Frankenstein Conquers the World (Lost Alternate Ending)

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Frankenstein Conquers the World (Lost Alternate Ending)
status	Found (Breff)

The 1965 Toho-UPA co-produced kaiju film Frankenstein Conquers the World (also known as Frankenstein vs. Baragon) had an alternate ending that was intended for the American release but was never used. The scene itself involved Frankenstein battling a Giant Octopus (known as Oodako) in the climax of the film, after defeating his main opponent of the film, Baragon. He fought fiercely, but eventually succumbed to the many tentacles and long reach of the octopus and was dragged into the water.

In the normal ending, he is simply sucked into the ground by an earthquake.

Information

Stills of the scene were shown to the public in various trade magazines such as Famous Monsters of Filmland in the 1960s, confusing readers into the confusion of the magazine writers. The film was also titled Frankenstein vs The Giant Devilfish in these magazines, further confusing readers.

According to director of the film Ishiro Honda, there were more ending concepts, and that the octopus scene was just one of the five or six endings.

Frankenstein struggling against the monster

"The movie was made in co-production with an American company, Benedict Pictures Corporation. The bosses were so astonished by the octopus scenes from King Kong vs. Godzilla, they begged to include it into the screenplay, even in spite of logic. So we shot some scenes with the Giant Octopus but, in the end, they were left out of the picture."

"In fact Mr.Tsuburaya had shot five or six final scenes for this film. The infamous giant octopus is only one of these endings. That is, the top brass at Toho was told the giant octopus scenes in King Kong vs Godzilla were popular in the U.S., and so they wanted a similar scene in this production. But in the end it was rejected by the U.S side (by Henry Saperstein) as "too abrupt", and was not used in either the respective U.S or Japanese releases. Furthermore, there was never any official plan to utilize the sequence; but an alternative print with that ending was accidentally aired on television surprising many Japanese fans- because it was not the ending they had remembered from the original theatrical release."

The alternate ending had actually aired on Japenese television after the theatrical release, but no recording of the scene exists. There are some deleted stills of the scene, however, it is just unlikely that the scene will ever see the light of day.

Frankenstein starts to succumb to Oodako. This still is the farthest into the scene that has been found.

Trivia

• An octopus scene with Oodako battling Gaira actually occurred in the 1966 sequel, The War of the Gargantuas, and, unlike its predecessor, it actually stayed intact in both versions of the movie.