YMMV / King Kong Escapes

• Adaptation Displacement: The movie was a loose adaptation of Rankin/Bass Productions The King Kong Show that has fallen into obscurity.
• Awesome Music: Akira Ifukube created an excellent score, and the Mechani-Kong motif would later be reused as Mechagodzilla's theme in Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II (1993).
• Complete Monster: Dr. Who is an egotistical Mad Scientist working for an unnamed country represented by Madame Piranha. Planning to help make her country a nuclear superpower, he creates the Mechani-Kong to mine for Element X, before deciding to use the real Kong. Attacking and capturing Kong on his island, Who guns down a innocent native for no particular reason, before taking Commander Carl Nelson and his lieutenants hostage, torturing Jiro and Susan by rapidly freezing them, and threatening to personally disfigure Susan's face. When Kong and the crew manage to escape, Who plans to force Kong to fight the Mechani-Kong in the city of Tokyo, not caring that he'd kill thousands of people; when this is protested by Madame Piranha, scoffs at her for being a moralist. In Kong and the Mechani-Kong's ensuing fight, Who has Susan taken hostage and threatens to drop her to her death, and when Piranha herself tries to stop his madness, Who shoots her to death in retaliation.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Gorosaurus appears in only one scene, but would become a popular kaiju and would play a prominent role In Destroy All Monsters. Fans also love him for his simplistic yet effective design.
  • Among the human characters, Dr. Hu gets lot of love from Tokusatsu fans for his over the top schemes and Large Ham performance, to a point where many see him as the best character of the film. It kinda helps that he shares an almost similar name to the popular series Doctor Who. Being dubbed by the hamtastic Paul Frees in the American cut helps too.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Around four years after the Japanese release of this movie, Dr. Who's actor (Hideyo Amamoto) will play another Mad Scientist role in Kamen Rider.
• My Real Daddy: A lot of people would probably be surprised to know that Mechani-Kong was actually from the The King Kong Show and not an original creation by Toho. However, the live-action version bears almost no similarity to its animated basis outside of being a robotic Kong, and it's almost certain the character would have quickly fallen into complete obscurity had it not been for this film.
• Older Than They Think: Despite what you might think, Mechani-Kong predates his better-known cousin Mechagodzilla by a little over half a decade.
• Quirky Work: As one may notice from this page, this is the batshit insane version of King Kong.

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