It is hard to rate some trashy films. Films can be really good entertainment in spite of the quality of the filmmaking. In fact, it might be even harder to create unique trash that keeps surprising you than most "quality" films with which you know what you are going to get. It certainly is an even better pleasure to watch them. My friend says that he knows a trash film is worth something if it gets three laughs out of me. I mean proper, good belly laughs when you just can't believe what the film is showing to you, scene after scene. That's as good a rating as any for these movies. Any film that has these three laughs has a special place in my heart.
Three laughs case #18:
King Kong Escapes (Kingu Kongu no gyakushû, 1967)
Director: Ishiro Honda
About time to talk about giant monsters in this column. One of my favorites of the genre comes from the deal of the Toho company to have King Kong fight Godzilla. They did an independent sequel/spin-off after that which sees Kong take on a Mecha-Kong, 7 years before Godzilla met his own robotic doppelganger. I think the idea was to have Kong fight against a giant Frankenstein's monster. Ol' Frankie did later get his own two Japanese kaiju movies, but without Kong, whose rights reverted back to Universal.
Nevertheless, this one is fun precisely because, even though Kong is a King, he tends to be a very vunerable character in his fights, even more so than Godzilla, which creates some more excitement. But here much of the fun is due to the grotesque ape costume they have on the main character with its droopy eyelids and sharp brown teeth. And wobbly way of moving.
The villainous doctor and builder of the giant ape robot is named Dr. Who, in a probably another copyright-infringement I seem to love so much. The robot, which has Kong's famed abilities, is used to drop bombs in a crack in the Antarctic in order to obtain some radioactive material. But the radioactivity makes the robot malfunction, and thus Who must scheme a group of scientists heading to Skull Island to grab King Kong to do his dirty work for him. But Kong does not like to be held captive...
Three laughs (Spoilers):
1. On Skull Island, things are same as always. When a really grumpy-looking dinosaur growls a bit at a woman, we get the first glimpse of the film's hero. Glassed-over eyes slowly opening, staggering around and revealing its rotten teeth, this Kong is a thing to behold. After a tender moment with the blonde, he soon gets into a drunken brawl with T-rex, though. The japanese have some extra flourish in their monster mashes, though, like when the dying T-rex starts foaming at the mouth.
2. Later, helicopters arrive to dose Kong with sleeping gas, but it just makes it seem like ten beers and six vodka shots did the guy in as his eyes start drooping. And as with these kinds of cases, he has to be carried away from the bar, I mean, island. When he wakes up in a ship's hull he even seems appropriately hungover.
3. I takes a while, but we finally learn excatly what Dr. Who wants with Kong, and it's his world-famous digging skills, of course! One could have thought Kong wouyld be more famous climbing, though he gets to do that on the famed Tokyo Radio Tower late in the film, too. But long arms appear to be as useful as any machine when it comes to tunnel-digging. Swirling his arms away at the Earth's crust he still acts as mind-numbingly clumsy that he seems as drunk as ever. In-story, he's drifting in and out of sleep. A fun drinking game would be to take a drink every time the film shows a close-up of his golfball eyes. One would be as drunk as Kong in no time!
No comments:
Post a Comment