KING KONG VS. GODZILLA (1962) Is Entertainingly Cheesy Schlock
(Schlock that’s winningly game to have some satirical fun at its own expense.)
“Where should we evacuate to?”
“Where? Somewhere safe, of course!”
“It’s one thing to run from a typhoon, but with Godzilla and King Kong, you never know where to go.”
So I guess the scene in Kong: Skull Island, where Kong chowed down on a giant squid/octopus, wasn’t (just) a nudge-wink reference to Oldboy, but was maybe also a nod to a similar moment from this, the original King Kong vs. Godzilla?
Neat, if true!
Something else that would also be amazing if it’s historically accurate (which it is purported to be, but I add this cautious caveat just in case) is that — according to IMDb, and the Toho Kingdom website quoting the book, Japan’s Favourite Mon-Star: The Unauthorised Biography of The Big G — when they were promoting King Kong vs. Godzilla, Toho released so-called “interviews” given by the eponymous monsters, trash-talking each other before their big fight as if this was the run-up to a WWE smackdown.
Godzilla was “quoted” (inasmuch as you can quote a monster who doesn’t talk in words, and is also entirely fictional) as saying the following, which I encourage you to imagine being spoken in the voice of Macho Man Randy Savage:
“Seven years have passed since I rose from the bottom of the southern seas and raved about in Japan, leaving destruction behind wherever I crawled. It is most gratifying for me to have the privilege of seeing you again after breaking through an iceberg in the arctic ocean where I was buried. At the thought of my engagement with King Kong from America, I feel my blood boil and flesh dance. I am now applying myself to vigorous training day and night to capture the world monster-championship from King Kong.”
King Kong’s “response” was this, which I encourage you to imagine being spoken in the voice of Hulk Hogan:
“I may be the stranger to the younger people here, but have quite a number of fighting adventures to my credit. I will fight to the last ditch in the forthcoming encounter with Mr. Godzilla, for my title is at stake… Hearing that the world-renowned special effects director Eiji Tsuburaya is to act as referee, I am going to return to the screen in high spirits.”
Incredible stuff.
The film itself? Eh, it has its charms, as all these endearingly silly films do. The parts with the dated depiction of natives from Faro Island (the new home of Kong, because perhaps Toho couldn’t call it “Skull Island”?) feels racially insensitive in ways I’m not equipped to articulate, nor have any authoritatively expert stance on. Plus, while I don’t hold it against them, the monster effects implemented to bring Kong to life are rather hokey.
Yet even so, it’s a marvel to look back on these movies, and watch them through the perspective of filmmaking problem-solving, given the limitations of technology, time, and money they had at their disposal to bring these gargantuan rock-’em-sock-’em kaiju battles to life. From the men inside the Godzilla and Kong suits throwing themselves around small-scaled sets, to the miniatures and models of buildings and trains and tanks and even people, not to mention the occasional bit of stop-motion and hand-drawn animation, it’s endlessly charming to see the myriad techniques they used to use to create sequences we’d nowadays render almost entirely in CGI.
Also, the satirical, slyly meta aspect to the plot, where bringing Kong to Japan and eventually pitting him against Godzilla is all because of cynical corporate advertising interests looking to capitalise on the ratings and money such a spectacle would bring, is wonderfully cheeky.
Kudos to the denizens of the Internet Archive for providing the best avenue available to watching this film whatsoever, seeing as it’s not on any streaming services, nor or are there any… um, shall we say, “sea-faring” options of a good quality version of the original Japanese language cut. (No way in hell am I willingly watching any dubs over subs.)
The version I watched can be found HERE, whose subtitles included very helpful contextual information that clued me in to a couple of culturally specific wordplays or references that would’ve otherwise gone over my head. (For instance: the cartoonish boss of Pacific Pharmaceuticals, who sends his two bumbling employees to Faro Island, is named Mr. Tako; tako is also the Japanese word for octopus; so when the giant octopus starts attacking the Faro Island village, the two men get into a “who’s on first?”-style miscommunication where one of them’s talking about the giant octopus outside, and the other thinks they’re talking about their boss. Hilarity ensues. The other example: a character believed to be dead returns to his home, and his neighbour sees him, but thinks he’s a ghost, remarking that she didn’t expect to see him with legs. A subtitle then handily notes that in Japanese folklore, ghosts are believed to be literally legless beings, whom you can only see from the torso up.)
However, that version has a tendency to fluctuate in picture quality, due to how it alternates between the well-preserved negative that the American re-edit was made from, and the unwell-preserved negatives from the full Japanese cut. Only after I’d watched it, and saw on IMDb that there was a full 4K restoration made of the full Japanese cut’s rediscovered 35mm print, did I check for this potentially better-quality version, and sure enough, there it is on the Internet Archive as well, with English subtitles attached to the MKV file and everything! So if you want to see a better print of the film than even I watched for this review, check that out HERE.
Originally published January 26th 2024 at https://jackandersonkeane.substack.com.
