King Kong Escapes (1967)

directed by Ishirō Honda

Japan/USA

104 minutes

3.5 stars out of 5

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I first watched this last year (just a few days before Akira Takarada died, actually) after putting it off for a while due to considering it somehow "separate" from the canon of other Toho films I was already a big fan of. I've probably mentioned this at some point before, but I'm really not into King Kong at all; the whole concept of him just does nothing for me, so despite appreciating his place in the history of monster movies, I can't say I've seen much involving him outside of the tokusatsu realm. My prejudices prevented me from watching King Kong Escapes for a long time, but thankfully I did end up watching (and now re-watching!) this extremely fun, entirely worthwhile film. I've heard the English dub is terrible but I remain blissfully unaware of that.

I'm not familiar with the Rankin/Bass cartoon this is based off of, so I can't say whether the plot of this film references a specific episode or story arc or if it's made up specifically for the movie. There was a previous screenplay that got rejected by Rankin/Bass for not following the series closely enough, so an attempt was clearly made to have some faithfulness to the cartoon. In any case, the basic framework of the film is that its villain, Dr. Who (not that one, and one of few elements of the animated series that I know was carried over into the film), is trying to mine a radioactive substance called Element X on a remote island somewhere in the Java Sea. He is of course not being terribly scrupulous about this. It's implied that his first couple of attempts didn't go so well, so he invents a robotic replica of King Kong, a creature who had already been living on Mondo Island, in the hopes that sending a robotic creature with super-strength and endurance down into the mines will produce better results. It doesn't - something about being in proximity to Element X makes it go haywire, and so, eventually, Dr. Who kidnaps and sticks a mind-control device on the real, living Kong to force him to do his bidding.

This is all played in a way that's mostly kid-friendly, but there is something kind of horrifying that underlies it. Kong is explicitly a friendly or at least docile creature, characterized as not very intelligent but also not malicious at all, just an animal living his life in his native environment until somebody comes along and forces him into servitude. Dr. Who has absolutely no qualms about subjugating living beings and also no qualms about just straight up murdering people - it is surprising that the downfall of the bad guys in this film doesn't come from their constant pulling guns on each other at the drop of a hat. Another thing that speaks to how thoroughly evil Dr. Who's enterprise on the island is is the presence of your requisite indigenous islander who comes to warn the good guys of his culture's taboo against entering the island. It's curious that we only see one single islander (played by Ikio Sawamura); we know this isn't an issue of budget or cultural sensitivity, because you usually see a whole bunch of people in brownface any time a Toho movie is set on a fictional island, so it leaves one wondering if he's the last of a people who were all either killed or forcibly relocated at some undisclosed point in the past when Dr. Who and his entourage occupied the island.

The good side is made up of Akira Takarada, Linda Miller, and Rhodes Reason driving around a submarine and a really nifty little hovercar after catching on to the existence of a giant ape on Mondo Island. In the process of their scientific research they get caught up in Dr. Who's operations and kidnapped a couple of times, but ultimately this is one of those movies where it doesn't feel like any of the human characters matter too much. If anything, Linda Miller's character, Susan Watson, is the most important member of the good side, representing a link between Kong and humanity, showing that this outwardly menacing, inconveniently huge ape is at heart gentle and not dangerous when not threatened. I don't want to say that no human characters in this matter, because Hideyo Amamoto's Dr. Who is - I say this with 99% confidence despite never having seen the series - a way better Dr. Who than the Rankin/Bass series ever had. But he's not working entirely for himself: Mie Hama plays Madame Piranha, a mysterious, ultra-wealthy woman throwing money at Dr. Who to get Element X for her country, though she ultimately has a change of heart near the end. It is also really funny that Dr. Who is apparently an internationally wanted criminal, because I like to imagine said wantlist being a bunch of terrorists and murderers and then a guy who's building a giant robot ape to mine radioactive substances.

The practical effects are especially charming here. As I said, I really like the hovercar, which is the only "futuristic"-seeming vehicle in the film; there's submarines and stuff but nothing too fantastic about them. Optical effects are used heavily to superimpose human-sized characters against the backdrop of Kong and Mechani-Kong, and it doesn't look spectacular but I love it anyway. This is just a perfect slice of '60s sci-fi, with all the drab colors and tactile knobs and buttons you expect from it. There are three creatures portrayed with suitmation: King Kong, Mechani-Kong, and Gorosaurus, and then the nothingburger Giant Sea Serpent, who was a puppet. All of them are extremely memorable, with Haruo Nakajima taking on the King Kong role like he did in King Kong vs. Godzilla. 

Leave it to Ishirō Honda to take children's media and turn it into something that, while very fun and never outright traumatizing, is still really serious when you think about it. It's disturbing to think about how Kong sees Mechani-Kong as another of his species - he sees Mechani-Kong as competition, but the robotic version of him is also a vision of what he would have been if Dr. Who's mind-control had worked successfully. I think the scene where Kong rescues Watson and then proceeds to absolutely beat the stuffing out of Gorosaurus was really compelling, because you've got Watson being saved by this creature who treats her so gently despite being the size of a mouse in comparison to him, and then she watches a display of his unreal strength when he kills Gorosaurus, realizing the power of the animal who decided to be gentle to her instead of as brutal as he's capable of being. There's definitely nuance here, not as much as any of Honda's Godzilla films or his other work, but a crucial amount of depth that elevates it beyond just a corny adaptation of a kid's cartoon. By the time I post this, June 19, it will be the exact anniversary of its US release.