All 10 King Kong movies ranked from worst to best

9. King Kong Escapes

Kicking off our list is King Kong Escapes, a movie released back when Toho was licensed to use the iconic character in various silver screen showdowns. It arrived in movie theaters back in 1967 and was Toho’s second movie starring Kong, essentially serving as a standalone sequel to King Kong vs. Godzilla. Time has not forgotten the 1962 clash of the titans because of how iconic it was, but King Kong Escapes hasn’t been quite as lucky, as it’s often overlooked.

It’s an unusual but fun movie that sees an evil supervillain named Dr. Who (no, not that one), who is actually inspired by the James Bond villains of the time, attempt to manipulate Kong into digging at the North Pole for the radioactive Element X. The reason of course being that he created a robot named Mechani-Kong to do it for him but it short-circuited. Naturally, there’s a battle between Kong and Mechani-Kong, and somewhere in-between the former falls in love with one of the film’s main characters Lt. Susan Watson.

King Kong Escapes was very much designed as a kaiju movie about Kong battling an evil robot version of himself. On that front, it’s a major success, so the rest of the story doesn’t need to hold up. Nevertheless, it’s a fun entry in Kong’s iconic movie showdowns, even if it doesn’t offer as much as some of the others.