KING KONG ESCAPES (1967)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *sociological, cosmological*

Before getting to reviews proper, I'll mention in advance that (of the three films originallyy reviewed together) only KING KONG ESCAPES is a "combative drama," given that only that film features two megadynamic forces fighting it out. 

I enjoyed KING KONG ESCAPES in its initial release back in the day.  I don't think that even at that young age I was blind to the film's greatest deficiency: not that it didn't endeavor to follow the 1933 KING KONG's spectacular stop-animation FX, but that its choice of the "suitmation" for its version of Kong is ratty and overly comic-looking.

But though the film also lacks the deeper symbolic resonances of the Willis O'Brien epic, its script does make a game try-- more than one saw in 1962's KING KONG VS. GODZILLA-- to reproduce some of the most famous tropes of the 1933 film.  First of these is the trope in which Kong proves his "alpha male" status by continually besting other giant monsters-- here, a T-Rex, a giant serpent, and the formidable "Mechani-Kong."  The other is Kong conceiving a major crush on a pint-sized blonde beauty.  Director Ishiro Honda even throws in a redux version of the original's climb to the top of the Empire State Building, with the Tokyo Tower taking the place of the New York City icon.  Here it's Mechani-Kong, not the Great Good Ape, who takes the dramatic fall in the end.

There's no question that ESCAPES is more in a juvenile mode than the original film; the former is even loosely based on a 1966 Saturday-morning KING KONG cartoon by Rankin & Bass.  But Honda does a great job of respecting the juvenile audience of his day.  Even some of Honda's other *kaiju* films could bog down in earnest discssions of the Menace At Hand.  But the script keeps the pulpy conflict boiling on all levels.  Conflict between Doctor Hu, the supergenius villain who creates Mechani-Kong, and his maybe-Communist Asian backers, represented by the sultry "Miss X."  Conflict between Kong and the crew of a United Nations submarine, when Kong spies the cute blonde nurse Susan. Conflict between Hu and Kong, when the scientist realizes that his robot ape can't mine the precious element he needs, forcing him to enslave the real simian into his service.  Conflict between the sub's commander and Hu, "who" have met before in other adventures.  This sounds like a simple feat, but given the staggering number of dull juvenile features, Honda and his scripters deserve kudos for keeping things lively.

But the most impressive element of ESCAPES is the soaring, majestic score of Akira Ikufube.  When that music comes up, the rattiness of the Kong costume falls away, and the superior Robot-Kong costume looks like it cost a million bucks.