King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962)

[キングコング対ゴジラ]

Director: Ishiro Honda
Starring: Tadao Takashima, Kenji Sahara, Yu Fujiki

Synopsis:
A pharmaceutical company seeks to exploit King Kong for marketing purposes amid the revival of Godzilla.

Impressions:
As a fan of both Godzilla and King Kong, I watched this movie quite a few times when I was a kid. I felt that it was cheating to scale up Kong so much and give him lightning powers just to stand a chance against Godzilla, but I guess we wouldn't have had much of a match otherwise. Speaking of Kong, the suit is really bad, but I'll give the man inside (Shoichi Hirose) credit for doing a decent job with the performance. The human characters are almost parodical, especially Mr. Tako, but I guess that's what you should expect out of a comedic actor like Ichiro Arishima. The miniature vehicles will never fool you into thinking they're real, but I found them adorable. Speaking of miniatures, the destruction of Atami Castle is fairly impressive (sorry, Shizuoka). If you embrace the silliness, you'll enjoy this, so I'm going to say give it a watch.

Rating:
Watch It