfectly and is the sequel to Godzilla Raids Again (1955) at the same time. The last time we saw Godzilla he was defeated by firing missiles into a mountain causing the kaiju to be buried in ice, which is where we find him is this film. The genius thing about the start of this movie is that if you've never seen a Godzilla movie in your life, you can watch this movie and just assume that it's Godzilla awaking for the very first time since the Ice Age because it pretty much plays that way here.
The other good thing about this film is how very humorous it is. It's not a good film at all, but it's very watchable.
First off the English-dub for this film is absolutely terrible. Someone thought that in order to make this film more watchable we'd need to constantly cut to these TERRIBLE English inserts that were shot to explain what is happening inside the story. Guess what we don't. The inserts were clearly shot at a different time, have a much poorer production design, and are just hilariously bad.
This may also be a weird dub thing but the film introduces all of these "weird science" rules like for some reason Kong is energized when exposed to electricity, while it has the opposite effect on Godzilla...? Which doesn't make sense because I clearly remember a scene of Godzilla tearing through electric powerlines in the original Gojira (1954).
This is one of those things that is overly apparent because I recently watched the original King Kong (1933), but Kong's acting in this is terrible. The funny thing about this statement is that I thought Kong's acting was really good in the original and that was all stop-motion, where here you have an actor in a suit and it's so much worse? In the original they based the way Kong moved off of wrestlers, if these filmmakers even looked at the original (which after watching this, I'm not really sure they even did) they would have notice the distinctive way he moves! Though Godzilla's acting here is pretty bad also so maybe the movie is just a good example of why fight choreography and story boards are necessary.
Another weird thing is for some reason this Kong is narcoleptic in this film? There's at least 4 times where Kong just lays down and goes to sleep, I was fine with it once but when it kept happening I started to think that maybe Kong needs to lay off the medication.
This is the first of Toho's kaiju films where I really felt like everything here was models and guys in suits. I don't know if this production was on a swifter budget, or Ishiro Honda had made a few of these by now, so with each one he cared less and less or what? One of the things that I noticed that may have added to this was that this film has an over-reliance on models. Where many of the other kaiju films would go shoot anything they could outside against a mountain or a hill, this film is mostly indoors and anytime the characters go outside it's on a set, overall it's just lazier.
The one magnificent thing about this movie is how bad it is considering all of the things it had going for it. This is one of the first "Godzilla vs." movies. They've pitted Godzilla, their most popular kaiju, against King Kong who greatly inspired the original creators of Gojira and the entire Toho kaiju franchise. And if that wasn't enough Ishiro Honda is directing, who literally has created all the best kaiju films I've seen up to this point. Some of this is probably due to some things being lost in translation with the English dub and the American cut, (to which I can't comment because I haven't seen the original Japanese version yet...) but still.
3/5 Stars.
Happy watching!
I'm tackling all or most of the early Toho Studios' Godzilla and Kaiju films in honor of the newest Godzilla (2014), check back next time as I review the fan favorite: Mothra vs. Godzilla (1964).
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