King Kong Vs. Godzilla Movie Review

An entrepreneur captures a giant ape on a South Pacific island, names him King Kong (after the classic movie), and plans to bring him back to Japan to star on the TV show he sponsors. Unfortunately, the beast escapes. Meanwhile, Godzilla breaks out of an iceberg and begins another campaign of destruction. The government figures that if they get the two monsters to fight, maybe they'll finish each other off. The planet issues a collective shudder as the two mightiest monsters slug it out. Humankind can only stand by and watch in impotent horror as the tide of the battle sways to and fro. For Godzilla's third appearance, Toho went for a more whimsical atmosphere, spicing their outlandish story with doses of satire. Godzilla appears positively nasty and looking for trouble – while the Kong costume is, sadly, rather shoddy looking, and the actor inside fails to act like an ape. For the U.S. version, Universal altered the film drastically, deleting and rearranging scenes while adding bland sequences from the viewpoint of a TV anchor desk. Even Akira Ifukube's powerful score was thrown out in favor of stock library music. In any case, King Kong Vs. Godzilla became a monster hit at the box office all over the world, and is still a mighty entertaining monster mash. AKA: King Kong Tai Gojira.

1963 105m/C JP Tadao Takashima, Mie Hama, Kenji Sahara, Akihiko Hirata, Michael Keith; D: Inoshiro Honda; W: Shinichi Sekizawa; C: Hajime Koizumi; M: Akira Ifukube. VHS GKK