Comments on: King Kong vs. Godzilla

By: Kevin Pyrtle

Kevin Pyrtle — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 23:29:23 +0000

That bothered me more as a child than it does now. Realism obviously isn’t what the effects crew was going for with the Kong in this film, but personality. I tend to think the suit complements what the Kong of the picture is – basically a grumpy, pot-bellied old man who’s understandably annoyed to be taken away from his chicks and booze. One need only look at Half Human from several years earlier to see that Tsuburaya was capable of more believable work.

As for Barrows, his level of believability has more to do with performance than costuming, and I’m hard pressed to see how the Kong here looks any less like a suit than his.

By: midnightcyn

midnightcyn — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 09:56:02 +0000

The element I cannot get over in this film is the Kong costume–I’ve seen grade school costumes that are more realistic. And when it gets wet, you can actually see the seams and the underpinnings that give it a pronounced chest. The face is just as bad. Even if it was designed to be a comedy, there is no excuse for this–George Barrows would have done it for cheap!

By: Kevin Pyrtle

Kevin Pyrtle — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 05:03:57 +0000

It really depends on the title, and all of their films from ‘Mothra vs. Godzilla’ onward are in pretty good shape, as are some of the older films like ‘Rodan’, ‘Mothra’, ‘Varan the Unbelievable’ and so on. The issue with print storage seems across the board for many of Japan’s studios, resulting in a few films that have been lost outright, Toei’s ‘The Final War’ for example.

The issue doesn’t effect just science fiction movies either – a lot of Akira Kurosawa’s earlier films are in horrid shape, and while there’s a chance for those (‘Rashamon’ just got a full makeover, for instance) I doubt we’ll ever see a decent restoration of something more obscure, like Kaneto Shindos ‘Children of Hiroshima’ or the older Shintoho noirs.

As for movie props, I know that some (including Moguera from ‘The Mysterians’ if I’m not mistaken) were lost when Teroyushi Nakano burned down one of their sound stages while working on ‘Prophecies of Nostradamus’ in 1974. Many were also cannibalized for later productions, which is just part of the business. Still others were used and reused to the point of death, like the Godzilla suit from ‘Destroy All Monsters’, literally falling apart by the time ‘Godzilla vs. Gigan’ came around.

And as for us Americans, we’re the ones who gave ‘King Kong vs. Godzilla’ a doofy scientist who explains the intricacies of paleontology to television audiences with picture books, so . . . ;-]

By: Vault Master

Vault Master — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 04:19:17 +0000

Yikes. Seems to me that Toho never did do a good job of keeping its catalog of kaiju films in pristine condition. The same goes for the movie props left over from film shoots. They could learn a thing or two from us Americans… like the late and great Forrest J. Ackerman. Good write up Kev!