King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962)

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.