The War of the Gargantuas is a 1966 Toho film that was released in Japan as Frankenstein's Monsters: Sanda versus Gaira フランケンシュタインの怪獣 サンダ対ガイラ Furankenshutain no Kaijū: Sanda tai Gaira. It's sort of a sequel to Frankenstein Conquers the World. Ishiro Honda directs and co-wrote the script with Takeshi Kimura. Eiji Tsuburaya heads up the special effects team and Akira Ifukube creates the music. I have a copy on dvd from Classic Media. It comes in that 2 movie pack with Rodan. As the movie opens a small ship is attacked by a giant octopus. The attack is interupted by a giant ape like critter who saves the men from the octopus. Then the giant ape critter sinks the ship. One surviving man is questioned by the police who just don't believe him. Russ Tamblyn and Kumi Mizuno are scientists. That's them below on the left. They were taking care of a baby gargantua 5 years earlier but it escaped. The authorities think it's now grown up and attacking ships in the sea. Russ and Kumi don't think that's the case and they try to find the one that escaped.
Soon enough they do find out that there are two of the critters. The brown one is the one they raised 5 years earlier and it doesn't attack people. We find out the green gargantua is the man eater when he snacks on some tourists. The brown gargantua pulls a tree out of the ground and beats the green guy with it. The scientists try to keep the army from attacking the brown gargantua but the army isn't listening. They feel they need to kill both creatures. The giant monsters get into Tokyo and there's a good bit of damage to the city as the brown and green guys battle it out. Not Godzilla level but still pretty good. The army pitches in and gets buildings tossed on them for their troubles. When the two monsters get into Tokyo Bay the army bombs them. That causes an underwater volcano to open. It sucks them out of sight. Here's a picture of the two guys who played the monsters. Haruo Nakajima played the green guy and Yu Sekida played the brown guy. I'm not sure which guy is which. Then there's a couple of pictures of Eiji Tsuburaya on the set coaching the monsters in the upcoming scenes.
Another movie that was fairly entertaining but not great. The monster costumes just aren't that convincing and they're probably the worst thing in the movie. Packing the movie with Rodan makes the dvd set worth having. Of course that's mostly for Rodan. TWOTG is presented in both the 88 minute Japanese version and the 92 minute US version.
The US edition of King Kong Escapes is all there is on the Universal dvd of the movie. I'm not sure why they I hadn't bothered to go find a Japanese version of the 1967 movie called King Kong's Counterattack キングコングの逆襲 or Kingu Kongu no Gyakushū. The Japanese version is 104 minutes and the US version is 96 minutes. Honda, Tsurburaya and Ifukubi all worked on the film. It was co-produced by Rankin-Bass who had a Saturday morning cartoon call The King Kong Show. I couldn't remember if I had seen it but this clip on YouTube reminds me that I had. Here's the US trailer for King Kong Escapes.
White haired Dr Hu has found some of the highly rare and highly radioactive Element X underground at the North Pole. He develops a mechanical King Kong to dig it out. It collapses from the radiation. When the doctor hears about the real King Kong living on Mondo Island he captures it and ships it to the North Pole. His hynotism didn't work as well as he hoped it would and King Kong escapes. Bet you saw that coming, huh. King Kong heads right to Tokyo for some reason. The Dr follows thinking he can catch Kong again. He pits his mechanical Kong against the real thing. There's some smashing and bashing and near by buildings all fall down. The beast from Mondo Island proves to be tougher than he looks. He holds his own with Mecha-Kong who eventually gets shut down. The evil Dr gets drowned while trying to escape in his ship. Kong return home to Mondo Island. The sets and the props and the scenerey are pretty good but the King Kong costume is so poor. They managed to re-use it for some other kaiju tv shows anyway. The crazy Dr Hu is the most entertaining character in the movie. He's a scumbag who kills anyone who opposed his plan. Nice see see him deep 6'd. Not my favorite of the Toho monster movies but it's still mostly fun to watch.
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