King Kong Vs Godzilla/King Kong Escapes

I have been waiting for years for King Kong vs. Godzilla to be re-released on DVD, and the day is almost here. For the better part of 5 years, since I got my first DVD player, I have been looking on Amazon to see if they will release this movie again on DVD. And now the day is almost here.As a kid growing up in the 70's I loved the so called "monster movies" (Godzilla, King Kong, Mothra, Rhodan, Gammara, Gargantua). My local station was the original WOR in New York and would show these constantly, especially the day after Thanksgiving. I would also love seeing these during the old WABC 4:00 movie in New York when they would show them all week. I don't care how bad the Godzilla or King Kong suits look, how fake the sceneery looks like too, I was just a big fan.I have King Kong vs. Godzilla on VHS, but I have not watched a VHS tape in years, just to old school to rewind, fast forward, the quality too. But I always held out hope for the day it would be on DVD again. I ordered this the second I saw it available. This is 1000 times better than any of the monster movies that ever came out. Just the campyness of it is enjoyable too. Also there is no annoying soundtrack playing the latest has been top 40 song throughout the movie.I wish I was a movie producer because I would love to remake King Kong vs. Godzilla. Not a remake of that horrible Matthew Brodderick Godzilla moive (read my review) or the soon to be released "King Kong". I want a 200 foot King Kong, not a 40 foot.Ok, I am being biased. Get this movie, seriously, you will enjoy it. And I like extras, but who wants to see the guy who was in the Godzilla costume talk about (with subtitles) shooting the film. Do you really need to know this ? Most of the extras suck anyway on DVD's. There is a reason why the scene was not in the film, it sucked anyway. And one more thing, they can save 8 minutes on a DVD (or movie) but not crediting EVERYONE who was part of the film. Yes, the director is nice, actors, the producer, but do I really need to know who the personal chef was for the stand-in was ?

King Kong vs. Godzilla--I remember watching this all the time when I was 4 and 5. My dad was a fan of godzilla and found King Kong vs. Godzilla on VHS at a video store.We had this video until the tape got ruined!!! And I haven't seen it for 6+ years. But I decided to buy it one day one day, for this classic and historic film. This is probably the best slug fest, ever in Godzilla history. There has been good ones, but this tops everything. It has everything a godzilla movie should have. Godzilla destroying stuff, and the military failing every time, bad dubbing, and a fight at the end, and this nails it.King Kong Escapes--Okay, really I just tried to buy King Kong vs. Godzilla, and didn't care for Kong Escapes, because one time it was on Sci-Fi and my dad recorded it, and we still have it today, on tape. And I can't believe the amount of reviews tried to go for King Kong Escapes in this package. I think it was just thrown in their for a bonus, so did my dad. But I still like it, really though, only too see Gorosaurus in action.I'm a Godzilla fan and I bought this, King Kong is awesome, I just think he's just another monster though (but a better one), I'd say this package is really meant for those Godzilla fans. Since they both are made by Toho, and have the same idea, of monster vs. monster. If you're a godzilla fan, love people in rubber suits fighting, and love hilarious bad dubbing (which I do). This is definetly a must own. It's in my Top 5 Godzilla films, and #1 in Slugfests.

2004-2005 will go down as a banner era for American fans of Kaiju Eiga. Not only has it seen Sony's superb releases of most of the Showa-era Godzilla films, but Media Blasters' equally-excellent DVDs of other Toho monster classics such as Dogora, Varan the Unbelievable, Atragon and others.To this noble roster now add Universal's release of King Kong Vs. Godzilla and King Kong Escapes, in anamorphic widescreen. KK Vs. G is an enjoyable romp, beloved among G-fans for: 1) The fight between the two monsters at the Diet Building in Tokyo; 2) the incredible scene where Kong swings Godzilla around by his tail; and 3) being the first Godzilla film in color. Yes, the Kong suit is truly goofy, yet both it and the actor inside display loads of personality. And the film boasts a fine Akira Ifukube score.But for my money the true gem here is King Kong Escapes. What makes this film so special can be summed up in one word: Mechani-Kong. This giant robotic version of the Eighth Wonder is as cool as the shaggy gorilla-suited Kong is goofy, and he certainly ranks as one of the greatest monsters in the Toho pantheon. If you're a fan of Mechagodzilla (and who isn't?), you owe it to yourself to see his precursor in his only film appearance. (Icing on the cake: the first appearance of Gorosaurus, Maestro Ifukube's wonderful score, and a deliciously over-the-top performance by Eisei Amamoto as "Dr. Who" -- no relation to the famous Timelord!)It's still hard for me to believe that these two wonderful films are getting a quality DVD release.

godzilla rules

By 1962 Godzilla's career had hit the rocks: he hadn't worked since 1955's Godzilla Raids Again had failed to set the box-office on fire, so it was a lucky break when King Kong animator Willis O'Brien's pitch for King Kong Vs. Frankenstein got picked up by Toho, who decided to give the local boy one more chance. Not only would King Kong Vs. Godzilla be the first time in color and CinemaScope for both beasts, but its popularity would propel a Godzilla revival as he worked his way back up through the ranks of monster mashes to stake his claim as Japan's favorite monster. Sadly, while it may have revived their careers, it's not an especially worthy vehicle for either star. Even in its original Japanese version this was played largely for easy laughs - one character has obviously spent a lot of time studying Edgar Kennedy's mannerisms while another sounds like he's dubbed by Ritzik from Sergeant Bilko ("Ooh! Oooh!"), and that's not mentioning dialogue like "You can't start shooting at Kong now - he's holding my sister in his hand!" or "King Kong can't make a monkey out of us."The plot is nothing to write home about. After Godzilla breaks free of the ice he was trapped in back in 1955, the head of a pharmaceutical company hoping to market a giant berry with narcotic effects declares "I'm sick of Godzilla. I want my own monster! Find me a monster fast!" Luckily the same remote island the berries come from is the home of King Kong, who is worshipped by a tribe of Japanese actors in blackface speaking pigeon-English. After winning over the natives by giving them cigarettes (even the children), our comical capitalists capture Kong - but not until after he's battled a giant octopus - and plan to ship him back to Japan, which at least means that Kong aficionados finally get to see Kong being towed on the giant raft. Naturally things don't go well: Kong escapes and the two monsters find themselves on a collision course, with Tokyo the initial battleground before moving on to the countryside and a grand finale pepped up (in the US version at least) with earthquake footage from The Mysterians. The fight itself doesn't exactly live up to expectations or its billing as `The Battle of the Century!', but at least it got the big feller back in the game.There were plans at one point to incorporate stop-motion effects into the film before time and money ruled that out, though judging by the couple of brief and ineffective moments of stop-motion animation in the film that's not a bad thing. Still, there's no hiding the fact that the Kong suit isn't one of Toho's finest achievements - aware that more suspension of disbelief was needed than normal, they used photos of the 1933 Kong to promote the movie. There's also some very clumsy integration of the human characters and the battling monsters, the clumsy color separation and superimposition constantly turning foreground figures into blue silhouettes. The optical printing is reportedly slightly better in the Japanese version but unfortunately the only version available on DVD to non-Japanese audiences is the heavily Americanized version, which not only deletes large chunks of the original and replaces Akiro Ifukube's score with selections from The Creature From The Black Lagoon and other 50s Universal monster movies but also stops the action dead for long stretches with wildly overlong newly shot and very static sequences with Michael Keith's UN reporter and Gig Young impersonator commenting on the action from the studio while Harry Holcombe's dinosaur expert describes Godzilla as a cross between a Tyrannosaurus Rex (which he demonstrates by holding up a picture of an Allosaurus) and a Stegasaurus with a brain the size of a berry. Even the actors can't get up much enthusiasm: when Keith asks "How does that sound in Tokyo?" a deeply unimpressed Japanese newsreader replies "Not very good."Surprisingly, King Kong's second Japanese outing, 1967's King Kong Escapes is a much more enjoyable affair. A co-production with Rankin-Bass to cash in on the success of their animated King Kong TV series, it plays at times like a feature-length episode of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (the hero is even called Commander Nelson) with Kong as the guest monster. There's no Godzilla this time round, though Kong does take on a Gorosaurus in a tribute to the original 1933 version (though Willis O'Brien's Kong never drop-kicked a dinosaur!) before moving on to a giant RoboKong that those dastardly North Koreans are using to excavate Mineral X from the North Pole. When RoboKong proves to be not up to the task, they go after the real thing, who has conveniently just been discovered by the voice of a thousand trailers Rhodes Reason and his UN submarine crew. Naturally Kong takes a shine to Linda Miller's medical officer, so to control Kong they kidnap her, Japanese boyfriend Akira Tarada and Reason and threaten them with fiendish tortures at the hands of the villainous Dr Who, who, the Toho lawyers were quick to stress, bears no relation to the BBC's Dr Who even if he has the same costume, cape, hat and hairstyle as William Hartnell's first doctor. But to be fair no-one ever described the venerable Time Lord as "an oriental skeleton, a devil with eyes like a gutter rat" or sneered "You'd steal Niagara Falls for a drink of water" at him.The Kong suit is possibly even worse this time but the MechaKong puts up a much better fight and the action scenes are generally better all round: yes, they're only models, but it's still fun to see Kong shake up submarines, smash tankers, drop-kick dinosaurs and scrap it out with his mechanical nemesis atop the Tokyo Tower. This time round it's the original Godzilla Haruo Nakajima inside the Kong suit, and his superior grasp of body language and the art of fisticuffs pays off rather well. Mie Hama, Kissy Suzuki in You Only Lives Twice, provides the glamour as a North Korean agent but the acting honors among the humans go to Eisei Amamoto's villainous Dr Who, eating the scenery with underplayed relish like an Asian James Coburn.Once again this is only available to non-Japanese audiences on DVD in the American version, though this isn't so much of a problem this time since the American cast were in the film to begin with rather than clumsily grafted on at the last minute and Akira Ifukube's score is retained (though not credited on the US print)