Year: 1962
Director: Ishiro Honda
Special Effects Director: Eiji Tsuburaya
In The Suit: Haruo Nakajima (Godzilla), Shoichi Hirose (King Kong)

Godzilla returns after seven years, but he doesn't even get top billing because this is also the first appearance of King Kong since 1933. Even in Japan at this time, King Kong was more popular than Godzilla, and being the big daddy of all giant monster films, the Toho creators also had a lot of respect for the movie.

True King Kong aficionados [source: my dad] might say that this respect doesn't come across as well in the film as it should, though. The original King Kong was a stop motion masterpiece, but Toho uses a different type of special effect for their movies (sidebar: this movie began as an actual sequel to the King Kong movies by the original special effects creator Willis O'Brien, and King Kong was going to fight Frankenstein, but due to disputes over the use of the Frankenstein name and the overall cost of the stop-animation, the movie eventually wound up in Toho's hands and Frankenstein was swapped with Godzilla. Toho will later do their own Frankenstein movies as well.). So Toho's King Kong, like their Godzilla and most of their other monsters, is a guy in a rubber suit, and unfortunately it's not a very good looking suit, which is especially odd since movies had been using ape suits since forever. Also, Godzilla is MUCH bigger than the original King Kong, so this Kong is increased in size to match him, and that reduces his ability to interact with the human characters the way the original Kong did. Additionally, Godzilla breathes radioactive fire, so it's not really fair to pit him up against a regular monkey, no matter how large. So King Kong is given, erm, electricity powers! All told, you can definitely see why this movie isn't really considered to be canon for the King Kong mythos, although this and Toho's King Kong Escapes are definitely canon for the Tohoverse.

Toho's Kong is like a gorilla suit designed by a guy whose only knowledge of primates is pictures of orangutans. Bad. So bad.

Regarding that radioactive fire, note that this is the first color film for both Godzilla and King Kong. And so it's the first time we see Godzilla's breath weapon in color.

In his past two (black & white) appearances appearances, we saw Godzilla breathing what appeared to be more like steam than fire. And in Rodan, which is in color, Rodan breathes a similar substance which looks like grey steam or smoke. So you might have expected the same thing here, but when we see Godzilla's flame, it's not steam and it's also not regular fire. It's blue. And it's specifically described (in the scene where the sub encounters Godzilla for the first time) as being Cherenkov radiation, which emits blue light.

We only have the English dubbed version of this movie. And no, there isn't a difference in the ending depending on which version you see. But the American version does add a lot of new footage. Some of that "new" footage is actually taken from Mysterians - army scenes, crowd evacuations, and earthquakes - but some of it is truly new and is so hilariously awesome that i wouldn't give up my dubbed copy for a more authentic subtitled version even if i had the option.

Every prior Toho kaiju movie, at least in the American version, has started with some attempt at tying in the giant monsters with real world concerns and overuse of technology, but the efforts have gotten more and more half-hearted (we're thinking about going into space, but maybe there's monsters here on Earth!) and this one more or less gives up on that and just shows us a rotating model of the Earth along with a clip from Hamlet: "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

Then we get right into it, starting with our inserted scenes for the US version, which feature the awesome Eric Carter, United Nations Reporter.

God, i just love Eric Carter. His smug, authoritative expressions and voice are just PERFECT.

To my knowledge, there is no such thing as a United Nations Reporter, and certainly there's no trusted anchor that broadcasts from the UN that the world turns to for its international news. It seems goofy and weird, but i think it's an aspirational kind of thing, that there could be some sort of trusted world authority and source of information. We start off with Carter explaining to us how the UN is taking care of an earthquake crisis in Chili (unrelated to the rest of our story) before he informs us that the reason we're able to communicate with people on the ground all over the world is thanks to the facilities of the international communications satellite. That "satellite" is in fact the space station from the Mysterians.

It's again weird and kind of cool that they chose to represent this UN news satellite with an alien space station. It lends to the futuristic nature of the movie and the idea that we're in some sort of utopian society where the UN is a real institution. What's less cool is that the shot of the satellite/space station is used repeatedly, and it's always the same scene, which shows a Mysterian UFO flying in for a landing. Since this is supposed to be a satellite and not a space station, it's unclear why any kind of space ship would be flying towards it.

Anyway from there we get to the two main threads of the movie. The first is an unusually warm current coming down from north of Japan, and the second is a scientist explorer who has found some special red Soma berries. Here is Carter manhandling one of them.

He just throws that berry back in the jar with the rest of them. That's so rude. Now who's going to eat them?

The berries are said to aid with chemotherapy because they contain a "non-habit forming narcotic" on the remote Faro Island in the South Pacific. The idea that the Faro natives use the berry juice to placate their giant god monster is laughed off, which is odd considering that this is a world where Godzilla has already been determined to exist (although more on that below).

To investigate the warm current, a submarine is sent up north to investigate. Min wanted me to snap this picture because some of these white guys appear in other Toho films. I just wanted a picture of the guy on the left's mustache.

The submarine crew detects "a Geiger response" but seems unconcerned about floating into it. I don't know about you, but the minute i found out that the unusually warm water i was swimming in was being caused by radiation, i'd order an about face and a trip to the decontamination chamber. But these guys are pretty laid back about, well, everything. For one thing, they are pretty casual about using sonar to figure out their location. As they approach the source of the radiation, which is coming from a nearby iceberg, someone informs the Captain that they are getting closer. He orders the periscope to be raised but then they immediately crash into the iceberg.

Maybe a little more warning next time, ensign. But there won't be a next time because the one thing we've learned is that you never, ever, get into a submarine in a Toho film unless it's the Goten-Go.

Worst submarine piloting ever.

Informed that the submarine is coming down around him, the Captain responds with the most hilariously dubbed "Oh... great..." ever, and then just stands there dumbfounded as his men come to him with one crisis after another. These people all die.

The iceberg of course contains Godzilla...

...and there's some real continuity here between this film and Godzilla Raids Again. That film ended with Godzilla being buried in ice on an island north of Japan, and here he is floating in an iceberg north of Japan. So clearly the intention was a direct connection. But we switch back to Eric Carter who tells us, "The world is stunned to discover that prehistoric creatures exist in the 20th century."

I can't express the awesomeness of his delivery. It's like he's god, giving an update to other gods... And i'll tell you right now, if anyone has to give me the bad news about a giant monster having emerged to wreak havoc on mankind, i want it to be Eric Carter. But it is odd that he's talking like this is the first the world is hearing about Godzilla. You could argue that Godzilla's previous appearance (and/or appearances; remember that the first Godzilla movie actually contained a different Godzilla than the rest of these movies), since it was isolated to Japan, wasn't taken seriously by the rest of the world. But there will be more lines like this that make it seem like Godzilla is new to this time period. Pretty odd and seemingly unnecessary for a movie billed as a meeting between two established monsters; it's not like filmgoers would have found it incredulous to be asked to accept that Godzilla already existed.

Anyway, even now Godzilla's (re)appearance isn't such big news, since Eric Carter is committed to covering the story about berries on an island with equal intensity, and soon after announcing Godzilla he switches back to that story.

The scientist that discovered the berries was working for the Pacific Pharmaceuticals company. The head of that company, Mr. Tako (played by Ichiro Arishima) is a goofy comedy character...

...and he's more concerned with finding a way to advertise the company than the actual medicinal benefits of the berries. So he orders his two (also goofy) subordinates, Osamu Sakurai and Kinsaburo Furue, to find the natives' god and bring it back so that they can feature it in advertising campaigns. Osamu is played by Tadao Takashima and Kinsaburo is played by Yu Fujiki.

Before going on the trip, we go to the home of Osamu and we meet his sister and her boyfriend, who has developed an unbreakable dental floss.

Osamu's sister Fumiko is played by Mie Hama (who will later appear in King Kong Escapes as well as the James Bond film You Only Live Twice) and her boyfriend is Kazuo Fujita, played by Kenji Sahara (the lead in Rodan).

We continue the racist trend of depicting South Pacific islanders in the equivalent of blackface...

...and that includes their non-Faro guide, another horribly goofy comedy actor.

The whole scene with the Pacific Pharmaceutical company discussing their strategy and then making their way to Faro Island is very silly. It's surely aggravated by the bad dubbing but pretty clear that the "comedy" is from the original as well. A very different tone than the previous movies so far, even compared to Mothra, which had begun introducing comedy elements to these movies.

Things get especially bad when Osamu and Kinsaburo start offering the Faro chief various trinkets, including a transistor radio that gets the whole tribe dancing, and then cigarettes.

"Inhale!", they exhort to the tribe. "They satisfy!". When they realize they didn't bring any candy for the kids, they get cigarettes too. Hah hah!

The festivities are interrupted by lightning, which gets the tribe praying and Kinsaburo goofily worried as well. Osamu dismisses it as "ignorant primitive savages frightened to death by a little lightning", but of course we'll learn better.

Before that, however, we switch back to good old Eric Carter, who has brought in an expert to help us understand Godzilla. By "expert", it's possible that i mean "a man who wandered in off the street carrying a children's dinosaur book", but Carter identifies him as Arnold Johnson, curator for the museum of natural history and esteemed authority on prehistoric animals.

In Johnson's expert opinion, Godzilla is "possibly a cross between the Tyrannosaurus Rex and the Stegosaurus". Because that happened; dinosaurs routinely mated with each other and produced hybrids. Johnson speculates that Godzilla probably originally existed 97-125 million years ago, which seems to be splitting the difference between the T. Rex (60 million years ago) and the Stegosaurus (150 million years ago) (which makes the mating of the two species even more difficult!). The fact that Godzilla was previously seen only 7 years ago is not mentioned, and it's implied that Godzilla was "frozen inside an iceberg" back in the prehistoric era. The odd thing about this is that when the pilots that came to rescue the sub crew first saw Godzilla, they immediately knew his name. I guess they were just really up on their dinosaur science.

Johnson says that fossils have been found in Japan that resemble Godzilla (at the bottom of Tokyo Bay, perhaps?) and that he is now "instinctively" heading "home". When asked how Japan might stop Godzilla, Johnson responds, "As a reptile, Godzilla might shy away from electricity." It was at this point that the following exchange occurred:

Min: Reptile! Electricity!? He's no scientist! He just showed up at the UN News Room and demanded they interview him and he's really just an escapee from some mental hospital!
Fnord: They're all escapees! There IS no UN News Room!

Godzilla rampages around in Japan while Johnson is asked how he knows for sure that Godzilla will go to Japan. Maybe because he's already there?

Back on Faro Island, we've jumped ahead to where the Pharmaceutical guys have enlisted a bunch of natives to go deeper into the island. If there's a reason why the native chief would allow these outsiders to hunt for their god and even take his own people along for the trip, it's cut out of the American version. Osamu and Kinsaburo continue to be incredibly annoying, and Kinsaburo eventually has to be taken back to camp and put in a sick bed because of his "corns". The little kid they gave cigarettes to gets the idea to give Kinsaburo some berry juice to help him sleep and sneaks off to steal some from the natives' supply hut. His mom suddenly starts looking for him in increasing terror, and that's before the giant octopus creeps into the village.

Now, the Faro natives spotted the pharmaceutical guys the minute they set foot on the island, and we know they also have Kong to contend with. But the octopus manages to get past all their defenses and creep into the village without any notice. And it goes straight for the supply hut too; i guess it also likes the berry juice.

The reason it arrived undetected may be because it exists in a separate universe. Unlike most Toho monsters, the octopus (named Oodako, which just means "giant octopus", by fans, since it or a relative appears in other Toho films) is depicted for the most part with footage of an actual live octopus. According to the Wikipedia page for this movie, the poor thing was moved around over the little model sets by blowing hot air on it. Or i should say "poor things" since they actually used four of them, and one of them wound up getting eaten by the special effects director.

Since for the most part the creature is depicted with super-imposed film footage, Oodako can't interact with the rest of the set, and that's especially noticeable when the natives show up to throw spears and torches at it and you can actually see the shadows of those objects against the film screen. Very weird and it can even be confusing if you don't know what you're looking at.

This continues with the arrival of King Kong...

...who shows up to attack Oodako. He starts by throwing the remains of the hut and then rocks, all of which harmlessly bounce off Oodako's screen with no sign of a reaction. This makes Oodako a pretty formidable foe! He's untouchable! Eventually, they use a rubber model that King Kong can interact with more directly, though, and that allows Kong to eventually win the fight and drive Oodako off.

With Oodako gone, King Kong goes for the berry juice himself. "Non habit forming" my ass. As soon as he sees this stuff he is binging on it....

...and totally gets high before passing out.

The Pacific Pharmaceuticals guys decide to put King Kong on a raft and take him back to Japan.

Never, ever do this.

Why is that OK?!

Back to the UN News Room, where we have Dr. Johnson telling us that "legends of giant gorillas have persisted for some time. Now the fact that Godzilla and Kong have appeared at the same time is interesting. Scientifically." [emphasis mine throughout]

Johnson hands Eric Carter a marble, which he studies carefully.

Johnson tells him, "Godzilla has a brain about this size. He is sheer brute force. While Kong [holds up a skull] is a thinking animal. His brain is considerably larger, about 10 times the size of this gorilla's skull. Being instinctive rivals there is no doubt that they will attempt to destroy one another."

By now you should have administered several drinks and/or head smacks. And this is only going to continue.

"Being amphibian, Godzilla is probably lurking in the ocean depths off Japan." Right, he's a reptilian amphibian dinosaur.

I can only express my feelings about this entire exchange with non-verbal sounds.

Now back to our other point of interest, the question of whether or not this is a continuation of the previous movie: "He could be puzzled by the changes that have occurred during his long sleep".

The crisis of Godzilla is so serious it's caused a replay of the footage from Mysterians showing people from various nations arriving at the UN.

Meanwhile, Godzilla seems to be getting led around Japan by some guys in a helicopter.

The big guy has been putting on some weight in the thighs. His feet have also gotten bigger, and his head is smaller, making him looks somewhat more similar to how he'll look in more modern times, but they'll come away from that for later movies in the Showa series. We personally don't like this particular look for the character very much, but it's not the worst.

He looks like a doofus.

That helicopter that is stupidly leading Godzilla around eventually brings him to some train tracks, and there's this whole weird scene where Fumiko's neighbor and friend Tamiye (played by Akiko Wakabayashi, who was also in the Bond film) came running in to happily tell her that her boyfriend was in a plane that crashed (Tamiye is such a bitch.). So Fumiko took the train out to get to the wreckage and i guess this is a good time to include the picture with this hat that Min was enamored with:

It looks like a cake! She's wearing a baked good as a head covering! How is that not fascinating?

Later, Fumiko's boyfriend Kazuo shows up at Fumiko's place, totally not dead, and Tamiye explains that she sent his girlfriend off on a wild goose chase, alone, and so Kazuo goes looking for her. This is what's going on with the humans when Godzilla is trampling train tracks.

Now, Godzilla (for once!) is spotted in time for the train to be stopped and the passengers evacuated. But while all the other evacuees are sent running down a road to safety, Fumiko somehow gets separated from them and winds up stumbling down a hill all by herself. And i do mean stumbling, like just falling all over the place. Godzilla is miles away in the distance; he hasn't even made it to the train yet. But she is just falling all over the place and throwing her body around like it's performance art. This goes on for something like 10 minutes.

Mie Hama will forever be dubbed "The Falling Down Girl" in the SuperMegaHousehold no matter how well she acquits herself in other films.

She winds up throwing herself into a stream or something. Again, Godzilla is not even part of the equation.

Despite being miles away from the rest of the train passengers at this point, and way out in the wilderness somewhere, Kazuo manages to quickly locate her. He put a GPS on her because this happens all the time. He then carries her back to his jeep and home to safety, hopefully in the form of a padded cell.

With that gripping drama over with, we go back to our comedy routine with the Pacific Pharmaceuticals jokers. The boss, Mr. Tako, has heard about the capture of King Kong and had himself flown over to the boat that is dragging Kong back to Japan. Bowlegged, wearing safari gear, and carrying a rifle...

...Mr. Tako dopily prances about on the boat and eventually comes to lean on the handle of the device that will trigger the explosives under Kong's raft that were put there in case he wakes up. Luckily the Japanese police show up to tell Tako that the boat is not allowed to dock. We're just outside of Japan at this point, though, so it's too little, too late, and Kong starts to wake up. The explosive device turns out to be a dud, so the Pharmaceutical guys start shooting at the explosives instead, but, well, we know how well explosives work on 150 foot monsters.

At least i'm assuming that we're near Japan due to the fact that King Kong is only hip deep in the water. Maybe the Pacific Ocean is just a lot shallower than i know.

That scene above was in a movie monster book i had as a kid and i used to stare at it in wonder well before i ever saw this movie. It still looks awesome to me.

King Kong is said to start traveling along a path that will intersect with Godzilla. Back at the UN News Room, we hear from our expert, Dr. Johnson, that Kong, "scenting the presence of a hated enemy, is determined to destroy Godzilla. Thus, a battle of the giants which may or may not have taken place millions of years ago may be recreated soon on the Nassu plain". May. May not. Who knows?

I think this guy has a future career as a cable news anchor.

The Japanese military is proven incapable of stopping people from driving into restricted areas, so the Pacific Pharmaceuticals are able to follow along with King Kong. The idea that these guys might be arrested for having brought a 150 foot ape into the country isn't discussed.

King Kong himself is pretty weird looking. Aside from just not being a very good monkey suit, one of the big problems are his arms. He seems to have two sets of elbows, and the reason for that is that the suit had arm extensions which contained poles inside the arms for the suit wearer (Shoichi Hirose) to manipulate. So you had the actor's elbows plus the the elbows for the suit itself, and the overall effect is very unnatural. Sure, apes should have long gangly arms, but not like this.

King Kong's first meeting with Godzilla is not the big epic battle we've been told to expect.

When Kong first encounters his "hated enemy", he throws some rocks at Godzilla, but Godzilla responds with his radioactive breath. King Kong withdraws, patting down the fires on his chest. I know i can't describe this battle as "anti-climactic" since we're not at the climax of the movie yet, but the way Kong just kind of walks off the scene, and the way Godzilla lets him, is a little odd. If nothing else, Godzilla is usually more relentless in victory.

The Japanese Defense Force, meanwhile, has a plan to stop Godzilla. Actually it's the same electric fence plan that was used in the first Godzilla movie, except the voltage is doubled (no explicit reference to the first time). For someone with a brain the size of a marble, Godzilla quickly figures out how to get around this. It does keep him away from Tokyo, though.

But we're told that while electricity can hurt Godzilla, "for some reason we don't understand [like, we haven't seen it happen], Kong draws strength from electric voltage." Now we did see that when King Kong was moving around on Faro Island, there was an electrical storm. But the idea that Kong draws strength from electricity is new and pretty wild information. But if a scientist says something in a Toho film, you can be pretty sure that it's accurate, and indeed pretty soon we see Kong munching on the electric wires...

Om nom nom nom.

...and getting past them into Tokyo.

Lots of footage reused from Mysterians during these scenes. One new scene involves these blue missiles which i guess was Toho experimenting with using a kind of animation during the scenes with live humans instead of cutting away to models. The problem is that even after the missiles are "launched" you can still see a dark impression that is left behind. It's possible that scenes like this and the spears that were thrown at the octopus worked a lot better in the original film and on television and VHS, but our DVD copy is less forgiving.

The Toho King Kong's rampage through Tokyo makes his smaller cousin from the 1933 film's rampage in New York look like a casual stroll down the street. Not only is this Kong so large that just not being polite about picking up his feet while he walks is enough to cause untold damage, but he's an absolute jerk, bringing his gigantic fists down on skyscrapers. And Kong is nominally the good monster in this movie.

Forget about climbing any Tokyo equivalent to the Empire State Building; this Kong is way too big for that. But he does sort of repeat the train sequence from the original. Fumiko seems to have escaped her padded cell again and Kong grabs for her. Lady Rubber Neck does her worst Fay Wray impression.

OMG. Just eat her already! I can't look at her anymore.

Since the fate of the entire city is nothing compared to the life of one tipsy woman (and/or doll)...

...the army ceases its attack on Kong (granted, they were ineffective anyway), and the Pharmaceutical guys suggest bombing Kong with the Soma berry juice to make him sleepy while they play on some drums to replicate the Faro native's song. It works, and Kong passes out, somehow not crushing and/or dropping Fumiko as he falls to the ground.

There is still the problem of Godzilla however, and for whatever reason no one thinks to suggest using the Soma berries on him. As with many Toho kaiju films, there is repeated discussion in this film of using the atom bomb but the idea is ultimately rejected. This mostly comes from Prime Minister Shigezawa, played by good old Akihiko Hirata, in a largely unnecessary role.

The Defense Force general is played by Jun Tazaki, who will be another Toho regular.

But at this point the military has basically turned over command to the Pacific Pharmaceutical, and the Pharmaceutical guys get the idea to bring King Kong to Godzilla to make them fight. The idea is to send tiny animated men to climb King Kong and tie him up...

...and then attach him to helium balloons that will lift him into the air for transport.

You know, there's a helium shortage in the world, and you really shouldn't even be using the stuff for birthday parties anymore, let alone using as much as you would need to life a 150 foot gorilla.

Presumably, the material used to tie Godzilla to the balloons is the unbreakable dental floss invented by Fumiko's boyfriend, but that's not stated explicitly, at least in the American version.

In pretty much the only use of King Kong's supposedly bigger brain, he lays an ambush for Godzilla, hiding behind a cliff...

...and jumping out and grabbing Godzilla's tail as he walks past.

But Godzilla's tail is a powerful weapon so grabbing it just gets you tossed around. From there we get into a volleyball contest, with the two monsters batting a giant boulder back and forth. It is this scene in particular that, per the Wikipedia page, the special effects team "couldn't believe" they were being asked to do by director Honda, and along with the goofy Pharmaceutical characters definitely marks a major change in tone for the Godzilla movies. That said, the rock toss is a classic part of any Toho monster battle.

This second battle ends with an even more ignominious defeat than the first, with King Kong throwing a boulder and somehow the momentum of the throw propelling him forward and causing him to roll down a hill and bump his head on a rock. Totally an unforced error. And this time Godzilla is much less gracious in victory, slamming the unconscious Kong with his tail and burying him in rocks. It goes on for quite a while, with Godzilla clearly mocking his fallen opponent. Pretty awesome, really.

It's pretty clear that King Kong is no match for Godzilla, so it's time for him to get super powers. Queue a thunderstorm, with Kong getting struck by lightning. This revives him, and gives him electric hands that zap Godzilla when he grabs him.

Even this doesn't seem like it should be a match for Godzilla's radioactive flame breath, but King Kong does manage to hold his own from this point out. Their battle takes them to Atami Castle, which both monsters are head and shoulders above...

...and they manage to get on opposite sides of the castle and don't bother walking around it to fight each other. They simply fight over it, and manage to destroy the (beautiful model of the) castle in the process.

It really is a shame how these incredible models are always getting destroyed. If i were the guy in charge of building all of them, i would be pissed.

The battle ends with both monsters rolling into the sea. For the American version, this is accompanied with footage of a major earthquake, which was also taken from the Mysterians.

Only King Kong is seen emerging from the ocean, and he begins to swim away.

We go back to UN Reporter Eric Carter, who says that, "Strangely enough, we wish him luck, on his long, long journey home." Again, there is no alternate version of this movie, although in the Japanese version they apparently include a Godzilla roar during the end scene.

One of the first five things i ever did on the internet was try to read about the legendary alternate ending of this movie that was supposedly in the Japanese release wherein Godzilla won. All i could find were people dispelling that myth; it turned out it wasn't true. The early internet didn't exactly have authoritative sources, just message boards and people with homegrown websites, so i held out hope for a while but eventually went through my stages of grief and had to accept it as fact. It was a while longer before i found out how the myth got started, but nowadays all that info is right there on the Wikipedia page. It's all due to a 1960s film magazine called Spacemen, whose article was then reprinted in its sister magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland a couple of times. It still doesn't say why they got it wrong, but at least now we know who to blame.

It's debatable whether or not Kong really "won" this fight anyway. The two monsters roll into the water, and Kong swims away. We know that Godzilla will survive as well. So it's probably better to describe it as a tie.

Regardless of who won, and despite the less than optimal gorilla suit for King Kong, this is a fun movie. It's definitely one that would be improved by removing the human scenes altogether (except for the UN scenes!) since the overly goofy Pharmaceutical guys and Falling Down Girl are major detractors and there's no character arc for anyone here. Just step back and let the monsters fight, guys. Godzilla of course fought Anguirus in his second film but this is the first official Vs. movie and is therefore an important turning point for the franchise. As with Raids Again, the monster fights borrow a lot from pro-wrestling, and it is pretty awesome to see two giant monsters jumping on each other and destroying detailed model buildings even if it can also be a bit goofy. One of the best scenes is where Kong shoves a tree down Godzilla's throat.

Godzilla of course has a flame breath so that's not too much of a problem.

Toho did briefly experiment with stop animation for this film before giving it up due to the expense. Some of the footage did make it into the final film, but it looks like two non-articulate action figures getting moved around, more Robot Chicken than 1933 King Kong.

One thing i won't let you edit out of this movie are the UN scenes, which are so dead-on 1960s era newscast/documentary that i am geared up to laugh the minute the characters start talking, thanks to how well scenes like this have been parodied in later years. The way the characters will get asked a quest and then turn to the camera and definitively state their answers, the serious frowns and arrogantly authoritative but kinda dumb looking expressions from Carter, the back and forth between him and his "expert", it's all unintentional comedy gold.

Godzilla Drinking Game
	Someone thinks it's a good idea to drag a giant monster across the ocean on a raft (giant eggs count).	Bingo!
	Attacking planes fly directly at a monster, with no possibility of avoiding a crash even if the monster didn't swat them down.	I'm fairly certain a helicopter deliberately flies directly into Godzilla's mouth.
	People refuse to believe in the existence of a giant monster even though they've already acknowledged that Godzilla exists.	You get a choice with this one. Either this is true, or if we're supposed to believe that Godzilla isn't supposed to have existed in this universe already, then "Everyone suddenly knows a monster's name" is true. Or hell, just take a drink for both.
	A submarine explodes.	Bingo!
	Teens have a dance party on a boat. Two drinks/head smacks if they get attacked by a monster during the party.
	The government is completely ineffective when faced with a corporation doing something illegal.	Despite Eric Carter reporting Pacific Pharma's actions almost as they happen, Japan waits until they've brought Kong all the way home before sending police to turn them away, and then there are no legal repercussions for their actions and instead they basically turn the military operation over to them.
	A humongous lumbering monster manages to sneak up on someone. Two drinks/head smacks if it's the army and they're supposedly using radar.	You know what's great? When a 150 foot monster is looming over your battlefield and you have to ask someone to lend them your binoculars in order to see them.
	A scientist suddenly figures everything out with little-to-no information and explains it all to everyone.	Oh god.
	A monster suddenly grows in size just because.	Honorary mention to King Kong's tremendous size increase for this film, but it doesn't count.
	People expose themselves to major amounts of radiation with no concern.	The sub guys are pretty cool about radiation.
	Everyone suddenly knows a monster's name. Two drinks/head smacks if everyone else nods appreciatively and repeats it.	See "People refuse to believe in the existence of a giant monster". When the rescue plane sent after the downed sub sees Godzilla, they identify him immediately.
	Army missiles can't seem to hit a 150+ foot monster and instead explode harmlessly around it.	This one is pretty much like the center square in Bingo. You get it for free.
	A woman falls down for no reason.	Holy god, yes.
	Bad dinosaur science. You have to give a little leeway for the time period, but pretending a children's picture book is a scientific journal is always worth two drinks/smacks.	Oh god.

Monsters Appearing: Godzilla, King Kong, Oodako