More Great Daikaiju Eiga News: Keene Kong Kaiju Koming in April!
By srbissette on February 26th, 2009Posted In: News
Following up on this week’s Agon revelations, I’m happy to report more delightful news for daikaiju eiga fans everywhere: Universal Pictures has resurrected King Kong vs. Godzilla!
“the Video Vault had burnt down (not to be confused with the actual Film Vault, The Video Vault contains the duplicates of the films). …Destroyed were 40,000 to 50,000 archived digital video and film copies chronicling Universal’s movie and TV classic shows, dating back to the 1920s, including the films Knocked Up and Atonement, the NBC series Law & Order, The Office, and Miami Vice, and CBS’s I Love Lucy. Many audio master tapes from Universal Music have been destroyed as well.”
This was the seventh costly backlot fire to ravage the Universal lot; the first of those raged in 1932, taking out many irreplaceable film negatives and prints.
Immediately after the fire, Universal announced that the fire-ravaged King Kong attraction would not be rebuilt, to be replaced by a new attraction; by August, they’d changed their mind and announced that they were rebuilding the attraction, revamping the ride to base it upon the 2005 Peter Jackson film.
Nary a whisper passed, though, over the loss of the only extant theatrical prints of Universal’s 1963 version of Ishiro Honda’s controversial classic キングコング対ゴジラ / Kingu Kongu Tai Gojira / King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962), which was considerably recut, redubbed and rescored from the Toho original but a blockbuster boxoffice sensation nonetheless.
In its day, King Kong vs. Godzilla was a big deal. It was the first Gojira/Godzilla feature in color, and only the third Gojira/Godzilla film in the series — all that preceded it was the 1954 original and the black-and-white ゴジラの逆襲 / Gojira no Gyakushū / Gojira Raids Again (1955), released in the US by Warner Brothers in 1957 as Gigantis, the Fire Monster.
The various controversies surrounding the film include whether its source material was the work of King Kong’s stop-motion animator and co-creator Willis O’Brien (it was, via producer John Beck’s purchase of O’Brien’s King Kong vs. Frankenstein pet project), whether its characterization of the immortal Kong was a travesty (it was), the malingering rumor (possibly originating with the late Forrest J. Ackerman) that Gojira / Godzilla was triumphant in the Japanese original version and Kong won only in the English-language prints (he didn’t and he didn’t; Kong was the victor in all versions), and just how much Universal altered the original Toho production (a fair amount, but not as extensively as the likes of Joseph A. Levine and Jerry Warren had hashed about with their respective releases of ゴジラ / Gojira / Godzilla, King of the Monsters and 獣人雪男 / Jujin Yuki Otoko / Half Human in the 1950s).
Anyhoot, Universal has just struck a fresh print of their US version of King Kong vs. Godzilla.
How do I know that?
Well, that ties into the even better news I have for those living in driving distance of Keene, New Hampshire.
Many of you who were in driving distance were kicking yourselves after that announcement, and I duly apologized for not posting the info sooner.
Well, the best of both worlds is about to come together — and I’m giving every Myrant reader in driving distance of Keene, NH ample notice this time!
Saturday Fright Special maestro and co-organizer Mark Nelson just wrote me to say that he and his creepy cronies have “secured a brand-new print of King Kong vs. Godzilla for our April 24th Spooktacular at the Colonial Theater in Keene. Universal is actually striking a print especially for us, as their previous rep print was lost in the fire last year.”
Mark notes, “I’ll send more details along once they’ve solidified, though it’ll be more or less the same drill as the Phibes show. Vintage trailers, on-stage silliness, DVD giveaways (including copies of the excellent American Scary horror host doc), and a fun flick. It’s happily on a Friday night this time, 7PM, and tickets will be $10 again.”
I’ll post more info, too, as Mark provides it, but you’re now on notice.
April 24th, 7 PM, Keene, NH, Colonial Theater — see some of you there?
–>> ..the Kong ride pix .. particularly break my heart.
**
You lucky ducks in the Northeast !! !!
I am so there!
Way too cool! I missed the Phibes show, but I am going to do everything I can to make this one! “King Kong vs. Godzilla” on the big screen. Does it get any better than that?!?
I’ll see if I can drag Dobbs and Mark Martin along for the ride.
The story about alternative endings for the respective “home” markets reminds me of an unsubstantiated rumor about another franchise vs. franchise movie, i.e., Zatoichi Meets the One-Armed Swordsman. According to the rumor, there is a Chinese-version of the film that has Wang Kang defeating Zatoichi.
Thanks to the world of int’l DVDs, we can now test those venerable legends for ourselves in many cases. If only there were an Asian label for those legendary ‘Asia market cuts’ of the Hammer films — CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN with four eyes! That was what Forry claimed in FAMOUS MONSTERS at one point. I always thought that meant the Chris Lee monster was wearing glasses…
Crap! I’m going to miss this! Have fun everyone.
Legend has it, this was my parent’s first date.
The “alternate” ending drove me nuts as a kid. I believed it and wanted to see it desperately. Learning it was wrong was one of the things that drove me to always question “urban legends”.
Toho also had trouble storing their cut of this film. I think the old laserdisc and the “remastered” dvd had to use visibly lesser source material for a few scenes. It was recently been re-mastered in HD and aired in Japan. Not sure how the damaged scenes worked out tho. I’ve seen some of these HD broadcasts and they looked beautiful.
http://www.scifijapan.com/articles/2008/08/07/godzilla-x-hi-vision/