Review of “King Kong vs. Godzilla” (1963)

For our Saturday pizza-and-bad-movie night, we watched an old-fashioned kaiju fest. It was as silly as advertised. It included everything: a train derailment, buildings smashed, Godzilla’s atomic breath, an earthquake, two monsters thumping on each other, and important-looking men in black-frame glasses proclaiming important-sounding nonsense.

Plot:

United Nations reporter (is there such an animal?) Eric Carter (Michael Keith) broadcasts news that he received from newsrooms in Chile via a satellite that looks like a tilted child’s toy top. Icebergs are moving through the Bering Sea.

Carter also mentions the discovery of berries with non-addictive narcotic properties. He means they put people to sleep without hooking them. A sample of the too-red “berries” sits in a tall cylinder jar on a table near him. They look like overgrown marachino cherries. The berries can only be found on Farou (Skull?) Island off the coast of Japan. The natives will part with just a few.

When Mr. Tako (Ichirô Arishima), the head of a pharmaceutical company, hears that there is a giant monster on Farou Island, he wants to capture the monster to promote his company. Why doesn’t anyone watch their TV show? It’s boring. He dispatches employees Osamu Sakurai (Tadao Takashima) and Kazuo Fujita (Kenji Sahara) to Farou Island to bring back this monster.

What could go wrong?

About the same time, a US (or maybe a UN?) sub patrolling the Arctic with corporate executives aboard for… some reason spots an iceberg lighting up like a Christmas tree. They move closer to investigate and— OOOPS—collide with the iceberg. The shot of the sub’s rear end sticking out of the iceberg, with the propeller spinning, is one of the silliest images in a silly movie. The captain eventually has to declare abandon ship. (In a sub, underwater? OOO. Hope the life rafts haven’t gotten stuck in that iceberg.) A few moments later, a helicopter comes to rescue them (good luck with that, fellas), but the crew sees the iceberg breaking apart to reveal—Godzilla!

Thoughts:

This is an American version of an earlier Japanese version, with extra scenes cut in and some deleted. According to the wisdom of the web, the original Japanese version was written as a parody of Japanese television promotional stunts. This didn’t translate well into English, which is a shame. The version I saw had silly moments and slapstick, but the parody was hard to see.

According to IMDB, this is Godzilla’s first appearance in color. He’s gray, not green like the movie posters.

When Sakurai and Fujita get to Skull Farou Island, the locals tell them to go home. The outsiders eventually charm locals with the introduction of a transistor radio and cigarettes, some of which end up in the hands and mouth of a child. The locals appear to be Japanese in blackface. Granted, it’s all silly, but it’s still quite demeaning.

Of course, Kong drinks some of the crushed berry juice, takes a nap, and, somehow, Sakuri and Fujita get him on a raft and tow him toward Japan. Whodathunk?

The best part of the whole flick is the throwdown between the two monsters. Kong’s outfit is just goofy.

He walks away from their first encounter with singed fur (which, according to the lore, posed a danger to the guy in that suit, Shôichi Hirose). Kong also had to grow a bit to stand up to Godzilla. The final match lasts about ten to fifteen minutes and counts a model of the Japanese Diet Building

and the scenic Atami Castle among its victims.

The American and Japanese versions end slightly differently. Only one monster swims away after the two crash into the sea following an earthquake and a landslide (why not): the Japanese version allows two vocalizations, hinting at two survivors.

This movie is only for those who like the Japanese monster movies, of course. Without seeing the Japanese version, I can’t tell how much this version has been watered down, but I get the feeling it’s missing a bit. I probably won’t be becoming fluent in Japanese in this lifetime, however. Nevertheless, even with some vagueness in it and the aspects that didn’t age well, it was fun to watch the two monsters smash models and duke it out.



Title: King Kong vs. Godzilla (1963)

Directors
Ishirô Honda (as Inoshiro Honda)
Tom Montgomery (as Thomas Montgomery)

Writers
Shin’ichi Sekizawa…written by
Paul Mason…written by (English version) and
Bruce Howard…written by (English version)
Edgar Wallace…Kingu Kongu Created by
John Beck…story “King Kong vs. Prometheus” (uncredited)
Willis H. O’Brien…story “King Kong vs. Frankenstein” (uncredited)

Cast (in credits order)
Michael Keith…Eric Carter
Harry Holcombe…Dr. Arnold Johnson
James Yagi…Yutaka Omura
Tadao Takashima…Osamu Sakurai
Kenji Sahara…Kazuo Fujita (as Keji Sahaka)
Ichirô Arishima…Mr. Tako

Released: 1963
Length: 1 hour, 31 minutes
Rated: Approved