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King Kong vs. Godzilla

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King Kong vs. Godzilla
File:King Kong vs Godzilla 1962.jpg
Directed byIshirō Honda
Written byShinichi Sekizawa
George Worthing Yates
Willis O'Brien
Produced byTomoyuki Tanaka
StarringHaruo Nakajima
Katsumi Tezuka
Shoichi Hirose
Tadao Takashima
Kenji Sahara
Yu Fujiki
Ichirō Arishima
CinematographyHajime Koizumi
Music byAkira Ifukube
Sei Ikeno
Hachiro Matsui
Bukimasha
Distributed byToho
Release dates
August 11, 1962 (Japan)
June 26, 1963 (USA)
Running time
98 Minutes (Japan)
91 (USA)
LanguageJapanese/English

King Kong vs. Godzilla (キングコング対ゴジラ, Kingu Kongu Tai Gojira) is a 1962 tokusatsu kaiju film directed by Ishiro Honda with visual effects by Eiji Tsuburaya. It was the third installment in the Japanese series of monster films featuring the mutant dinosaur Godzilla. It is also the first time both King Kong and Godzilla appeared in color.

Plot

Mr. Tako, head of Pacific Pharmaceuticals, is frustrated with the television shows his company is sponsoring and wants something to boost his ratings. When a doctor tells Tako about a giant monster he discovered on the small Faro Island, Tako believes that it would be a brilliant idea "...with a punch" to use the monster to gain publicity. Tako immediately sends two men, Sakurai and Kinsaburo, to find and bring back the monster from Faro.

Meanwhile, the American submarine Seahawk gets caught in an iceberg. Unfortunately, this is the same iceberg that Godzilla was trapped in by the Japanese Self-Defense Forces back in 1955, and the submarine is destroyed by the monster. As an American rescue helicopter circles the iceberg, Godzilla breaks out and heads towards a nearby Soviet Arctic base. The base alarm sounds as they deploy everything they have against him. Tanks were sent to stop Godzilla's advance, but to no avail. Godzilla advances, now closer to the base. 12 rapid-firing four-turreted artillery cannons, despite their firepower and firing rate, had no effect either. Godzilla, now at the coastline of the base, fires his atomic ray at the tanks' defensive line, melting them instantly. The rest of the tanks retreat, now leaving the bases defenses to deal with him. The base itself, of course is ineffective against Godzilla. He continues moving inland, razing the base to the ground, and sends the tank armory up in flames. Godzilla's appearance is all over the press, making Tako furious.

Meanwhile on Faro Island, a Giant Octopus attacks the native village. The mysterious Faro monster is then revealed to be the giant gorilla King Kong and he arrives and defeats the tentacled menace. Kong then drinks some red berry juice, gets drunk, and then falls asleep. Sakurai and Kinsaburo place Kong on a large raft and begin to transport him back to Japan. Back at Pacific Pharmaceuticals, Tako is finally glad because Kong is now all over the press instead of Godzilla. Mr. Tako arrives on the ship transporting Kong, but a JSDF ship stops them and orders them to return Kong to Faro Island. Godzilla had just come ashore in Japan and destroyed a train, and the JSDF doesn't want another monster entering Japan. Unfortunately, during all this, Kong wakes up from his drunken state and breaks free from the raft. Reaching the mainland, Kong meets up with Godzilla in a valley and Tako, Sakurai, and Kinsaburo have difficulty avoiding the JSDF to watch the fight. Eventually they find a spot. Kong throws some large rocks at Godzilla, but Godzilla shoots his ray at Kong's chest, forcing the giant ape to retreat.

The JSDF desperately tries everything to stop Godzilla from entering Tokyo. In a fielded area outside the city, they dig a large pit laden with explosives and try to lure Godzilla into it. They succeed and set off the explosives, but Godzilla is unharmed and crawls out of the pit. They next string up a barrier of power lines around the city filled with a 1,000,000 volts of electricity (300,000 volts had been tried in the first film, but failed to turn the monster back). The electricity is too much for Godzilla, who then moves away from the city towards the Mt. Fuji area. Later at night, Kong approaches Tokyo. He tears through the power lines, feeding off the electricity which seems to make him stronger. Kong then attacks Tokyo and holds a woman from a train, named Fumiko, hostage. The JSDF explode capsules full of the berry juice from Faro Island and knock out Kong. Tako approved of this plan because he "...didn't want anything bad to happen to Kong." The JSDF then decide to transport Kong via balloons to Godzilla, in hope that they will fight each other to their deaths.

The next morning, King Kong is dumbo-dropped onto the summit of Mt. Fuji from the balloon air-lift, meets up with Godzilla and the two begin to fight. Godzilla has the advantage at first, eventually knocking Kong down with a vicious drop kick, and battering the monstrous ape unconscious with powerful tail attacks to his forehead. When Godzilla tries to kill Kong with his ray, an electrical storm arrives and revives Kong, giving him the power of an electric grasp. The two begin to fight again, with the revitalized Kong swinging Godzilla around by his tail, shoving a tree into Godzilla's mouth, and judo tossing him over his shoulder. The brawl between the two monsters continues all the way down to the coastline. Eventually the monsters tear through Atami Castle and Kong drags Godzilla into the Pacific Ocean. After an underwater battle, only King Kong emerges from the water and begins to slowly swim back home to Faro Island. As Kong swims home, onlookers aren't sure if Godzilla survived the underwater battle, but speculate that it was possible.

Production

The film had its roots in an earlier concept for a new King Kong feature developed by Willis O'Brien, animator of the original stop-motion Kong. In 1960, O'Brien came up with a proposed treatment, King Kong vs. Frankenstein, where Kong would fight against a giant version of Frankenstein's monster in San Francisco.[1] O'Brien took the project (which consisted of some concept art and a screenplay treatment) to RKO to secure permission to use the King Kong character. During this time the story was renamed King Kong vs. the Ginko when it was believed that Universal had the rights to the Frankenstein name (they actually only had the rights to the monster's makeup design). O'Brien was introduced to producer John Beck who promised to find a studio to make the film (at this point in time RKO was no longer a production company). Beck took the story treatment and had George Worthing Yates flesh it out into a screenplay. The story was slightly altered and the title changed to King Kong vs. Prometheus, returning the name to the original Frankenstein concept (The Modern Prometheus was the alternate name of Frankenstein in the original novel). Unfortunately, the cost of stop animation discouraged potential studios from putting the film into production. After shopping the script around overseas, Beck would eventually attract the interest of the Japanese studio Toho. Toho had long wanted to make a King Kong film and decided to replace the Frankenstein creature with their own monster Godzilla. They thought it would be the perfect way to celebrate their thirtieth year in production. [2] John Beck's dealings with Willis O'Brien's project were done behind his back, and O'Brien was never credited for his idea [3]. In 1963, Merian C. Cooper attempted to sue John Beck claiming that he outright owned the King Kong character, but the lawsuit never went through as it turned out he was not Kong's sole legal owner as he had previously believed.[4]

Special effects Director Eiji Tsuburaya had a stated intention to move the Godzilla series in a lighter direction. This approach was not favoured by most of the effects crew, who "couldn't believe" some of the things Tsuburaya asked them to do, such as Kong and Godzilla volleying a giant boulder back and forth. But Tsuburaya wanted to appeal to children's sensibilities and broaden the genre's audience.[5] This approach was favoured by Toho and to this end, King Kong vs. Godzilla has a much lighter tone than the previous two Godzilla films and contains a great deal of humor within the action sequences. The decision was also taken to shoot the film in a "Scope" ratio (2.35:1) and to film in color, marking both monsters' first color portrayals.

Toho had planned to shoot this film on location in Sri Lanka, but had to forgo that (and scale back on production costs) because they ended up paying RKO roughly $200,000 (US) for the rights to the King Kong character. The bulk of the film was shot on Oshima (an island near Japan) instead.[6]

During pre-production, Ishiro Honda had toyed with the idea of using Willis O'Brien's stop motion technique instead of the suitmation process used in the first two Godzilla films, but budgetary concerns prevented him from using the process except in a few, isolated scenes.

Godzilla's appearance was changed somewhat for this film. King Kong vs. Godzilla was made more as a comedy rather than having the "sense of terror" theme in the two previous films. Because of that, Toho decided to make Godzilla less frightening. On this suit, Godzilla's ears were removed, and instead of having four toes on each foot, Godzilla had three. The center dorsal fins were englarged and the two side dorsal fins decreased in size. The body of Godzilla was bulkier than the last two suits. The head was made longer, and a slight frown was added to the side the mouth, a feature that would be seen in some later suits. The pupils were enlarged, and the eyes sported a yellow-reddish color. The new features on Godzilla gave him a more reptilian appearance.

For the attack of the Giant Octopus, four live octopuses were used. They were forced to move by blowing hot air on them. After the filming of that scene was finished, three of the four were released. The fourth became special effects director Eiji Tsuburaya's dinner.

Since King Kong was seen as the bigger draw (at the time, he was even more popular in Japan than Godzilla), and since Godzilla was still a villain at this point in the series, it led to the decision to not only give King Kong top billing, but also to present him as the winner of the climatic fight. While the ending of the film does look somewhat ambiguous, Toho confirmed that King Kong was indeed the winner in their 1962/63 press book Toho Films Vol. 8, which states, A spectacular duel is arranged on the summit of Mt. Fuji, and King Kong is victorious.[7]

English version

When John Beck sold the King Kong vs. Prometheus script to Toho (which became King Kong vs. Godzilla), he was given exclusive rights to produce his own version of the film [8]. Beck was able to line up a couple of potential distributors in Warner Brothers and Universal Pictures International even before the film began production.

After the film was completed, Beck was given a private screening of the film and didn't like the comedic aspect of the movie (the original Japanese version is a satire of commercialism). He went to work on his version and tried to turn the film into a straight sci-fi story. This resulted in what would be the most altered Godzilla film from its original Japanese version to the English version in the film series history. Beck removed much of the overt comedy from the original version of the film, cutting out huge amounts of Japanese dialogue which primarily comprised of character development. He replaced this footage with newly shot scenes of Eric Carter, a UN reporter who spends much of the time commenting on the action from a UN communication satellite, as well of Arnold Johnson, the head of the Museum of Natural History in New York, who tries to explain Godzilla's origin and his and Kong's motivations.[9]. Several of the assertions made by the Johnson character in regards to Godzilla's origins and intelligence however, are erroneous, having been refuted either by the previous two films, or by later films in the series. The new footage was directed by Thomas Montgomery[10].

Beck was able to secure a deal with Universal Pictures International during this time as a distributor and was able to obtain from them library music from some of their older films (music tracks that had been composed by Henry Mancini, Hans J. Salter, and even a track from Heinz Roemheld). These films include Creature from the Black Lagoon, Bend of the River, Untamed Frontier, The Golden Horde, Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman, Man Made Monster, and The Monster That Challenged the World. He used these scores to almost completely replace the original Japanese score by Akira Ifukube.[11]. Beck also obtained stock footage from the film The Mysterians from RKO (the film's US copyright holder at the time) which he used to not only represent the UN communication satellite but which he also used during the film's climax. Beck was unimpressed with the tiny tremor that occurs in the Japanese version when Kong and Godzilla are fighting underwater. He utilized stock footage of a massive Earthquake from The Mysterians, in order to make the Earthquake much more violent than the tame tremor seen in the Japanese version. This footage features massive tidal waves, flooded valleys, and the ground splitting open swallowing up various huts. None of this over the top carnage is seen in the Japanese version of the film.

Beck spent roughly $15,500 making his English version and sold the film to Universal Pictures International for roughly $200,000 on April 29, 1963.[8]

The English version runs 91 minutes, seven minutes shorter than the original Japanese version.

Box office

In Japan, this film has the highest box office attendance figures of all of the Godzilla series to date. It sold 11.2 million tickets during its initial theatrical run. After 2 theatrical re-releases in 1970 and 1977 respectively, it has a lifetime figure of 12,550,000 tickets sold.

Legacy

This film marks a number of firsts for King Kong and Godzilla films: this film was the first time either King Kong and Godzilla were filmed in color and the first time either filmed in wide-screen. Coincidentally, this film was also the third film for both King Kong and Godzilla (although this film isn't considered a sequel to the original King Kong or Son of Kong).

Due to this film's great box office success, Toho had wanted to do a sequel almost immediately. The sequel was simply called Continuation: King Kong vs Godzilla. [1] However the project never got off the ground.

In 1992 (to coincide with the company's 60th anniversary), Toho wanted to remake this film as Godzilla vs King Kong [2] as part of the Heisei series of Godzilla fims. However, according to the late Tomoyuki Tanaka, it proved to be difficult to obtain permission to use King Kong.[12] Next, Toho thought to make Godzilla vs Mechani-Kong [3] but, (according to Koichi Kawakita), it was discovered that obtaining permission even to use the likeness of King Kong would be very difficult.[13][14]. In the end, the film became Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla II.

Even though it was only featured in this one film (although it was used for a couple of brief shots in Mothra vs Godzilla[15]), this Godzilla suit was always one of the more popular designs among fans from both sides of the Pacific. It formed the basis for some early merchandise in the US in the 1960s, such as a popular model kit by Aurora Plastics Corporation, and a popular board game by Ideal Toys [4]. In Japan, this suit was the inspiration for the suit built for the films, Godzilla 2000 and Godzilla vs Megaguirus.

The film was referenced in Da Lench Mob's 1992 single "Guerillas in tha Mist".

In Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, the special effects crew was instructed to watch the Giant Octopus scene to get reference for the Kraken.

Dual ending myth

For many years a popular myth has persisted that in the Japanese version of this film, Godzilla emerges as the winner. It isn't known where this myth of the dual endings actually originated, but it's been reported as far back as Famous Monsters of Filmland in the early 1960s. Decades later in the 1980s, the myth was still going strong. The Genus III edition of the popular board game Trivial Pursuit had a question that asked "Who wins in the Japanese version of King Kong vs Godzilla", and states that the correct answer is "Godzilla". As well, through the years, this myth has been misreported by various members of the media[5], and has been misreported by reputable news organizations.[8]

But as more Westerners were able to view the original version of the film especially after its availability on home video during the late 1980s, the myth became dispelled. Both versions of the film end the same way. Kong and Godzilla crash into the ocean, and Kong is the only monster to emerge and swims home. The only differences between the two endings of the film are extremely minor and trivial ones.

  • In the Japanese version, as Kong and Godzilla are fighting underwater, a very small Earthquake occurs. In the American version, producer John Beck tacked on stock footage of a violent Earthquake from the film The Mysterians to make the climatic earthquake seem far more violent and destructive.
  • The dialogue is slightly different. In the Japanese version onlookers are speculating that Godzilla might be dead as they watch Kong swim home, and speculate that it's possible he survived. In the American version, onlookers simply say "Godzilla has disappeared without a trace", and newly shot scenes of reporter Eric Carter has him watching Kong swim home on a viewscreen and wishing him luck on his long journey home.
  • As the film ends and the screen fades to black, Owari (The End) appears on screen, Godzilla's roar followed by Kong's is on the Japanese soundtrack. This was akin to the monsters "taking a bow" or saying "Goodbye" to the audience, as at this point the film is over. In the American version, only Kong's roar is present on the soundtrack.

Alternate Titles

This film was released in Germany as Die Rückkehr des King Kong (The Return of King Kong) and in Italy as Il Trionfo Di King Kong (The Triumph of King Kong[16]


DVD release

Universal Studios

  • Released: November 29, 2005
  • Aspect Ratio: Widescreen (2.35:1) anamorphic
  • Sound: English


  • Region 1
  • Note: Contains the English version of the film; Only available in a two-pack with King Kong Escapes

References

  1. ^ Steve Archer. Willis O'Brien: Special Effects Genius. Mcfarland, 1993.
  2. ^ Paul A. Woods. King Kong Cometh!. Plexus Publishing Limited, 2005. Pg. 119
  3. ^ Willis O'Brien-Creator of the Impossible by Don Shay. Cinefex #7 R.B Graphics. 1982. Pgs. 69-70
  4. ^ Mark Cotta Vaz. Living Dangerously: The Adventures of Merian C Cooper. Villard, 2005. Pgs.361-363
  5. ^ Gaisha Kabushiki. Gojira Eiga 40-Nenshi, Gojira Deizu (Godzilla Days: 40 years of Godzilla Movies). Shueisha, 1993.
  6. ^ Stuart Galbraith IV. Monsters are Attacking Tokyo!. Feral House, 1998. Pgs. 83-84
  7. ^ Toho Company Limited. Toho Films Vol.8. Toho Publishing Co. Ltd, 1963. Pg.9
  8. ^ a b c Steve Ryfle. Japan's Favourite Mon-Star. ECW Press, 1998. Pgs.87-90
  9. ^ The Legend of Godzilla-Part One by August Ragone and Guy Tucker. Markalite: The Magazine of Japanese Fantasy #3. Pacific Rim Publishing Company, 1991. Pg. 27
  10. ^ Kaijuphile Movie Reviews : King Kong vs. Godzilla
  11. ^ War of the Titans (Linear Notes) by David Hirsch. King Kong vs Godzilla: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack. La-La Land Records, 2005. Pgs. 4-9
  12. ^ Toho Company Limited, Toho Sf Special Effects Movie Series Vol 8: Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla, Toho Publishing Products Division, 1993
  13. ^ Koichi Kawakita interview by David Milner, Cult Movies #14, Wack "O" Publishing, 1995
  14. ^ "Koichi Kawakita Interview". {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)
  15. ^ "Evolution of Godzilla". {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)
  16. ^ Godzilla Abroad by J.D Lees. G-Fan #22. Daikaiju Enterprises, 1996. Pgs.20-21

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