Toho Films used their imported US star (this time a man in an ape suit - no stop-motion effects on display here) as an adversary for their newly heroised Gojira, who in his first two films had been the scary personification of the A-bomb. Their series of bouts takes the form of giant tag wrestling matches which knock small buildings over, monitored by the Japanese corporation which brought the two great beasts back into existence. The formerly 50ft Kong had to scale up quite a bit to square up to the 300ft radioactive lizard, but that's only one of many departures from the original film. When Merian C. Cooper heard of the Toho film he tried to sue, before discovering there was a done deal between them and RKO-Radio rights holders. In separate Eastern and Western prints, both title characters became the conquering hero. In fact Kong would become a little too housetrained for his own good€
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