Review of King Kong Escapes (1967) by Adam F — 19 Apr 2014

You would never call "King Kong Escapes" a good film (and it seems that even the studio that's released it thinks so because the Blu-ray is completely devoid of special features) but it certainly is an entertaining one, if only because of how nutty it gets. Written by people I can only assume have never seen the 1933 film, the plot goes something like this: An evil genius named Dr. Who (Eisei Amamoto) has created Mechani-Kong, a robotic version of King Kong to dig for the highly radioactive "Element X", which is only found deep within the North Pole. A beautiful woman wants the element so her country can build nuclear weapons and originally wanted the real King Kong to dig it out, but since he could not be found, hired Dr. Who to build a giant robot facsimile instead. The woman is never named in the English version of the film so we will name her as the end credits do: "Madam X". Mechani-Kong goes underground and begins digging, but the radioactivity short circuits its brain and the operation halts. Meanwhile, a submarine commanded by Carl Nelson (Rhodes Reason) arrives at Mondo Island, where it turns out King Kong is living. After witnessing Kong fight a dinosaur (who will return in "Destroy All Monsters" and other films as "Gorosaurus"), Kong falls in love with the chief medical officer, Lt. Susan Watson (Linda Miller). When the explorers who witnessed Kong's appearance: Nelson, Watson and her love interest Lt. Commander Jiro Nomura (Akira Takarada) return to the mainland and share their discovery with the world. Upon learning of Kong's location, Dr. Who kidnaps the great ape and brings to the North Pole. Unable to control the beast, he also kidnaps the submarine operators in order to force them to get Kong to unearth Element X.

We've got a decent amount of monster action in this movie, with 3 new monsters and a returning not-so favorite. Mechani-Kong is ridiculous but fun, Gorosaurus actually looks really impressive and Kong also fights a giant sea serpent. Ironically, Kong is easily the worst-looking of the lot, his face resembling a cross between a California raisin and a child's drawing of a gorilla. The bulk of the amusement you will get from the movie is when Kong is fighting the other monsters because despite the shabby-looking suit, it actually lends itself to some decent fight choreography. When it comes to the human plot though, it's actually just as interesting, if not more. First of all, how can you not giggle at the villain here, this "international Judas" that is Dr. Who? This guy is a straight-up supervillain, complete with death traps, ultimatums, plans to strong arm world governments, giant mechanical apes, mind control devices and, to top it all he actually wears a cape. He feels like a cross between Lex Luthor and Scaramanga (from "Superman: The Movie" and "The Man with the Golden Gun") and it's actually pretty appropriate because the human plot feels a bit like a James Bond Movie. We've got our heroes taken hostage and being forced to co-operate with the villains, people being tortured, Madame X trying to seduce Carlson, people changing allegiances, all that mixed in with a silly monster movie. I really enjoyed the implied rivalry between Carlson and Dr. Who. There are no real prequels to this movie but it comes up over and over again that these two have met before and they hate each other. It makes the fact that Madam X is trying to turn Carlson to her side while rejecting Dr. Who all the more fun to see.

I'm actually making the movie sound a lot better than it is because if there's one detriment to the film it's that the dialogue is truly awful and the acting is lousy. It really feels like someone watched the movie, wrote down what the plot was and thought to themselves "There's no way I can make this sound good so I'll just expand on my notes for a half hour and that will be the script". Major point deduction for the destruction department too, which is weak. You would think that with 4 monsters in the movie, plus a supervillain there would be a ton of buildings destroyed and a pretty high body count, but no. We get maybe two skyscrapers toppled over in total. A significant portion of the movie just feels like a re-hash of the original Kong film too, so it can get slow and repetitive at times. Like I said, it certainly is not a good movie, but if you're in the right mood you can have a lot of fun with it. That said, it's probably leaning more towards die-hard Godzilla fans because the King Kong bits tie into what is probably the worst of the films in the series, "King Kong vs. Godzilla" and Gorosaurus, while looking really good might as well be a new character when he appears again in the Godzilla franchise. It's a mixed bag for little kids who just want to see monsters fight each other or for adults who like giant monsters and making fun of bad dialogue it's worth at least taking a look. (English Dub on Blu-ray, April 10, 2014).