King Kong Vs. Godzilla - English Version

English Version

When John Beck sold the King Kong vs. Prometheus script to Toho (which became King Kong vs. Godzilla), he was given exclusive rights to produce a version of the film for release in non-Asian territories. He was able to line up a couple of potential distributors in Warner Brothers and Universal Pictures International even before the film began production. Beck, accompanied by two Warner Bros. representatives, attended at least two private screenings of the film on the Toho Studios lot before it was released in Japan.

John Beck enlisted the help of two Hollywood writers, Paul Mason and Bruce Howard, to write a new screenplay. After having discussions with Beck in regards to how the film would be handled, the two wrote the American version and worked with editor Peter Zinner to remove scenes, recut others and change the sequence of several events. Mason and Howard, in order to give the film more of an American feel, came up with the idea of inserting newly-shot footage of newscaster Eric Carter, a UN reporter who spends much of the time commenting on the action from the UN Headquarters via an International Communication Satellite (ICS) broadcast, and Arnold Johnson, the head of the Museum of Natural History in New York, who tries to explain Godzilla's origin and his and Kong's motivations. The new footage was directed by Thomas Montgomery and shot in three days.

Beck and his crew were able to obtain library music from a host of older films (music tracks that had been composed by Henry Mancini, Hans J. Salter, and even a track from Heinz Roemheld). These films include Creature from the Black Lagoon, Bend of the River, Untamed Frontier, The Golden Horde, Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman, Man Made Monster, While the City Sleeps and The Monster That Challenged the World. Cues from these scores were used to almost completely replace the original Japanese score by Akira Ifukube and give the film a more Western sound. They also obtained stock footage from the film The Mysterians from RKO (the film's US copyright holder at the time) which was used to not only represent the ICS, but which was also utilized during the film's climax. Stock footage of a massive Earthquake from The Mysterians was employed to make the earthquake caused by Kong and Godzilla's plummet into the ocean much more violent than the tame tremor seen in the Japanese version. This added footage features massive tidal waves, flooded valleys, and the ground splitting open swallowing up various huts.

Beck spent roughly $15,500 making his English version and sold the film to Universal Pictures International for roughly $200,000 on April 29, 1963. The film opened in New York on June 26 of that year.

Starting in 1963, Toho's international sales booklets advertised an English dub of King Kong vs. Godzilla alongside Toho-commissioned, uncut international dubs of movies like Matango and Atragon. By association, it is thought that this King Kong vs. Godzilla dub is part of an uncut international version never released on home video.