Farolacton

Farolacton Use(s) Ritual sacrifice, sedative medicine Creator(s) Faro Islanders Aliases Soma (U.S. dub) First appearance King Kong vs. Godzilla

Farolacton (ファロラクトン,   Farorakuton) is the name of a potent ingredient of a fictional species of berry-bearing plant, named Soma in the American version of the film, that is distilled into a beverage offered to King Kong by the people of Faro Island in King Kong vs. Godzilla. It is described as a relative of Actinidia polygama, or silver vine.

Name

Farolacton's Japanese name, Farorakuton (ファロラクトン), is likely a portmanteau of Faro (ファロ,   Faro), the island where the berries were discovered, and lactone (ラクトン,   rakuton), a kind of organic compound in chemistry associated with esters. Despite this, the English subtitles on The Criterion Collection Blu-ray of King Kong vs. Godzilla translate it as Farolacton, without a final E. In the film's U.S. version, the berries from which Farolacton is extracted are called Soma, a name they share with both a ritual drink in the Indo-Aryan culture of the Vedic period and a mood-altering drug from the 1932 novel Brave New World.

Origins

The Farolacton plant grows naturally on Faro Island, where its berries are collected and crushed into juice before being offered to the island's giant god King Kong. The U.S. version of the film in which they appear supposes that their natural medicinal qualities could be used as a means to treat illnesses, and that including them in their diet allowed Kong and Faro Island's other creatures to attain their great size.

History

• King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962)

King Kong vs. Godzilla

Dr. Makioka relaying his findings to Tako while Osamu Sakurai samples their fragrance

Farolacton, when purified into a juice, is highly valued for its narcotizing medicinal advantages, but it comes with a difficult limitation - the berries only grow on the tropical South Pacific Faro Island. Dr. Makioka, a Japanese pharmacologist with a working relationship with the drug company Pacific Pharmaceutical, classified the berries there during an expedition to the Solomon Islands, taking his findings and a quantity of the berries back to Japan for research. Pacific Pharmaceutical mounted an expedition with Tokyo Television to the island, to seek out the berries to obtain a large enough amount to bring back to Japan for further study, as well as document and later obtain the island's giant kaiju to use as the company's mascot, although the island's tribe were initially unwilling to cooperate until they were given cigarettes. After an expedition into the island yielded almost no sightings of the plant, and an encounter with a Giant Lizard, the expedition force chose to remain with the tribe, where they witnessed an attack from a Giant Octopus, who tried to steal the Farolacton juice from a hut in the village which was being used to store it. As the expedition team and the islanders tried to fight the creature off, Kong emerged from the jungle and defeated the Giant Octopus, forcing it to retreat. Afterward, Kong drank several jars of the Farolacton juice before falling unconscious, allowing him to be tied to a raft and transported back to Japan.

Later, when Kong had escaped captivity and climbed to the top of the National Diet Building, the JSDF loaded Farolacton juice into several rockets and fired them into the air above Kong, causing him to fall asleep once again and allow his human captive, Fumiko Sakurai, to be rescued.

Gallery

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  Eric Carter holding a jar of the fruit

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  Faro Islanders juicing the Farolacton fruit

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  Several large jars containing Farolacton juice

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  King Kong drinking Farolacton juice from one of the jars after defeating the Giant Octopus

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