2004-2005 will go down as a banner era for American fans of Kaiju Eiga. Not only has it seen Sony’s excellent releases of most of the Showa-era Godzilla films, but Media Blasters’ equally-excellent DVDs of other Toho monster classics such as Dogora, Varan the Astounding, Atragon and others.
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To this good roster now add Universal’s release of King Kong Vs. Godzilla and King Kong Escapes, in anamorphic widescreen. KK Vs. G is an appetizing romp, beloved among G-fans for: 1) The fight between the two monsters at the Diet Building in Tokyo; 2) the wonderful scene where Kong swings Godzilla around by his tail; and 3) being the first Godzilla film in color. Yes, the Kong suit is truly goofy, yet both it and the actor inside indicate loads of personality. And the film boasts a pretty Akira Ifukube gather.
But for my money the suitable gem here is King Kong Escapes. What makes this film so special can be summed up in one word: Mechani-Kong. This giant robotic version of the Eighth Wonder is as icy as the shaggy gorilla-suited Kong is goofy, and he certainly ranks as one of the greatest monsters in the Toho pantheon. If you’re a fan of Mechagodzilla (and who isn’t? ), you owe it to yourself to stare his precursor in his only film appearance. (Icing on the cake: the first appearance of Gorosaurus, Maestro Ifukube’s amazing procure, and a deliciously over-the-top performance by Eisei Amamoto as “Dr. Who” — no relation to the renowned Timelord!)
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It’s quiet hard for me to bear that these two extraordinary films are getting a quality DVD release.
I won’t accumulate 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. Glowing remarkable EVERY DVD I’ve ever watched has better sound and portray 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 provocative 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 current fire-breathing reptilian bursts out of his Arctic entombment thanks to a clumsy submarine crew and heads relieve for Tokyo to do some exercises honest 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 Substantial 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 seek information from is pure and total fanboy’s-dream absurdity of premise and relentlessly-high camp in execution (spy “Freddy vs. Jason”) . Never mind how Kong came encourage 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 just, there’s a blooming bit of satire in KKvG that holds up within the campy context of the film: Substantial 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 stout hole fat of dynamite can cessation 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 necessary weaknesses, which are the same in glorious noteworthy 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 gain to the latter in a moment, but first, the human angle doesn’t suit the characterize as well as it should. There’s some attempt at soap opera drama spellbinding 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 genuine riot. The more detrimental spot 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 current “Godzilla”. However, it doesn’t work here. Firstly, because it’s presented under the banner of the United Nations News Network (they distinct haven’t been the same since Catwoman, Joker, Penguin and Riddler vaporized the Security Council) so as to do a fake 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 destroy Toho deserves credit, but when the rest of the movie involves badly-dubbed Japanese actors, it kind of disrupts the story roam.
Lastly, there’s the stars themselves. Godzilla looks ample in this one; Toho obviously took titanic care to acquire positive their biggest star looked his best in color. The opening defensive against Godzilla may be one of the best minute sequences in the early films. And while the character has embryonic hints of silliness in his performance, he’s unruffled a mean mofo and it largely comes through whenever he’s on veil. By inequity, Kong is the more comedic of the two, and everything about him suggests a more cartoonish near, even the suit. This ape suit is easily among the worst ever filmed, but it might have been slash a minute more slow if not for a truly bad Kong head stale for close-ups. This second conceal, I’m guessing, was meant to develop the character more expressive than the shroud on the “stunt” suit would allow, but at least there Kong quiet looks reasonably menacing. Had they honest stuck with the “stunt” cover, that might have made this representation of the Kong character less overly goofy; as Captain Kirk once said, too distinguished of anything is not necessarily a expedient thing.
All in all, though, KKvG is likely to provide a top-notch time for those of us weaned on Saturday-night Creature Features. For its efforts, it’s level-headed spellbinding to witness.
KING KONG ESCAPES
Now this one is a apt rarity. I’ve only ever seen this movie once before on cable. It was apparently Toho’s attempt to branch their fresh version of Kong out into his have series of films, to diminutive avail. But it serene is fun to contemplate for as great 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 exasperated desires of the scientist Dr. Who (again, no relation to the renowned Time Lord – how the distributors of this movie avoided a lawsuit, I don’t know) . Crazy ragged Dr. Who needs super-strong Kong to dig through his mines looking for a remarkable radioactive substance for Who’s mysterious benefactor (the blooming 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 carry out this kill, Who kidnaps Kong’s novel 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 upright unhurried him, Who sends out the ultimate super-weapon to bring Kong to his knees…(wait for it) …MECHANI-KONG!!! Yup, the ‘giant monster’s nasty robot twin’ gag starts apt here, even before Mecha-Godzilla.
The movie itself, like all such fare imported from Toho, is grade-A cheese, yet that’s allotment of its charm. And unlike KKvG, it’s completely unfettered by American-filmed sequences, even though the American actors at some points do raze up dubbing themselves over (maybe the distributors saw the discrepancies in KKvG? ) . In terms of pacing, it’s also a great faster movie than KKvG, something that ultimately worked to these movies’ favor as time went on.
The characterization here is distinguished stronger than KKvG, even if doesn’t execute 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 tremendous kid who will follow elegant Susan around anywhere (you have to give Toho credit on this secure too: at least their version of Kong aloof has that weakness for the ladies) . Mechani-Kong is the actual worn link in this chain, since he’s simply a titanic remote-controlled toy for Dr. Who, but he proves substandard 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 fair the proportions of the suit in relation to those of a true 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 allotment of Great G’s series – doesn’t really exhaust 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: advance for the Expansive G, stop for the nefarious robot twin. There are plenty of worse ways to consume your Saturday nights.
Natural Gain Plus
