Die Rückkehr des King Kong

King Kong vs Godzilla (1962 edition, not the edited 1963 American version), the 4th ever Godzilla movie, is a movie I recently watched on YouTube. The storyline follows a marketing team who wants to boost ratings by capturing film of the legendary King Kong. Wouldnt you know it that just as they arrive Godzilla re-emerges for an epic showdown like we've never seen before.

This movie is directed by Ishirô Honda (Godzilla, 1954) and stars Tadao Takashima (Sons of Godzilla), Ichirô Arishima (The Lost World Of Sinbad), Kenji Sahara (Godzilla, 1954), Mie Hama (You Only Live Twice) and Akiko Wakabayashi (Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster).

The first thing I have to say is this is the worst King Kong ever created. His eyes are absolutely crazy throughout the film. The 1933 edition is infinitely better than this one. The music in this is awesome and Godzilla is as entertaining as always. His introduction followed by his battle with the military is great, though the burning tanks were a bit dated. There's a weird octopus scene in this that's unfortunately shot too dark in a fun battle with Kong. The conclusion fight in this is fun and the tree in the mouth scene is legendary.

Overall this is a very dated movie that's fun for its nostalgic charm but doesn't hold the test of time as well as other Godzilla and Kong movies. I'd score this a 5.5/10.

A pharmaceutical company head is not happy with the television ratings and wants to boost it with the help of a giant monster at Faro Island which is none other than King Kong. Meanwhile, an American submarine named Seahawk crashes into an iceberg freeing Godzilla. As Godzilla moves towards Japan, even King Kong is being brought to Japan. Circumstances make way for an unplanned wrestling match between King Kong and Godzilla. Who emerges as the winner and what new lesson Japanese learn out of this battle, forms rest of the story.

For all the hype, it's fascinating to see the makers pull this off back in 1962. The human characters especially the the pharmaceutical company head was cartoonish and over the top. It is when the monsters are introduced that film gets interesting and the gigantic octopus scene with Kong stood out. King Kong capturing a girl is again repeated here for a brief period, before setting him on the path of Godzilla. However the electricity powering Kong was not something I could get onboard with and it happens twice. Barring that, the film is all about the wrestling match and the humans picking their sides without betting. All in all, it delivers on the fun and is a decent watch.

Now, the monster mashups begin. Godzilla's first squaring off with another creature is the result of a script that originally pitted King Kong against Frankenstein's monster that Toho got their hands on and retooled for their marquee monster that they were discovering they could bring back repeatedly without turning off their Japanese and American audiences. They also brought back the original filmmaker behind Godzilla, Ishiro Honda, though without his original writing partner, choosing instead to use Shinichi Sekizawa, one of two writers who had become Honda's regular partner. The result is what one might expect from this period of Toho monster movies: thin, a bit (though not incredibly) silly, and with an effort to make another kind of movie in there somewhere.

The head of Pacific Pharmaceuticals, Mr. Tako (Ichiro Arishima), has decided that his media and advertising contract is not performing to standards, so he demands that the television studio create a sensation to up their ratings which should lead to more sales of the company's drugs. Here is the heart of the film, the satiric look at the Japanese television industry and its quest for ratings no matter what, and it's probably where the film works best. It's unfortunate that Sekizawa wasn't a good enough writer to bring it into the whole of the film, picking it up and dropping it from time to time as other types of film dominate for large sections of the film, but Mr. Tako doing everything he can to push the reporters into making things sensational across the action of the film provides some solid chuckles here and there.

Sakurai (Tadao Takashima) and Furue (Yu Fujiki) end up being sent to Faro Island (also the name of the place Ingmar Bergman called home for decades, but it has to just be a coincidence, right?) to investigate a mysterious spirit that the locals live in fear of. Yes, it's King Kong. They witness him battling a giant octopus and then getting so drunk that he falls asleep in a ceremony the locals provide him, giving them the perfect opportunity to get the Japanese boating crew to tie him up and lash him to a giant raft. Where the original King Kong outright ignored how to move a giant ape from one side of the world to the other, King Kong vs. Godzilla embraces it, and the sight is always inherently silly. Granted, the raft sight isn't hilarious (though the combination of man-in-suit and water just doesn't mesh all that well), there's a moment late where they transport him by giant balloon that is just...kind of hilarious.

Meanwhile, at the same time, Godzilla has decided to awaken for no reason at all, heating up the ice prison that he was trapped in at the end of Godzilla Raids Again, and he heads straight for Japan. This (so far) short series has developed a little tic of bringing back scientific characters from the previous entry to explain the science or behavior of Godzilla in the new one. Takashi Shimuri had a cameo in Godzilla Raids Again after his near-star role in Godzilla, and this time it's Dr. Shigezawa (Akihiko Hirata), who was also in Godzilla, to appear in a couple of scenes and explain Godzilla's behavior. I mean, for this weird little series in the 60s, the commitment canon is surprising.

Anyway, the two monsters have a fight, but King Kong is bested by Godzilla, leading to a retreat, some business with a girl being kidnapped by the giant ape, drugging it based on the stuff it got drunk off of on Faro Island, and then transporting him to face Godzilla again when the scientists decide that despite Kong losing his first battle maybe a day before, Kong is definitely strong enough now. It'll help if he gets miraculously struck by lightning to make him much more stronger at a down moment, too.

So, it's silly. There is some more character stuff around Sakurai's sister and Furue's fiancée (I might have mixed those up, but it just doesn't matter in the least), Fumiko (Mie Hama), but she's forgotten for long sections in favor of bits of satirical comedy around Mr. Tako and monster mash action. Focusing more purely on the satirical elements would have been a net-positive, I think.

Eiji Tsuburaya's special effects are, once again, the star of the show, but I have to say that he repeated the decision to play monster action quickly here like he did (supposedly accidentally) in Godzilla Raids Again. Moving these guys quickly makes them feel smaller, not bigger, and it makes the action itself inherently sillier. So, the suits are mostly pretty good (Godzilla is pretty good, Kong looks...not great, to be honest), and there's this wonderful continued embrace of miniature destruction. However, I just wish Tsuburaya had gone back to how to film kaiju from his first effort rather than his second.

So, it's fine. It's an excuse to pit Godzilla against another monster. The character stuff works slightly better this time than most because it has that satirical edge, even if it doesn't really go very far. So, it's decent, on the brighter side of this kind of film in this era. It entertains slightly. It's just, you know, not good.

The script is good and you can see a lot of events in the movie. After watching the film, I learned that Ishiro Honda is a amazing director. What I didn't like was working with this graphics and effect maybe it was good in a short time, but I've seen it now nor can I say that there are no badly done scenes in the film. In short, the film is better than I expected and good for its time!

The original Japanese Toho cut of 'King Kong Vs Godzilla' has a much more developed sense of comedy imbued throughout its runtime: the entire film is satirical and scatty; it just isn't really any better than the heavily altered American/International cut that features truly dreadful added United Nations scenes alongside necessarily dubbed and re-edited scenes.

I find this version needs significant further attention from an editor to improve its pacing and the construction of action scenes: the American film does slightly improve in this area despite it causing terrible damage to the satirical comedy of the original.

In the comedic premise of the story 'King Kong Vs Godzilla' has its best strength. There is a great degree of poking fun at television and corporate cultures and some of this is well put across.

The action part of the film is less ably done and the narrative pace is off by a considerable degree.

The same failings of really poor and unconvincing monsters that afflict the American version are naturally in this film also.

They look, sound, and move badly, individually, and even moreso, in tandem together.

The film score is better in this version as is the overall sound design.

I rate a 5/10 for a version that has more brains but less pruning than the more often seen English language cut.