King Kong vs. Godzilla

King Kong vs. Godzilla (I am talking about the American version from 1963)

Runtime: 90 minutes

Directed by: Ishiro Honda, Thomas Montgomery

Starring: Tadao Takashima, Kenji Sahara, Yu Fujiki, Michael Keith, Harry Holcombe

From: Toho/Universal

Yeah, I do wish I could have seen the original version along with the American one, but only the latter could I find so that is what I had to work with. Sure, the American dub likely is the source of the muscle relaxing drug Soma having that name in the United States, but other than that legacy, it's mainly the cheese factor here, which it does deliver on. I will return Sunday night.

(Note: The cut of this movie I am reviewing is of the American version, put out by Universal in 1963 and released on Blu-ray by Universal last year. I haven't ever seen the original Toho version so I can't compare the two; I just understand the different versions are, well, pretty different. It's not ideal but I've never seen that so I can only talk about what is easy for me to track down, which is the Universal edit.)

I wasn't planning on watching this last night; it just came to me that I should check it out. I figured this would be a campy good time and at least with what Universal put out-with the American bits being a “United Nations” reporter named Eric Carter who narrates things and tries to tie it all together and the dubbed dialogue-it is campy and goofy. In short, while Godzilla escapes from the iceberg he ended up in at the end of Godzilla Raids Again, a pharmaceutical company (run by a guy named TACO... I mean TAKO) discovers that a monster lives on Faro Island and for ratings, wants it brought back to Japan. Wacky, but then again it sort of mirrors what happens in the 1976 remake of King Kong and of course, that's what the Faro Island monster is. After fighting a giant octopus, he's captured and the two giants end up brawling with each other, after Kong is not allowed into the country, which actually does make sense... and both creatures wreck other things before wrecking each other.

Like I said I wish I could see the original Toho cut. I mean, the American scenes were fine to me and all but the original is typically the preferred way I would like to go, usually. The matte lines can be rather noticeable here and that wasn't the case in the Japanese cut. I also understand you don't have a character complaining about the corns on his feet in the primary language! But the biggest crime is that the score from Akira Ifukube is replaced with old music from other movies so “it'd be more American”. As he's a great composer and from listening to some of the songs on YouTube (where you can find the entire score) it's an epic soundtrack he did and I wish I could have been able to hear it while watching the Blu-ray.

Even with all that, I can still rate it as 3 stars. Just looking at the Japanese scenes there are a number of goofy moments, which I won't spoil... except that the part on Faro Island is Japanese people in blackface as “natives” who are transfixed with cigarettes and a Japanese song on a portable radio... I thought that I'd get enough racism for awhile when I watched The Birth of a Nation the night before I saw this, but I was wrong! That was quite unfortunate and is not what I am putting in the “goofy” category.

Oh, and as it was at least (and still may be) a popular rumor, the endings to both the Universal and Toho versions of the film are the same; the two do NOT differ in which kaiju wins the epic battle that closes the movie. I even remember back in the late 90's before such things as Wikipedia, IMDb or even Google where that false rumor was discussed with some people I knew in a class one day at school. In case anyone reading this is still confused about the matter, that's the truth.