Film Review: King Kong vs Godzilla (Kingu Kongu Tai Gojira)

Here it is:  the most gargantuan battle of monsters anybody could come up with.  From the west, there's the massive gorilla that was worshiped by natives and went on to climb the Empire State building.  From the Far East, the giant fire-breathing lizard spawn from the atomic age that crushes entire cities.  This film unites the two iconic titans in a vicious match of pure bestial muscle power.

As cool as it all sounds, the film may inspire more absurd laughter than actual thrills.  When the two beasts collide, King Kong throws his arms around in a hokey ape-like manner, while Godzilla throws a hissy-fit and flaps his arms erratically.  In the confines of gaudy rubber suits, it looks incredibly silly.  The actual mass destruction is plentiful, but these scenes seem so few and far-between.  By the film's end (after a ridiculous scene where Kong is airlifted by balloons), the conflict just kinda fizzles out with no clear winner or loser.  It's a cheap and dated film with horrid special effects and bad costume work; even if you look past that, the execution is so weak that it can't be taken seriously.

Of course, if you don't take it seriously (and you probably shouldn't for monster flicks anyway), then it's still pretty fun.  Fans should get a kick out of the epic clash, despite all its cheesiness and flaws.

The story is pretty standard stuff; most characters exist to simply to provide a human conduit for the audience to follow as the monsters roam around.  The plot does take a few stupid turns (seriously, King Kong flying around on balloons? And since when can he grow stronger with electricity?).

This film is pretty cheap, featuring okay photography and editing.  Acting is pretty cheesy, and is made even worse with terrible English dubbing.  Writing is pretty nutty (possibly marred by the changes of the US cut).  This production uses some cheap and gaudy sets, props, costumes, model-work, and some horrid-looking compositing effects.  Music is okay.

This film has had a pretty spotty history.  For the US, parts of it have been cut out, and many new footage has been cut in, in a manner similar to Godzilla:  King of the Monsters.  I don't know what the exact changes are, but the added news reports and exposition feel quite forced, and some of the explanations given seem misinformed, and possibly biased to appeal to Americans.  Even in Japan, parts of the film have gone missing (some of which has been restored for home video releases), and the overall condition of the film has been poor. 

This film is probably best seen for watching the two titular beasts duke it out, in all their cheesy rubber-suit glory.  It's not a good film, and the story is pretty dumb (at least for the US version), but if you ever wanted to see two of the biggest and most popular monsters engaged in epic combat, this film has its moments.

3/5 (Entertainment:  Pretty Good | Story:  Marginal | Film:  Marginal)