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King Kong vs. Godzilla
Movie: 6/10
"It's dull and boring and without imagination" That's an actual quote from the movie that seemed worth mentioning in a review. As fond as I am of Godzilla movies, this is not among the better ones. It does feature all the standards like bad dubbing and cheesy special effects. Plus the English translation is amazingly hoky and goofy. Basically it's a movie that begs for the MST3K treatment. My favorite part is the "UN Reporter" who pops up periodically to explain everything to the more brain dead members of the audience. These segments were apparently added later for the benefit of American audiences. It would seem that American audiences were believed to have cabbage for brains.
The star, as always, is Godzilla. Basically, a guy in a big rubber lizard suit stomping around doing his best to flatten the miniature sets. So how does King Kong end up in this movie? Simple, some Japanese guy is tired of getting bad ratings because Godzilla sightings tend to dominate the airwaves. So he dispatches his people to the island that King Kong is on to get him his very own monster to play with. As ridiculous as that sounds, I could actually imagine network executives doing something like that if giant monsters really existed.
"I'm not here to become their dinner!" The natives of Kong's island are worthy of mention. As far as I can tell they slapped beads, feathers and several layers of tanning lotions on Japanese actors and called them natives. Oh yeah, don't forget the classic native style of the coconut shell bra.
What I'd really like to know is what the hell happened to Kong between this movie and King Kong? During that time he appears to have grown by about 200 feet, developed mange and a hunchback and lost almost all ability to move his face. That's another way of saying that the Kong costumes is just awful. That goes for most of this movie actually. But I say that affectionately since this movie is so amazingly bad that it heads right over the line back to entertaining. I laughed through much of the movie, although I'm sure only some of it was meant to be funny.
Video: 3/10
Pan and scan transfer. Ick. It's not even a good pan and scan job. They periodically forgot the pan part as we get the part of the frame with no action. For instance, in the first battle between Kong and Godzilla, we never once see them in the frame at the same time. The picture quality is pretty awful too. It's riddled with artifacts and has fairly poor contrast.
Audio: 4/10
Mono Dolby digital sound. Not terribly impressive.
Extras: 1/10
Production notes. That's it. Very weak. This despite the large 35th Anniversary tag on the case which would seem to indicate that meant something special.
Overall: 4/10
There are two sorts of people in this world. Those who love Godzilla movies and those who don't. Make damn sure you know which group you belong to before checking out this movie.
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