King Kong vs. Godzilla

Cinephile deep dive

The take

Ishirō Honda directs. Hajime Koizumi behind the camera. Akira Ifukube scores. Reiko Kaneko cuts. Runs lean at under 100 minutes. Produced in Japan. Dialogue in Japanese, English.

Trivia

Things worth knowing

• 164 years old — a genuine piece of film history.
• 2Dialogue crosses 2 languages: Japanese, English.
• 3Part of the "Godzilla (Showa) Collection" — so the characters or world continue elsewhere.
• 4Directed by Ishirō Honda, shot by Hajime Koizumi. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.
• 5Original score by Akira Ifukube. Worth a dedicated listen after — most great films lose half their impact without the score.
• 6Editor Reiko Kaneko shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.
• 7Tadao Takashima and Kenji Sahara and Yū Fujiki carry the top of the cast.
• 8Marketing tagline: "Will you win, Godzilla? Will you win, Kong? The battle of the century!".
• 9IMDB entry: tt13364334 — still the authoritative cross-reference for credits and trivia.
• 10Classified under 20 themes, including "island", "japan", "helicopter", "octopus".

The technical file

Cinematography

Hajime Koizumi

Original score

Akira Ifukube

Editing

Reiko Kaneko

Production design

Teruaki Abe

Runtime

97 min · 1h 37m

Aspect ratio (typical)

1.37:1 (Academy)

Status

Released

Box office

$12,550,000

Original language

JA

Certification (US)

NR

IMDB

King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962) ↗

Rotten Tomatoes

52% 🥫 Rotten

IMDB rating

6.2/10 · 2,958 votes

Part of

Godzilla (Showa) Collection

Film series featuring Godzilla from the Showa era.

• 
  Godzilla

  1954
• 
  Godzilla Raids Again

  1955
• 
  King Kong vs. Godzilla

  1962 · this one
• 
  Mothra vs. Godzilla

  1964
• 
  Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster

  1964
• 
  Invasion of Astro-Monster

  1965
• 
  Ebirah, Horror of the Deep

  1966
• 
  Son of Godzilla

  1967
• 
  Destroy All Monsters

  1968
• 
  All Monsters Attack

  1969
• 
  Godzilla vs. Hedorah

  1971
• 
  Godzilla vs. Gigan

  1972
• 
  Godzilla vs. Megalon

  1973
• 
  Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla

  1974
• 
  Terror of Mechagodzilla

  1975

Also by

Ishirō Honda

• 
  Night School

  1956 · ★ 10.0
• 
  Adolescence Part II

  1953 · ★ 10.0
• 
  The Man Who Came to Port

  1952 · ★ 10.0
• 
  Song for a Bride

  1958 · ★ 10.0
• 
  Godzilla Fantasia

  1984 · ★ 9.7
• 
  People of Tokyo, Goodbye

  1956 · ★ 9.0

Stills · wallpapers

Selected frames

Full-resolution frames — open one to save it as a wallpaper.

Wallpaper Wallpaper

Trailers & featurettes

Watch the pieces

• 

  ▶
  KING KONG VS GODZILLA (1962) [trailer]

  Trailer

Community reviews

What people are saying

• insanenerd1012016-10-28
  ★ 7/10

  What is there to say about an early monster movie where two of the worlds biggest monsters come together and beat each other up in clunky looking rubber suits? Alright, well it may not be up to the high tech standards of film we're so use to today, King Kong vs. Godzilla is credited as being one of the first "versus" films to start the now very popular trend of bringing franchises together. What an interesting idea. You take a character from one film and another character from another film and bring them together, now to do what is beyond them. But now studios are taking interest in something that should have been done years ago and with the advent of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it is now catching on like wild fire. But to the credit, this is the one that started it all. With such a colossal idea, you would imagine that it'd look cleaner. Well to it's credit, it was made in 1962 and Toho was asked by RKO to fork over a giant amount of money for Kong's likeness that substantially hurt the budget. So the real question is, how does it hold up? It's cheesy when it needs to be and serious when it needs to be too. Some people think that the added Americanized footage with Michael Keith and the stock music from films like The Wolf Man and Creature From the Black Lagoon butcher the film. I like to think that it helps set it in the mood among the classic Universal Monster Movies. The fight is a little hokey now but back then, was probably mind boggling. And stop motion techniques spread throughout the film are amazing. On top of that, this has one of the least annoying Americanized dubbings to a Godzilla movie I have ever seen. So is it great? No. Is is bad? No. What is it then? Just good old cheesy fun that needs to be seen to be believed.

  Read full review ↓
• nuttyhuddy2023-09-06
  ★ 10/10

  The original clash of the Titans you think the first crossover with these two would take a long time, but no it happened in 1962 and was both monsters third movie but their first in color the characters in this movie are actually pretty entertaining. Definitely better than the characters in raids again. Mr Tako definitely being the stand out in the movie Godzilla’s design looks pretty good although if you do look at him face on, he doesn’t look that great but him profile he does look pretty incredible. I like them more hunchback to look and this is the first Godzilla movie where we got to see the atomic breath in color and its blue, which would become iconic King, Kong, design however, is not that great. The body looks like an app that looks fine. It’s really the face that’s a problem. It just looks bad. It looks like they got run over 50 cars and then a semi truck but yet again, the design does work in a way the scene that the movie itself is very goofy and silly so in a weird way it does work, but has a design on its own. Yeah it’s not that great. You do you have to wait a while to see Godzilla fight King Kong but once you do, it is worth the wait I mean sure they have a brief encounter but it’s very very brief and it’s really just Godzilla shooting his atomic breath at Kong and then Kong running away but the final battle is so entertaining there’s so many great moments like when Godzilla does the drop kick and when he’s just constantly beating on Kong and obviously the tree in the mouth Just a fun fight Overall, this movie is really entertaining and a lot of fun and definitely one of the better Godzilla movies out there

  Read full review ↓

Production companies

Who made it

• 

  TOHO

  JP

• 

  Tokyo Laboratory

  JP

Key crew

• ProducerTomoyuki Tanaka
• EditorReiko Kaneko
• Production DesignTeruaki Abe
• Production DesignTakeo Kita
• ChoreographerKenji Aoki
• Sound EffectsSadamasa Nishimoto
• Special EffectsSadamasa Arikawa
• Visual EffectsHiroshi Mukoyama
• Special EffectsEiji Tsuburaya
• Original StoryGeorge Worthing Yates
• First Assistant DirectorKoji Kajita
• Assistant DirectorKoji Hashimoto
• Assistant DirectorSeiji Tani
• Special EffectsKoichi Kawakita
• Visual Effects CameraKoichi Kawakita
• VFX Director of PhotographySadamasa Arikawa
• VFX Director of PhotographyMotoyoshi Tomioka
• Special EffectsMotoyoshi Tomioka
• Visual Effects DirectorEiji Tsuburaya
• Special Effects AssistantKoichi Kawakita
• Sound MixerHisashi Shimonaga
• Production ManagerShigeru Nakamura
• Visual EffectsTakao Saiwai
• Visual EffectsYukio Manoda

Themes & keywords

What it's about, really

• island
• japan
• helicopter
• octopus
• mutant
• giant monster
• giant lizard
• sequel
• jungle
• tokyo, japan
• dinosaur
• gojira
• kaiju
• giant ape
• giant octopus
• lost world
• godzilla
• mount fuji, japan
• king kong
• tokusatsu

Release history · US

When it landed

• Premiere1962-11-01· Nippon Theater, Honolulu, Hawaii. JP audio w/EN subs. Exact date unknown.
• Physical2019-10-29NR· The Criterion Collection Blu-ray set titled "Godzilla, the Showa-Era Films, 1954-1975". Packaged with US theatrical version.

Also known as

International titles

• Kingu Kongu tai GojiraJP
• King Kong vs. Godzilla Japanese-Release VersionUS
• King Kong contre Godzilla - JP VersionFR
• 金剛鬥恐龍TW
• Jīngāng dòu kǒnglóngTW
• King Kong Fighting DinosaurTW
• King Kong Contra GodzillaBR
• KKVSGUS