The Kong File 3: The one with robot Kong

 

 

Title: King Kong Escapes

What Year?: 1967

Classification: Weird Sequel/ Improbable Experiment

Rating: Ow, My Brain!!! (Unrated/ NR)

 

With this review, I’m up to the third in this lineup, which would usually be the last. As I already alluded, this is the one that was going to be here all along. In a franchise approaching its 90^th anniversary, there have been all kinds of detours and dead ends, and one is the strangest and wonkiest of them all, not just in concept and execution but in the backstory of its creation. And, even more amazingly, it’s not the one that had Kong literally brought back as a zombie. Without further delay, I present King Kong Escapes, the one where King Kong does indeed escape.

Our story begins with a sub travelling under water, accompanied by a moody yet groovy score. It turns out that the crew is on an expedition to Mondo Island, to investigate legends of a giant creature called Kong. For some reason, this Japanese crew has exactly one female crew member who happens to be blonde, because apparently the template has overcome ethnicity. They discover this movie’s incarnation of Kong, who can politely be described as sleepy-looking even in battle with Mesozoic creatures. Naturally, he takes a fancy to the blonde, leading him on one hand to save her from the monsters but on the other trying to disable the sub when they try to leave. Meanwhile, a mad-ish scientist named Dr. Hu has built a giant robot ape based on Kong, as a means to mine the mysterious element X. When the machine fails, the doctor and a lady spy set out to get the real Kong. It’s  zany villainy on a collision course with good, and there’s no way this doesn’t end with Kong fighting his own double on top of a building!

King Kong Escapes was a 1967 science fantasy/ kaiju film from Toho and Rankin Bass, directed by Ishiro Honda. The film is regarded as both a sequel to the 1962 Toho film King Kong Vs. Godzilla and a film adaptation of the Rankin Bass cartoon King Kong aired from 1966-1969. While the characters Dr. Hu and Mechani-Kong were previously featured on the show, the film did not feature or directly reference characters or events from the earlier Toho film or any other entry in the franchise. The film starred veterans Akira Takarada as Hiro and Hideo Amamoto as Hu, with Linda Jo Miller as Susan and the original Godzilla suit actor Haruo Nakajima as Kong. The film was released in the US by Universal in 1968 with a G rating, for a North American box office reported as $1 million. Toho continued development of films featuring Kong, but was unable to proceed after a deal with the US rights holders expired. The film is not available for digital purchase or rental in the US.

For my experiences, this is an egregious example of a film that has been a third-hand memory for most of my life. I first became aware of it from a single illustration of the robotic Kong, which I am sure I long thought of as Mecha-Kong. A little later, I saw King Kong Vs. Godzilla on TV, which in hindsight was a major reason I did not warm up to actual kaiju movies as a kid. By early adulthood, I had figured out that the references I remembered were to this film. It was still a few years before I watched it. It immediately stood out as a strange chimera. It’s as if someone set out to make a film based on all the stereotypes and assumptions people, especially in the Western sphere, hold about kaiju movies: Low production values, wonky effects, marginal acting, preposterous plots and an anticlimactic resolution. Fortunately, it also demonstrates why even a “bad” example of the genre can still be a lot of fun.

Moving forward, what’s really noteworthy here is that this a fairly rare case of a vintage kaiju movie that is definitely trying to be funny. It is counterintuitively difficult to pinpoint the difference. All the elements here could be and were played “straight”, yet the presentation transforms them. Whether it’s the psychedelic costumes, vehicles and sets, the weird suit monsters and permanently spaced-out Kong, or the hammy acting, everything here is just a little “more” than usual, at least before the 1970s camp cycle (see Godzilla Vs. Hedorah), and that makes a big difference. It shows the most in the dynamic between Kong and the blonde, which is in many ways the most interesting and sophisticated variation on the formula. Out of the long trail of quasi-romantic figures, Susan is the first to succeed in telling the big guy what to do. She accomplishes this feat mostly by talking to Kong as if he was the petulant toddler he really acts like, with no regard for the very real possibility that he might simply squash her if sufficiently annoyed. The results are truly comical, with a disturbing edge that was there all along. It’s just as well that it ends with the pair parting in peace, implying that the ape has actually learned some kind of lesson.

On the other side of the equation are the villains and Mechani-Kong. The striking thing about the mad doctor and his fair-weather lady friend is that they are the one element played more or less straight. Despite their campy appearances (and Paul Frees swinging for the fences as Hu’s redubbed voice), these are competent and cold-blooded professionals who are absolutely willing and able to kill to get what they want. This is driven home with uncharacteristically brutal human-on-human violence that would be shocking in a G-rated movie if you haven’t seen the likes of The Green Slime and The Andromeda Strain. The robot ape comes across as nothing less than the sum of their malign personalities. We never get a full sense of its capabilities, yet it is a grim and formidable presence in its quite limited screen time. The bot’s greatest advantage is its hypnotic ray, which requires human intervention to neutralize. In true one-on-one combat with Kong, it proves itself quite capable without being completely overwhelming. It’s the environment of the tower that makes the fight memorable, as both combatants maneuver in search of an advantage. One more thing I have to say is that the bot’s early failure from radiation is a quite believable weakness for an AI (though there aren’t many things that wouldn’t be equally bad for the organic Kong). If there’s anything I might suggest changing, it would be to make this a factor in the finale.

That leaves the “one scene”, and I’m going with one that’s random even for this movie. Soon after the landing on the island, the blonde is menaced by a wonky dino admitted to the Toho stable as Gorosaurus. Its overall look is actually unusually realistic for a vintage kaiju, even if that’s not saying much. The only thing really “off” with mid-20^th century paleontology as a frame of reference is that the head, neck and forelimbs seem bunched up, a compromise presumably dictated by the mechanics of the suit. The lady has the presence of mind to scream and run away, cueing the now-infamous cut to Kong’s eyes opening as he wakens from either a long nap or a stoned stupor. (Okay, his eyes aren’t blood-shot, so we should lay off the drug jokes… nah.) It takes bare moments for him to arrive. That’s when we get possibly the most surreal moment of the movie as the gorosaur launches what proves to be its main attack, a sort of tail-bounce that allows it to hit Kong with both feet simultaneously. It’s every bit as absurd as it sounds, except, this kangaroo-like form of locomotion was considered very seriously in the Victorian era and portrayed in paleo art through the 1930s at least. It’s just an early highlight of a weird sequence that is definitely going for slapstick, and as with many things, it works.

In closing, I will freely admit the bottom line: By any technical standard, this is the worst Kong movie that can still be counted as within the franchise, a fact I certainly took into account in nominating King Kong Lives for that very title. It’s obviously not as polished or professional as De Laurentiis’ offering; for that matter, there were still undoubtedly entries far worse than either among the wave of knockoffs and parodies that the 1976 remake spawned (see Mighty Peking Man). Per my standard refrain, it all comes down to context and means. The real “problem” with King Kong Lives was that those involved could do far better. By comparison, this is a movie that delivers exactly what you would expect from those involved, inasmuch as one could have expectations of a studio that went on to make House. The crowning achievement and irony is that, even considered as a parody of what Toho had done before, it still comes out as well above average. In that respect, it can take its place with the likes of Galaxy Quest and Twitch of the Death Nerve. It’s weird, it’s silly, it’s dated, and for the right taste and mood, it’s just fine. Hail to the King!