King Kong Escapes (1967)

I feel like I've watched a fair few King Kong movies of late, ranging from the original sequel, Son of Kong (1933) to the much more recent Godzilla vs Kong (2021) and Godzilla x Kong (2024).  Most recently, I watched King Kong Escapes (1967), one of a pair of Kong movies made under license in Japan by Toho studios.  Interestingly, it seems to have no continuity with Toho's previous Kong film, King Kong vs Godzilla (1962), giving Kong a different island home and origin story.  Indeed, this second stab at a Japanese Kong was apparently inspired by a US cartoon series, The King Kong Show (1966-69), produced by Rankin/Bass, who also have a co-production credit on the movie.  Despite this animated origin, the film also seems to take some inspiration from Irwin Allen's Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1961) film and subsequent 1964-68 TV series: its hero is in command of a futuristic UN super-submarine that bears more than a passing resemblance to the Seaview in Voyage, the crew of which wear uniforms which look very similar to those from the US TV show.  Like the Seaview, the submarine in King Kong Escapes is on a mission of research and exploration and its commander, Commender Carl Nelson, like Admiral Nelson in Voyage, is not just a military man, but also a scientist and engineer, well versed in many subjects.  In fact, it seems that he's long been obsessed by the legendary giant ape, King Kong, being a leading authority on the subject and has even designed, but never built, a mechanical King Kong - as you do when obsessed with such things, obviously.  Little does he know, however, that his plans for robot ape have been stolen by the evil Dr Who, who used them to construct Mechani-Kong, which he intends to use to mine a rare element - 'Element X' from the arctic on behalf of an unnamed Asiatic nation that wants to use it to construct nuclear weapons.

When Mechani-Kong malfunctions, Dr Who reasons, naturally, that the ideal replacement would be the real King Kong.  By an amazing stoke of luck, Commander Nelson has just stumbled across Kong's island where, the giant ape saves one of the sub's crew - Lt Susan Watson - from a dinosaur, falling in love with her and attacking the sub when it tries to leave with her aboard, (also fighting a sea serpent along the way).  Eventually Watson appeals to Kong's reason and he returns to his island, with Nelson deciding that he should be left in peace there. But with the discovery of Kong's island becoming public, Dr Who is soon there to kidnap Kong and take him (suspended beneath a fleet of helicopters - a sequence echoed in Godzilla vs Kong) to his arctic base.  When hypnotising the ape to work for him doesn't go according to plan, Who kidnaps Susan Watson, Nelson and another officer in order to get control of the ape.  Naturally, things don't go to plan, Kong breaks out and runs amuck, Mechani-Kong is reactivated and everybody ends up in Tokyo, where the two monsters trade punches, wrecking half the city in the process.  Like most Toho monster movies of the period, King Kong Escapes is clearly orientated toward western audiences, most specifically English-speaking audiences, featuring American actors (Rhodes Reason and Linda Jo Miller) in the main sympathetic human roles.  It also casts Mie Hama, recognisable to English-speaking audiences for her recent appearance as Kissy Suzuki in the Bond film You Only Live Twice (1967).  The whole design of the submarine likewise seems intended to reassure these audiences, being very 'western' in design, clearly referencing Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (although, apart from Reason and Miller, most of the crew are played by Japanese actors).  Even that lead monster - Kong - is a US creation and the foes he faces are all suitably generic (a robot double, dinosaurs, sea serpents) rather than being obviously drawn from Japanese culture.

The end result feels, on the one hand, somewhat bland in comparison to the exotic monster menageries and plots of other Toho monster films but, on the other hand, reassuringly familiar.  What it does have is spectacle - while the final dust up between the two main monsters isn't quite on the same scale as Kong's punch up with Godzilla a few years earlier, it is, nonetheless, suitably destructive.  King Kong Escapes features some especially fine miniatures work, with the model ships and submarine particularly impressive, (you get some idea of their massive scale and detailing when Kong grapples with, first, the sub then, at the climax, Who's ship).  Mechani-Kong is, in his clanking way, quite impressive too, as are the dinosaur and sea serpent fought by Kong.  Kong himself, however, appears to use the same, less than convincing, ape suit used in King Kong versus Godzilla a few years earlier.  To its credit, unlike many other apes suits, it does get its proportions right, with the arms noticeably longer than the legs, it retains the ridiculously cartoonish face, with its unblinking eyes, seen in the earlier film.  But perhaps that face is apt, bearing in mind the film's origins in a Saturday morning TV cartoon - the film's whole look is, in fact, pleasingly reminiscent of the sort of up market science fiction comic strips, often adapted from Gerry Anderson series, we used to have in British comics in the late sixties and early seventies. 

I have to say that, overall, I enjoyed King Kong Escapes far more than I did either Godzilla vs Kong or Godzilla x Kong.  While its man-in-a-suit monsters can't hope to match the CGI effects of those far bigger budgeted recent productions, the Japanese film is far more accessible and much more easily liked, not taking itself too seriously or overloading itself with too many subplots and characters (and their 'development').  It knows that we're really there to see the monsters rampage around and battle each other - the human characters and plotting are of secondary importance and simply don't need to be especially complex.  There's no doubt, though, that the Japanese movie benefits from being a stand-alone entity, with no ongoing plot lines and character relationships from previous movies to tie up - unlike the more recent US films.  Moreover, although those modern CGI effects are very slick, they never really seem that convincing to me - I'm always aware that they have no physical existence and can never quite suspend my disbelief while watching them.  Honestly, when you have a CGI giant ape slugging it out with a CGI giant lizard, wreaking havoc in a CGI generated city, are we really that far away from a man in a monkey suit slugging it out with a man in a robot monkey suit, wreaking havoc in an intricately detailed large scale model of a city?  Both are equally artificial, but the very fact that you know the latter is physically real, lends it, if not realism, then a certain dramatic weight.   (Although, of course, neither solution, in my opinion, is as good as using stop-motion animation).