is a 1962 Japanese kaiju film directed by Ishirō Honda, with special effects by Eiji Tsuburaya. Produced and distributed by Toho Co., Ltd, it is the third film in both the Godzilla and King Kong franchises, as well as the first Toho-produced film featuring King Kong. It is also the first time that each character appeared on film in color and widescreen. The film stars Shoichi Hirose as King Kong and Haruo Nakajima as Godzilla with Tadao Takashima, Kenji Sahara, Yū Fujiki, Ichirō Arishima, and Mie Hama playing other prominent roles. In the film, Godzilla is reawakened by an American submarine and a pharmaceutical company captures King Kong for promotional uses, culminating in a battle on Mount Fuji.
The project began with a story outline devised by King Kong stop motion animator Willis O'Brien around 1960, in which Kong battles a giant Frankenstein's monster; O'Brien gave the outline to producer John Beck for development. Behind O'Brien's back and without his knowledge, Beck gave the project to Toho to produce the film, replacing the giant Frankenstein's monster with Godzilla and scrapping O'Brien's original story.
King Kong vs. Godzilla was released theatrically in Japan on August 11, 1962, and grossed , making it the second-highest-grossing Japanese film in history upon its release. The film remains the most attended Godzilla film in Japan to date, and is credited with encouraging Toho to prioritize the continuation of the Godzilla series after seven years of dormancy. A heavily re-edited "Americanized" version of the film was released theatrically in the United States by Universal International Inc. on June 26, 1963 as Universal's first King Kong film, the second being King Kong Escapes on June 19, 1968, and the third being the second remake of the 1933 film on December 14, 2005.
The film was followed by Mothra vs. Godzilla, released on April 29, 1964.
Plot Mr. Tako, head of Pacific Pharmaceutical, is frustrated with the television shows his company is sponsoring and wants something to boost his ratings. When a doctor tells Tako about a giant monster he discovered on the small Faro Island, Tako believes that it would be a brilliant idea to use the monster to gain publicity. Tako sends two men, Osamu Sakurai and Kinsaburo Furue, to find and bring back the monster. Meanwhile, the United Nations nuclear submarine Seahawk gets caught in an iceberg. The iceberg collapses, unleashing Godzilla, who had been trapped within it since 1955. Godzilla destroys the submarine and makes its way towards Japan, attacking a military base as it journeys southward.
On Faro Island, a gigantic octopus crawls ashore and attacks the native village in search of Farolacton juice, taken from a species of red berry native to the island. The mysterious Faro monster, revealed to be King Kong, arrives and defeats the octopus. Kong drinks several vases full of the juice while the islanders perform a ceremony, which causes him to fall asleep. Sakurai and Furue place Kong on a large raft and begin to transport him back to Japan. Mr. Tako arrives on the ship transporting Kong, but a JSDF ship stops them and orders that Kong must be kept out of Japan. Meanwhile, Godzilla arrives in Japan and terrorizes the countryside. Kong wakes up and breaks free from the raft. Reaching the mainland, Kong confronts Godzilla and proceeds to throw giant rocks at him. Godzilla is not fazed by King Kong's rock attack and uses its heat ray to burn him. Kong retreats after realizing that he is not yet ready to take on Godzilla.
The JSDF digs a large pit laden with explosives and poison gas and lures Godzilla into it, but Godzilla is unharmed. They next string up a barrier of power lines around the city filled with 1,000,000 volts of electricity, which proves effective against Godzilla. Kong approaches Tokyo and tears through the power lines, feeding off the electricity, which seems to make Kong stronger. Kong then enters Tokyo and captures Fumiko, Sakurai's sister, taking her to the National Diet Building which he then scales. The JSDF launches capsules full of vaporised Farolacton juice, which puts Kong to sleep, and rescue Fumiko. The JSDF decides to transport Kong via balloons to Godzilla, in hopes that they will kill each other.
The next morning, Kong is deployed by helicopters next to Godzilla at the summit of Mount Fuji and the two engage in battle. Godzilla initially has the advantage, dazing Kong with a devastating dropkick and repeated tail blows to his head. Godzilla attempts to burn Kong to death by using its atomic breath to set fire to the foliage around Kong's body. A bolt of lightning from thunder clouds strikes Kong, reviving him and charging him up, and the battle resumes. Godzilla and King Kong fight their way down the mountain and into Atami, where the two monsters destroy Atami Castle while trading blows, before falling off a cliff together into Sagami Bay. After a brief underwater battle, only Kong resurfaces from the water, and he swims back toward his home island. There is no sign of Godzilla, but the JSDF speculates that it may have survived.
Cast Japanese version
American version
Cast taken from Japan's Favorite Mon-Star, except where cited otherwise.
Production Crew
Ishirō Honda – director Eiji Tsuburaya – special effects director Kōji Kajita – assistant director Toshio Takashima – lighting Takeo Kita – art director Teruaki Abe – art director Akira Watanabe – special effects art director Kuichirō Kishida – special effects lighting Masao Fujiyoshi – sound recording
American version Thomas Montgomery – director John Beck – producer Paul Mason – writer Bruce Howard – writer Peter Zinner – editorial and music supervision
Personnel taken from Japan's Favorite Mon-Star.
Conception
King Kong vs. Godzilla had its roots in an earlier concept for a new King Kong feature developed by Willis O'Brien, animator of the original stop-motion Kong. Around 1960, O'Brien came up with a proposed treatment, King Kong Meets Frankenstein, where Kong would fight against a giant Frankenstein's monster in San Francisco. O'Brien took the project (which consisted of some concept art and a screenplay treatment) to RKO to secure permission to use the King Kong character. During this time, the story was renamed King Kong vs. the Ginko when it was believed that Universal had the rights to the Frankenstein name. O'Brien was introduced to producer John Beck, who promised to find a studio to make the film (at this point, RKO was no longer a production company). Beck took the story treatment and hired George Worthing Yates to write the screenplay for the film. The story was slightly altered and the title changed to King Kong vs. Prometheus, returning the name to the original Frankenstein concept (The Modern Prometheus is the subtitle to the original novel).
The November 2, 1960 issue of Variety reported that Beck had even asked a filmmaker named Jerry Guran (a possible misspelling of filmmaker Nathan Juran's pseudonym Jerry Juran) to direct the film. However, the cost of stop-motion animation discouraged potential studios from putting the film into production. After shopping the script around overseas, Beck eventually attracted the interest of the Japanese studio Toho, which had long wanted to make a King Kong film. After purchasing the script, they decided to replace the giant Frankenstein's monster with Godzilla to be King Kong's opponent and would have Shinichi Sekizawa rewrite Yates' script. The studio thought that it would be the perfect way to celebrate its 30th year in production. It was one of five big banner releases for the company to celebrate the anniversary alongside Sanjuro, Chūshingura, Lonely Lane, and Born in Sin.
John Beck's dealings with Willis O'Brien's project were done behind his back, and O'Brien was never credited for his idea. O'Brien attempted to sue Beck, but lacked the money to do so, and on November 8, 1962, he died in his home in Los Angeles at the age of 76. O'Brien's wife Darlyne later cited "the frustration of the King Kong vs. Frankenstein deal" as the cause of his death. Merian C. Cooper, the producer and co-director of the 1933 King Kong film, was bitterly opposed to the project, stating in a letter addressed to his friend Douglas Burden, "I was indignant when some Japanese company made a belittling thing, to a creative mind, called King Kong vs. Godzilla. I believe they even stooped so low as to use a man in a gorilla suit, which I have spoken out against so often in the early days of King Kong".L. Tom Perry Special Collections. Brigham Young University. Cooper Papers. Box MSS 2008 Box 8 Folder 6
In 1963, he filed a lawsuit to enjoin distribution of the movie against John Beck, as well as Toho and Universal (the film's U.S. copyright holder) claiming that he outright owned the King Kong character, but the lawsuit never went through, as it turned out he was not Kong's sole legal owner as he had previously believed.
Themes Director Ishirō Honda wanted the theme of the movie to be a satire of the television industry in Japan. In April 1962, TV networks and their various sponsors started producing outrageous programming and publicity stunts to grab audiences' attention after two elderly viewers reportedly died at home while watching a violent wrestling match on TV.
The various rating wars between the networks and banal programming that followed this event caused widespread debate over how TV would affect Japanese culture with Sōichi Ōya stating TV was creating "a nation of 100 million idiots". Honda stated "People were making a big deal out of ratings, but my own view of TV shows was that they did not take the viewer seriously, that they took the audience for granted...so I decided to show that through my movie" and "the reason I showed the monster battle through the prism of a ratings war was to depict the reality of the times".
Honda addressed this by having a pharmaceutical company sponsor a TV show and going to extremes for a publicity stunt for ratings by capturing a giant monster stating "All a medicine company would have to do is just produce good medicines you know? But the company doesn't think that way. They think they will get ahead of their competitors if they use a monster to promote their product." Honda would work with screenwriter Shinichi Sekizawa on developing the story stating that "Back then Sekizawa was working on pop songs and TV shows so he really had a clear insight into television". Sekizawa remembered the excitement about the project stating "I remember thinking, I might get to write about that guy who climbed the Empire State Building."
Filming
Special effects director Eiji Tsuburaya was planning on working on other projects at this point in time such as a new version of a fairy tale film script called Princess Kaguya, but he postponed those to work on this project with Toho instead since he was such a huge fan of King Kong. He stated in an early 1960s interview with the Mainichi Newspaper, "But my movie company has produced a very interesting script that combined King Kong and Godzilla, so I couldn't help working on this instead of my other fantasy films. The script is special to me; it makes me emotional because it was King Kong that got me interested in the world of special photographic techniques when I saw it in 1933."