Two kongs fight to the death! King Kong Escapes! is the last Kong movie made by TOHO before the rights for Kong expired. TOHO actually had plans to do several more Kong movies, one of them having Kong and Godzilla continuing their fight. Other movies planned had Kong fighting a sea monster, but was replaced with Godzilla instead and came to be known as Godzilla vs. The Sea Monster (aka Ebirah, Horror of the Deep) and Kong was even suppose to appear in the fan favorite movie, Destroy All Monsters, yet he was replaced by another monster. In the 90's, TOHO had proposed for a King Kong vs. Godzilla remake, but the plan fell through. So they planned to have Godzilla fight Mecha-Kong instead, but even that fell through because it was difficult to get permission to use any likeness of King Kong.
The movie is about an evil scientist, Dr. Who (no relation to the British sci-fi tv show), was hired by a representative of an Asian country to dig up this new radioactive element called Element X, which is found in the North Pole, so they could be ahead of Russia and America in the nuclear arms race. The plan failed when the robot version of Kong malfunctioned while digging, so they kidnap the real King Kong to finish the dig. The lead roles of the movie are Rhodes Reason, Mie Hama, Linda Miller, Akira Takarada, and Hideyo Amamoto as the evil Dr. Who. I like how the movie had a James Bond type of feel to it, especially when Reason, Miller, and Takarada were being held hostage in Dr. Who's lair and Dr. Who tries to convince Reason to cooperate with him. What I thought was odd was Linda Miller's voice in the movie is not her real voice. They had someone dub over her real voice even though she spoke perfect English. In my last review, I said that this is a sequel to King Kong vs Godzilla. Well actually, this is much less of a sequel and more of a stand alone. I read that this is more based off the King Kong cartoon, which is about a young boy that travels with Kong to stop an evil organization from ruling the world. I'm not sure how true that is because I never watched the cartoon, but this did feel more like a stand alone.
The movie is silly, but it's fun silly. It has your classic cheesy mad scientist that wants to rule the world, robots, monsters, what more could you ask for. The thing is that not everyone is a fan of cheesy scifi monster flicks. If you like cheesy scifi monster films, I recommend checking it out. Otherwise, this is a Kong movie that you can skip.
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