With all due respect, Godzilla is a far more marketable character and with a greater meaning that The Beast. While I could see his distain at a creature that barrowed heavily from his film acheiving greater success than his creation, I think he could also very much be proud that he inspired one of the most enduring movie icons.
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He really didn't declare it a rip-off, though he did admit a lot of similarities. (And Ray is not a fan of men-in-suit creations either).
But Harryhausen's main beef with Godzilla is the KING KONG VS. GODZILLA movie, in which he seems to blame everything that is wrong with the film on Toho, but no emphasis on the real culprit, producer John Beck, who left Willis O'Brien hanging, when O'Brien was doing KING KONG VS. FRANKENSTEIN and gave the idea to Beck to shop around.
Yea, John Beck... Cooper introduced O'Brien to him because he thought Beck could help. Instead, Beck rewrote the script as King Kong versus Prometheus and sold it to Toho, who replaced 'Prometheus' with Godzilla and rewrote it into a spoof of Japanese comercialization. Neither Cooper nor Obie received any payment for their contributions.
actually a jap. film company had money for a film but that project fell out so witht he money they had they decided to jump on the monster movie band wagon and to some degree paraphrased this movie the name godzilla is the english pronuciation of the words for gorilla and whale in japanese. the name godzilla was a nickname of one of the employees at the compnay due to his large stature. so godzilla is technically a rip of this film!
sharethe name godzilla was a nickname of one of the employees at the compnay due to his large stature. so godzilla is technically a rip of this film!
That has actually become a Godzilla urban-legend. Steve Ryfle's book "Japan's Favorite Mon-Star" goes into great detail on the orgin of the Godzilla name. While it is true that the name is a combination of the word gorilla and the Japanese name for whale "kujira", this mystery man whom was said to be called "Gojira", and who was said to be working at Toho's publicity department has never been brought forward, has never been identified by anyone, and it's believed he never actually existed! The wife of Godzilla director Ishiro Honda, believes that the name was thought up after very careful discussion between her husband and the producer, Tomoyuki Tanaka.
Despite Tanaka having the working title as THE GIANT MONSTER FROM 20,000 MILES BENEATH THE SEA, it was really the re-release of KING KONG in Japan in 1952, that was the biggest film influence on GODZILLA. THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS wasn’t released in Japan until December 1954, one month after GODZILLA had premiered.
According to the "Godzilla" entry in Danny Peary's CULT MOVIES, one of the creative forces behind GODZILLA (I'm not sure whom it was, and I no longer have the book) saw BEAST in the U.S. during its initial release and concocted the Japanese version of the film on the flight back home. Certainly, the working title you cite (and Peary also included this in his book) strongly suggests that the movie was, indeed, inspired by and patterned after BEAST. Peary also points out that a giant monster that came from 20,000 miles beneath the sea would had to have started out a goodly way towards the moon to come some 20,000 miles. Steve V.
shareIt was Toho producer Tomoyuki Tanaka who on a flight home from Indonesia (after an aborted film project with the country), looking down at the ocean, thought of doing a monster movie -- in part to capitalize on the success of the 1952 re-release of KING KONG, and the general worldwide success of THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS, but also as an anti-nuclear statement following the "Lucky Dragon No. 5" incident, in which the crew of a Japanese fishing boat was exposed to radiation from a US hydrogen bomb test in the Pacific. Many of them died, and the incident caused a furor in Japan. The result was two very different films from Toho: GOJIRA (GODZILLA), and Kurosawa's RECORD OF A LIVING BEING (I LIVE IN FEAR).
Even 20,000 fathoms is a stretch -- while not jutting 10,000 miles into space, that still works out to a depth of over 34 miles -- certainly a much deeper part of the ocean than exists anywhere on earth, by a factor of 5 at least.
Tanaka and special effects creator Eiji Tsuburaya openly admitted to having been influenced by both KONG and BEAST, and Tsuburaya regretted that time, money, and the lack of available animation talent in Japan prohibited them from making a stop-motion creature. In the end, GOJIRA was completed within three or four months, an astonishing achievement considering no Japanese film had ever done what Tsuburaya did before. Ray Harryhausen and Willis O'Brien may have looked down on the "man-in-a-rubber-suit" style of FX, but the fact is that this process was neither easy nor straightforward, with much trial and error. Not the quality of Ray's and Obie's work, of course, but pretty good under the circumstances.
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Well, as I wrote in my last post the men behind GOJIRA were certainly influenced by BEAST as well as by the unfortunate but fortuitous Lucky Dragon incident, so a confluence of these two factors obviously propelled them into giving the world Godzilla. Maybe a half-ripoff. But hardly a unique situation in filmmaking history!
No wrench thrown in, an interesting topic, but I disagree that the Americanized GODZILLA (1998) was a remake of anything -- BEAST or the original GOJIRA (or for that matter, any Godzilla movie). '98 was one of the worst, most asinine and moronic movies ever made, an utter waste of talent and a blown opportunity from the word go. No plot similarities at all with either BEAST or GOJIRA, beyond the obvious monster-invades-a-city storyline. But speaking of ripoffs, '98 was a ripoff of elements from many, much better films, and managed to do everything worse. A truly lousy, terrible film, as every review said and as its abysmal business at the box office and even on home video have made plain.
Glad you liked THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS: a true, technically ground-breaking classic of the genre.
Here's a cutie....
In the early fifties, after he left Willis O'Brien's stable and completed his work on Beast From 20,00 Fathoms, Ray Harryhausen set down and came up with three story outlines that could star his Dynamation techniques:
SINBAD
THE GIANT YMIR
THE ELEMENTALS
Both Sinbad (as the Seventh Voyage of Sinbad) and The Giant Ymir (as 20, Million Miles to Earth) were eventually filmed...
But...
Jack Deitz, the line producer of Beast From Twenty Thousand Fathoms (and the full producer of the Black Scorpion some years later...) Shopped Elementals around but nobody was taking it. Warners, who made a pile of dough with Beast, was busy making an "in-house" monster movie about giant ants or Gi-ants (hello, Uncle Forry!)
The Elementals was a movie about a discovery of bat-like pteradactyl creatures found hibernating in a hollow mountain. There were a herd of giant worms that the creatures fed on when they "hatched" and in the end, the flying monsters perished after ravaging the countryside of France by being lured to the Paris river and, dying in flames from the oil that the army had coated the river with.
Does this sound familiar to any of you?
It does to me.
It sounds like RODAN THE FLYING MONSTER which was made in Japan (ha ha) in 1956 and brought over here by.......WARNER FRIGGIN BROTHERS....the following year!!!!!
Am I the only one that smells a rat here?
Fact: Godzilla came out in America in '56 and made a HUUUUUUUUGE amount of dough.
Fact: Jack Deitz had a year long option on The Elementals and couldn't sell in here, so he gave the rights back to Harryhausen at the end of the year.
Fact (sort of) : Rodan is very...and I mean VERY similar to the Harryhausen Elemental story except it's sort of Japanesed up....(Impossibly big pterosaurs...men in suit monsters....etc.)
Now I can't prove this but I think Jack Deitz talked to someone at Warners and they talked to Toho about having American releases of the next Japanese monster movies....Toho was making an abominable snowman movie and another aquatic dinosaur movie and I can just see a Warners exec saying..."Have you thought of a....flying monster?"
This seems to be the way to go...if you can't get an american company behind your giant monster movie, sell it to the Japanese. And this seems to be the same thing that happened with Willis O'Brien's KING KONG vs FRAKENSTEIN.
curiouser and curiouser...the abominable snowman Toho movie was retitled HALF HUMAN and placed on a double bill with MONSTER FROM GREEN HELL and released by a company called DCA...which was a sub distributor of....say it children....WARNER BROTHERS, and DCA released RODAN to american audiences in '57.
When told this, Ray said..."Oh yeah that was the Giant Wing."
Well no, he was confused and thought that this was the Giant Claw, which was a movie Sam Katzman was given and wanted Ray to do the effects for, but Ray and Charles Schneer were busy on 20 Million Miles to Earth....
Now how is THAT for a conspiracy theory!
http://www.woodywelch.com
Interesting story, obit1. I did indeed recognize the "elementals" of RODAN as you unspooled the plot, but was prepared to write that it wasn't WB that distributed RODAN, but DCA (Distributors Corporation of America). But I never heard that DCA was a subsidiary of Warner. They also released PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE, among other gems.
I knew about Ray H. being offered THE GIANT CLAW...if only he'd taken it! Although, while it would certainly have been a much better film, it might not have been quite as much "fun" as the puppet Claw we got.
As you know, Toho eventually struck a distribution deal with Columbia for most of its output in the US, quite a coincidence considering it was RH's home studio after BEAST.
I have the original Japanese version of RODAN (RADON in Japan), and oddly enough it's not as good as the dubbed American version -- there are subtle variations in the plot and some very slight re-cutting in the US version that, to my amazement -- because this has never been the case that I know of -- actually render it more suspenseful and logical than the original. I wrote a post on that on the RODAN site (SORA NO DAIKAIJU RADON, if I recall it correctly) a few months ago, and another poster, who's very up on all films Japanese, said he's heard the same thing. Score one for DCA, I guess.
Speaking of HALF HUMAN, I gather that the original Japanese version is locked away forever in Toho's vaults because of objections to its plot, or depiction of native people, by the Ainu of Hokkaido. That one's supposed to be vastly better than the Americanized version but I suppose we'll never see it.
Oh, it was KING KONG VS. GODZILLA that Toho sort of ripped off from Willis O'Brien, who did the basic storyline but I don't believe got a screen credit (I haven't seen the US version in decades and own only the original, better, Japanese film, whose print unfortunately doesn't subtitle any of the credits besides the title), and the movie didn't turn out as he envisioned it -- though he had died by the time it made it to US theaters. Poor Obie, again and again.
I remember seeing the pre-production artwork for KING KONG vs FRANKENSTEIN in MonsterWorld Magazine and many of Obie's sketches appear in "Willis O'Brien, Special Effects Genius" by Steve Archer (McFarland).
KING KONG vs FRANKENSTEIN was a project O'Brien worked on from 1960 to 1962.
From this book is a quote from his wife, Darleyne:
"This picture (KING KONG vs FRANKENSTEIN) ended in San Francisco and was to have King Kong riding a cable car at one point...that was in 1960, when he (O'Bie) had the idea for King Kong vs Frankenstein. He did have a story but it ended up as King Kong vs Godzilla, but he didn't have anything to do with it. It was supposed to be what they were promoting, but he didn't have anything to do with it. They were supposed to meet on this island and have this big battle (Alcatraz?). People would come from all over the world to see this big fight. And O'Bie drew all these watercolor pictures...they were taken to Japan and never returned to us.."
Darlyne continued:
"I think there was a lawsuit pending and I think it was dropped because financially, the lawyers will eat you out of house and home."
Anyhow, Willis O'Brien came up with the idea for KING KONG vs FRANKENSTEIN and was told by Universal executive/financial lawyer, et al., John Beck, that Universal held the rights to Kong (I'm assuming they aquired them from RKO after the television sales) and Beck took the idea to Toho and worked out a deal to have Kong fight Godzilla instead in order to make this a co production between Universal and Toho. Toho would deliver the effects and, as it turned out, make the movie, with most of the story being rewritten by Senichi Sekizawa.
O'Brien never wrote a SCREENPLAY himself for KING KONG vs FRANKENSTEIN, but did the many watercolor illustrations highlighting the "treatment" he wrote which was an extensive, descriptive story, written like a short story but not in official screenplay form
John Beck gave KING KONG vs FRANKENSTEIN to writer George Worthing Yates (THEM, IT CAME FROM BENEATH THE SEA, etc.) where it was retitled King Kong vs Promethius, but when Toho was approached with the idea all bets were off. Since the Godzilla angle had nothing to do with O'Brien, he was never compensated for his time in creating the original Frankenstein/Kong idea (which was seminal in getting the Godzilla film off the ground) or for all the artwork.
This is a sad sad crime.
Willis O'Brien had nothing to do with King Kong vs Godzilla, other than being the creative force in the beginning with the Frankenstein idea. Once the Godzilla film was finished, American scenes, written by Bruce Howard and Paul Mason, were filmed and inserted. (Remember the hilarious wonky science where the "paleontologist" states that Godzilla is a combination of intermarrying between Tyrannosaurus rex and Stegosaurus. I guess Howard and Mason drank a lot.)
During this fiasco, O'Brien was working on IT'S A MAD MAD MAD MAD WORLD, with Jim Danforth, and Danforth can pretty much back up these facts.
Look, I like King Kong vs Godzilla in the same way I like The Three Stooges. It's fun and kind of a guilty pleasure. But it is cinematic fast food, pure and simple. I am not stating that King Kong vs Frankenstein would have been a classic, but to see a thirty foot King Kong battling a thirty foot, HULK-like Frankenstein monster in the streets of San Francisco, with all of Willis O'Brien's stop motion effects come to the forefront...well...I just think that would be kinda nifty as far as outrageous ideas go.
http://www.woodywelch.com
Fascinating info, obit1. As we've been saying, poor Obie got screwed time and again, by Hollywood and even by Toho.
I'd like to try to find a copy of the book you mentioned, "Willis O'Brien: Special Effects Genius." I assume it's out of print, but wonder if I can find it anywhere -- will check. Sounds like a very good source.
After the fiasco concerning KKVF, reworked as KKVG, I wondered whether Toho's later monster mash, FRANKENSTEIN CONQUERS THE WORLD (and known by other titles) was "inspired" (ripped off) from Obie's original idea. I'd certainly assume so.
As I said, I'm not a big fan of KING KONG VS. GODZILLA (and not at all of the later FRANKENSTEIN movie). I do think the original Japanese version is much superior to the dubbed, recut US deal, but overall the Godzilla films as a rule got less appealing as time went on, although the two immediate post-KK Godzilla films -- VS. MOTHRA and GHIDORAH -- were much better than KONG VS. (neither had any of the dopey comic relief in KKVG).
Still, my objection isn't to the use of rubber-suited monsters instead of animation; the latter is superior but the former isn't the cheap, crummy approach many blithely make it out to be -- it requires much skill too. My real objection, and I gather yours, is the treatment of such a pioneering genius as O'Brien. We've also talked about this on the GIANT BEHEMOTH and LOST WORLD (1960) boards. He was underappreciated, stolen from, lied to, misled, misused, you name it, and the projects he was able to hook on to in his later years were in general beneath him -- though his talents always shone through. And I agree, the vision of Kong battling Frankie in Frisco would have been something to see! Although I can't help but feel that by the late 50s and early 60s, such a film might have been better handled by Ray H. than the ill and aging O'Brien. What if both had worked on it? Now that really would have been a film!
When they were making DINOSAURUS! (the tabletop stop-motion scenes) at the Project Unlimited special effects facility, (I believe the animation was done in late '59 because the film came out in the summer of '60) O'Brien would visit often (Marcel Delgado and his brother Victor worked at Project at that time and made the stop motion dino models).
O'Bie was looking for animators for The Lost World, and when the beasts in the Irwin Allen film were replaced by the lizard-in-a-sandbox approach it all became a moot point. However O'Brien DID use a young Jim Danforth as animator on his next job, which was IT'S A MAD MAD MAD WORLD. ( might've left out a MAD .)
The point is, I think O'Bie would most likely have used Danforth as an animator much in the same way he used Pete Peterson in Black Scorpion and Giant Behemoth (and Ray in the animation sequences in Animal World.)
I'm just supposin' here.
The animation on Dinosaurus...executed by Don Sahlin and Tom Holland, was/is AWFUL, and Jim's personal effects reel (as well as his work on Goliath and the Dragon) showed much more promise and that's what leads me to this conclusion.
Below is the address for the publisher of the O'Brien book. The title is:
WILLIS O'BRIEN
Special Effects Genius
by Steve Archer
the address is:
McFarland & Company Inc. Publishers
Box 611,
Jefferson,
North Carolina 28640
the copyright is 1993 by the author
And the author, Steve Archer, was one of the assistants to Ray Harryhausen in CLASH OF THE TITANS and did the animation of the really cool albino spider in KRULL. In writing this book, Archer talked a GREAT deal with Darlyne O'Brien about stuff which is a good thing since she has now passed on, as they say.
Write to Mcfarland and see if they have something in stock. The worse that could happen is they never get back to you and you lose a stamp.
When I bought the book it was around 30 dollars, hardcover.
Happy hunting!
http://www.woodywelch.com
Fascinating info, obit1. As we've been saying, poor Obie got screwed time and again, by Hollywood and even by Toho.
Actually, the real culprit is John Beck, not Toho, which most likely were probably unaware of O'Brien's involvement. Beck could not sell the idea to any Hollywood studio. He then looked overseas, first to Italy and eventually striking a deal with Toho (Toho was just merely interested in acquiring the use of the King Kong character). It was John Beck who neglected to keep O'Brien informed about the King Kong project. And when Merian C. Cooper found about KING KONG VS. GODZILLA, he filed suit to stop it's American release, but that failed, and Cooper himself realized that though he had the rights to the original movie, he did not have the rights to the King Kong name. RKO and John Beck did.
After the fiasco concerning KKVF, reworked as KKVG, I wondered whether Toho's later monster mash, FRANKENSTEIN CONQUERS THE WORLD (and known by other titles) was "inspired" (ripped off) from Obie's original idea. I'd certainly assume so.
That has been suggested, but I don't know if that is true or not. Personally, I tend to think that the Universal Frankenstein movies were more of the inspiration for FCTW. And since producer Tomoyuki Tanaka loved giant monsters, (and placed some in movies where they were not needed), why not make Frankenstein into a giant creature?
Thank you very much for the book info -- I did find it on line and may purchase it.
I suspect your suspicions about who Obie would have worked with on his later, unrealized (or unrealized as promised) projects such as TLW, are correct. One thing about him is that he did seem to encourage new talent in his field. Harryhausen is the great example but as you point out there were others, such as Danforth. This says volumes about his generosity and dedication to his art, even at the potential expense to his own career. Didn't his wife say to him, after his first meeting with RH in 1940 I believe, "You've just met your successor"? Quite a guy, and beset by so many personal problems in his life, quite apart from his professional setbacks.
You're an amazing source of information, obit. Always glad to see your byline on a site!
Awww, shucks! Thanks. You're making me blush right down to the tips of my little tentacles! :)
http://www.woodywelch.com
Animated by Ray H., I trust!
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