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In the South Pacific, Sakurai (Tadeo Takashimi) & Furu (Yu Fujiki)
are searching for legendary
giant ape King Kong as a promotional gimmick for Tako's (Ichiro Arichima)
pharmaceutical
company - & it's about time too, since giant dinosaur Godzilla has
just hatched from an iceberg & is rapidly approaching Tokyo,
starting to take on the army all on his own while our duo still
experience all sorts of jungle shenanigans including native dances &
a giant kraken attack before finally finding Kong, drugging him &
bringing him to Japan on a giant raft. But the giant ape does get
problems with immigration & is almost sent back home when he manages
to break free from the raft, an instinct apparently telling him that
there is another monster for him to fight - Godzilla. That monster
meanwhile starts derailing trains & menaces especially Fumiko (Mie
Hama), Sakurai's sister & inventor Fujita's (Kenji Sahara) girlfriend. As it soon
turns out, the 2 monsters seem to have the same taste since soon
afterwards Kong carries around Fumiko, too, before being put to sleep by
some more drugs. The army soon decides, the only way to beat Godzilla is
having him battle King Kong, thus King Kong is bound to some balloons by
extra-strong threads developed by Fujita & flown near Godzilla,
& soon the 2 giants start to fight. At first it actually looks
rather grim for King Kong, but then he gets an extra power-boost from
electric lightning, & after a fierce battle, drowns the dinosaur in
the sea. King Kong now heads off, back home ... & rumours that in
the Japanese version Godzilla actually won the fight, are totally
unfounded & ultimately wrong (it wouldn't make narrative sense
anyway). Director Honda's second Godzilla film (& in fact
Toho's third) does prove an entertaining, funny, colourful romp that, if
you are a bit childish, will leave a smile on your face. It is though a
far cry from the grimness of the original Gojira (1954), the monster's
introduction into the cinematic world, or in fact most of Honda's other 50's
sci-fi- & monster-movies. Kingu Kongu tai Gojira is in fact a
movie you just must not take seriously, but nevertheless (or because of
that) might enjoy immensely. The only bad scenes of the movie are
actually the American ones, directed by Thomas Montgomery, in which
somebody sits somewhere telling the audience what just happened of what
will happen in the next scene. Shots of a very phony looking
communications sattelite don't make the scenes any better.
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