King Kong vs. Godzilla

Of all the early Godzilla films (those before such 1970s flops as Godzilla vs. Megalon and Godzilla vs. Gigan), none is put down as often as King Kong vs. Godzilla. Yet for many years, this was the top grossing Godzilla film in Japan. To look at what causes this mismatch between what English-language film goers think of this film vs. how it is viewed in Japan, you have to look at the original Japanese film, which is unfortunately not available in the United States and doesn’t seem to be part of the big release of dual-film (Japanese original with English subtitles and American dubbed versions) that Sony is doing of many of the other early Godzilla films. One has to thus go to other sources to find it. (If anyone reading this wants to complain about piracy, my response is that, when Sony releases an official version, I’ll buy to replace my unofficial copy, the same way I did when the released the original Godzilla a few months back.)

The original, while not a great film by any means, is enjoyable and certainly a better film than the English-language version. It’s longer, spending much more time on the setup and a lot more on the parody of commercialism/advertising, which only partially comes through in the English version. More importantly, the original contains a marvelous Akira Ifukube soundtrack, which is mostly replaced in the English version (other than a few segments of the natives’ song) by the soundtrack from the Creature from the Black Lagoon.

For those note familiar with Ifukube, he is the Japanese Bernard Hermann or John Williams – the creator of big, memorable symphonic scores. For Ifukube, like Hermann or Williams, the soundtrack of a film is much like the score of an opera – something integral to the film, something memorable in itself, not just something almost unnoticed in the background used to set the mood. Among other things, Ifukube wrote all of the best Godzilla scores, from that of the original film to the score of the last film of the second series, Godzilla vs. Destroyah. In fact, I’d argue that there are no really good Godzilla films that don’t have Ifukube scores (though the reverse is not true, since he also scored several bad Godzilla films).

The movie itself is made up of two story lines that converge as the film goes on. The longer of the two involves a pharmaceutical company that is looking for a marketing ploy. They find it when a scientist not only brings back samples of new berry (source for a possible sleep-aid drug) from an island in the Solomons, but also word that the natives there worship some sort of monstrous god. This gives the firm’s marketing exec and idea: go to the island, film or capture the monster, and make that the center of his advertising campaign. Of course the god is the giant ape King Kong, who they bring back to Japan with no thought of the damage he’ll cause.

Meanwhile, Godzilla, who had been buried in the ice at the end of the second Godzilla film (Godzilla’s Counterattack, aka Gigantis the Fire Monster) emerges from an iceberg, heads for Japan, and immediately begins tearing up the countryside. The military, as usual, is unable to stop him, and Kong’s first encounter with him is a rousing defeat for Kong (who can’t stand up to Godzilla’s radioactive breath). But the authorities (and the pharmaceutical firm employees) decide that Kong may be their only hope against Godzilla, that as bad as Kong is, Godzilla is worse. They knock out Kong using the sleep-drug they brought back from the island, airlift him with balloons, and drop him on Godzilla. They fight, Kong wins, and swims back toward home. (The persistent story that Godzilla wins in the Japanese version is wrong.)

As I said, the movie is entertaining. The subplot is often amusing, and some of the action scenes are good. Several of the solo Godzilla sequences are quite good (the Godzilla suit used in this one is one of the better ones). And Ifukube’s score is one of his very best and most innovative (including even some jazzy sections that weren’t typical for him).

On the downside, the King Kong suite just looks wrong. I think this is one of the things that makes this movie the but of jokes. Had this suit been a bit better, the movie would have been better. Moreover, while some of the fight sequences are good, a few look too much like sumo wrestling (deliberate, I believe, to help entertain the kids they expected to attend this one).

One final note: this movie does have some nostalgic appeal for me. It’s the first movie I ever went to with my family. We all went to the drive-in to see it when it was released. (The next film in the series, the far better Mothra vs. Godzilla (aka Godzilla vs. the Thing) also has nostalgic appeal as it was the first film I ever attended on my own at a theatre, as well as the first film that I saw print ads for and thus was anticipating when it came out.)