Have you seen King Kong (1933)?

[Rahne McCloud]

I also watched it on Million Dollar Movie. Grew up in Stamford,CT.

[Freddy the Pig]

I'm embarrassed to say that I cannot remember whether I have seen the original or not. After two remakes and countless excerpts and parodies, it all kind of runs together in my aging mind.

[BMalion]

I'm male, 51.

Saw it on TV as a kid all the time. Saw it in a movie theatre (revival house). Bought the DVD and watch it 3-4 times a year.

I feel it is a better film than Citizen Kane and equal to Casablanca. It is one of the best films of all time.

The remakes were, I agree, forgetable.

[mbh]

I saw the 1976 version and the 2005 version in the theaters. At some point in between, I rented the 1933 version on VHS.

The 1933 version is still the best.

Most people seem to hate the 1976 version, but I enjoy it. Yeah, sure, it's a guy in an ape suit, but Rick Baker did an excellent job of putting emotion into his eyes.

I like the 2005 version, but I don't love it. Peter Jackson has a tendency to go overboard with the CGI. The action scenes were a little too thrilling: I had difficulty believing that the men could survive the sauropod stampede, or that Kong's juggling act would not break the woman's neck.

[california jobcase]

Trivia- the giant wall and gate were reused in Gone With the Wind. They got torched.

[Myrnalene]

Have seen it multiple times and own the DVD.

[JohnT]

Yes, it holds up extremely well.

[GuanoLad]

Never seen it.

When I was a lad, growing up at the nadir of the world, we had one TV Channel. In 1978 we finally got a second. In 1989 we finally got a third. NZ still only has three main channels, though it has a satellite selection (equivalent to expensive cable). Australia, where I live now, is not that much better, only by an additional 50%.

Anyway, what that meant was I only saw a very limited selection of films on TV, old and new, and those were regularly repeated instead of widened in scope. The original 1933 King Kong, as far as I know, never was screened in my locality, in my lifetime. The 1978 one was, though.

We "missed out" on a whole bunch of the kind of low brow, or early classics, that America was soaked in and constantly talk about. One of the many things that separate the US from the rest of the world, from my point of view.

Now I look at any older movies earlier than 1950 and wince at the hammy acting and crappy production values, so it's really difficult for me to get past that and enjoy it. I just have a strong resistance towards it.

[outlierrn]

Yes, multiple times

[PSXer]

I've seen it. Hella cool film. I am tired as heck of kids these days who don't like it because "it's old lol"

[Backwater Under_Duck]

Check out This Film from 1926 currently available on Slate. "The Movie-Star Komodo Dragons That Inspired 'King Kong'"
"In 1926, the American Museum of Natural History trustee William Douglas Burden set sail with a team of adventurers that included a hunter, a herpetologist, a cameraman, and Burden’s wife. They were off to capture dragons.
Other intrepid explorers had already confirmed the existence in the East Indies of giant lizards (dubbed Komodo dragons). Yet none of the animals had been brought to the west alive."

I didn't watch the whole thing. It actually shows them shooting one

[Baker]

Originally Posted by PSXer

I've seen it. Hella cool film. I am tired as heck of kids these days who don't like it because "it's old lol"

So true. some of the best and funniest movies I've seen have been old films, especially the silent ones. Buster Keaton's Seven Chances http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0016332/ had me laughing through the whole show.

And for drama, there's the tale of child abuse told in Broken Blossoms, starring Lillian Gish.

[CalMeacham]

Originally Posted by Backwater Under_Duck

Check out This Film from 1926 currently available on Slate. "The Movie-Star Komodo Dragons That Inspired 'King Kong'"
"In 1926, the American Museum of Natural History trustee William Douglas Burden set sail with a team of adventurers that included a hunter, a herpetologist, a cameraman, and Burden’s wife. They were off to capture dragons.
Other intrepid explorers had already confirmed the existence in the East Indies of giant lizards (dubbed Komodo dragons). Yet none of the animals had been brought to the west alive."

I didn't watch the whole thing. It actually shows them shooting one

I wasn't aware of this film, although Cooper was inspired by Komodo dragons (see my earlier post about it).

as I understand it, this or another expedition briought back live Komodo dragons and several dead ones. The live ones didn't last long. Several of the skinsd wrere mounted in a diorama at the American Museum of Natural History's Hall of Reptiles. I recall going to see that many times. The old Hall of Reptiles was vclosed and they built a new one, which put the Komodo dragon skins on display in a new 360 degree diorama, instead of the old one-side-0only one, mounted in a big Lexan hexagon.

I remember there being a hole in one of the skins in the old diorama, and it's still there in the current one, which I've always thought was the gunshot wound.

[C K Dexter Haven]

I agree that it's an amazing film, and should be on everyone "best 100 films of all times" list. Yes, the special effects have been surpassed, but that's sort of like saying that Shakespeare is boring because he writes so many cliches. KING KONG was the inspiration for Ray Harryhausen and other special effects artists, to push the envelope to get us to where we are today. I thought that Peter Jackson's remake was less engrossing than the original, even though the spesh-fx were obviously better, the humanity was less (IMHO.)

[Corcaigh]

I've seen it more than once on TV, but haven't seen it for years

Originally Posted by Scumpup

Yes, I've seen it many times. Kong's fur, which seems to have a life of its own, endlessly fascinates me,

Me too! Turns out the 'rippling' is the fingerprints (so to speak) of the people animating the model, who didn't bother to smooth the fur out after them (or so I heard on a TV documentary - which I think was about Ray Harryhausen)

Originally Posted by CalMeacham

According to the Goldner and Turner book (and other sources), people did react to Kong, with women fainting at the Roxy. We've become more used to these things, and jaded.

Once you see a chestburster, everything else pales in comparison...

Originally Posted by mbh

I like the 2005 version, but I don't love it. Peter Jackson has a tendency to go overboard with the CGI. The action scenes were a little too thrilling: I had difficulty believing that the men could survive the sauropod stampede, or that Kong's juggling act would not break the woman's neck.

Yes, we were all convinced several times that she was dead, or horribly broken

[CalMeacham]

I've seen it more than once on TV, but haven't seen it for years





Me too! Turns out the 'rippling' is the fingerprints (so to speak) of the people animating the model, who didn't bother to smooth the fur out after them (or so I heard on a TV documentary - which I think was about Ray Harryhausen)

It's not that they didn't bother to smooth out the fingerpruints -- they couldn't. According to Goldner and Turner, the animators were horrified when they saw the fur that was obtained, knowing that it was the wrong kind or wrong cut, and would show every touch. For some reason they couldn't get the right stuff and had to proceed with it. But you don't see the same "fur ruffling" effect in O'brien's earlier efforts, or in Son of Kong or Mighty Joe Young.

Again, according to Goldner and Turner, some studio executives, seeing the working shots, responded "Look at Kong bristle!", so the effect worked pretty well for some people.




There was an Energizer TV ad several years ago that duplicated some of the rooftop scenes from Kong. It was done in black and white. I've heard that it was actually done with rod puppetry, not animation, but that they duplicated the "bristling hair" effect by using compressed air blown across the model from different directions.

[Maus Magill]

This thread put the bug into me, and I stayed up way too late last night watching King Kong.

Thanks, Cal.

[Cicero]

I have seen it many times. I have it on a VHS tape somewhere.

I would add a disclaimer that I tend to watch far more old movies than releases from the last 20 years.

[CalMeacham]

Originally Posted by Maus Magill

This thread put the bug into me, and I stayed up way too late last night watching King Kong.

Thanks, Cal.

Just doing my part to downgrade worker efficiency.


Carry on.

[TriPolar]

Originally Posted by C K Dexter Haven

I, even though the spesh-fx were obviously better, the humanity was less (IMHO.)

I've worked in the CGI industry, and sadly never been impressed with the quality of ultra-realism used in movies like the Kong remake. Technically impressive yes, but as you say, lacking humanity. The problem is the difference between modelers and animators. The old fashioned animators spent hours on end adding that humanity to their characters. The modelers want realism so much they forget that animation is so much more than an attempt to create reality. I'll take O'Brien and Harryhausen over CGI any day.

[gytalf2000]

I have seen it multiple times (a dozen times, at least). I'm 51, and saw it when I was a kid in the early 1970s. They played King Kong and various lesser "monster movies" on the TV all the time way back then. Fun times! Love the movie -- it is a true classic!

[StusBlues]

[Despite being a big fan of old monster flicks (primarily the Universal Frankenstein/Dracula/Wolf Man axis), I've only seen Kong a couple of times. It's not a favorite of mine. The special effects are a great artistics achievement, but it's hard for me to believe that several people in the 1930s adamantly insisted that the characters MUST have been played by men in suits because they are so lifelike. One definitely has to suspend disbelief to accept the effects as realistic. I'm not saying this detracts from the film at all, but its effects are far more like claymation than CGI.

Per the OP's surprise that folks hadn't seen the film: in our increasingly diffuse culture, I've given up assuming that there is anything that "everyone" has seen. I was in a meeting with seven or eight people the other day and mentioned that some friends were doing a hokey Dr. Who video. None of them (all between ages of 25-45) had ever heard of Dr. Who. I'd be surprised if most of my co-workers have ever seen Casablanca for that matter.

[CalMeacham]

Originally Posted by StusBlues

[Despite being a big fan of old monster flicks (primarily the Universal Frankenstein/Dracula/Wolf Man axis), I've only seen Kong a couple of times. It's not a favorite of mine. The special effects are a great artistics achievement, but it's hard for me to believe that several people in the 1930s adamantly insisted that the characters MUST have been played by men in suits because they are so lifelike. One definitely has to suspend disbelief to accept the effects as realistic. I'm not saying this detracts from the film at all, but its effects are far more like claymation than CGI.

Per the OP's surprise that folks hadn't seen the film: in our increasingly diffuse culture, I've given up assuming that there is anything that "everyone" has seen. I was in a meeting with seven or eight people the other day and mentioned that some friends were doing a hokey Dr. Who video. None of them (all between ages of 25-45) had ever heard of Dr. Who. I'd be surprised if most of my co-workers have ever seen Casablanca for that matter.

1. A "Popular Mechanics"-like magazine of the day published a two-page spread showing how the effects were done. They correctly showed the dinosaurs being animated, but incorrectly (and in great detail) showed how Kong was portrayed by an actor in a suit. The newspapers in later years carried stories by guys claimed to have played King Kong, and the obituary of legendary Holywood ape-portrayer Charles Gemora said that he played King Kong. Not only was it believed at the time, it was believed for decades afterwards.



It's harder for me to believe that the images from The Lost World (filmed by O'Brien, who did the effects for Kong, eight years earlier) fooled even reporters from the New York Times, but they did. To my modern eye, most of these look pretty obviously fake and very jerky*, and some are downright atrocious. But these really did convince people they were real -- they committed themselves in print.


Even earlier, people were convined that Winsor McCay's cartoon Gertie the Dinosaur was a mechanical construct on stage. There's sufficient testimony to back it up.


This is what I mean by people being used to the technology and jaded -- when it was new and unfamiliar, people's reactions are seriously affected by that, and I suspect they don't even properly recall things when they think back on it. According to what I've read, the first public exhibition of motion pictures showed a train arriving at a station -- and people ducked out of the way. (the footage they were reacting to is extant. I've seen it.)



By the way, I agree about "Casablanca", because I asked people if they'd seen that when I asked about Kong. A lot of them hadn't.



*not all of it, though. Some is beautifully fluid, and is accompanied by matted-in flowing water at the base of the frrame. It showed what O'Brien would be able to do in Kong.

[TriPolar]

Originally Posted by CalMeacham

Even earlier, people were convined that Winsor McCay's cartoon Gertie the Dinosaur was a mechanical construct on stage. There's sufficient testimony to back it up.


This is what I mean by people being used to the technology and jaded -- when it was new and unfamiliar, people's reactions are seriously affected by that, and I suspect they don't even properly recall things when they think back on it. According to what I've read, the first public exhibition of motion pictures showed a train arriving at a station -- and people ducked out of the way. (the footage they were reacting to is extant. I've seen it.)

McKay had chosen a dinosaur to prove that his animation wasn't really live action, but people are hard to convince.

The train situation was highlighted in the recent movie Hugo.

[Corcaigh]

Originally Posted by CalMeacham

It's not that they didn't bother to smooth out the fingerpruints -- they couldn't.

Oh? I seem to remember the show I saw they didn't realise they'd marked Kong's fur until they watched the whole sequence and realised what was causing the rippling.

But that was on the BBC so probably a different source material.

[Dr. Rieux]

I first saw it when I was 21--four years after I saw the 1976 remake. I was underwhelmed.

IMHO, The acting--except for Fay Wray--is terrible, the dialogue is atrocious, the special effects vary in quality from good to really bad, and the famous last line is one of the worst I've ever heard.

Peter Jackson finally got it right.

[StusBlues]

Originally Posted by CalMeacham

Even earlier, people were convined that Winsor McCay's cartoon Gertie the Dinosaur was a mechanical construct on stage. There's sufficient testimony to back it up.

Interesting. I have a story of this in reverse. I was at the dog park a few months ago and saw what I thought to be an animatronic dog. It was huge--far out of proportion of what I had typically conceived as the limits of canine expanse. Turned out to be the real thing. 250 pound of English Mastiff from the same lines as Ch. Mtn. Oaks Gunner, the "Beast" from The Sandlot. Suffice to say that, when one thinks that a dog must be SFX, it is one big damn dog.

[BMalion]

Originally Posted by Dr. Rieux

I first saw it when I was 21--four years after I saw the 1976 remake. I was underwhelmed.

IMHO, The acting--except for Fay Wray--is terrible, the dialogue is atrocious, the special effects vary in quality from good to really bad, and the famous last line is one of the worst I've ever heard.

Peter Jackson finally got it right.

Interesting perspective.

[jsc1953]

Originally Posted by Dr. Rieux

I first saw it when I was 21--four years after I saw the 1976 remake. I was underwhelmed.

IMHO, The acting--except for Fay Wray--is terrible, the dialogue is atrocious, the special effects vary in quality from good to really bad, and the famous last line is one of the worst I've ever heard.

Peter Jackson finally got it right.

Despite my love for the film, I will agree with you about the dialog and acting. Well, to put it more precisely, and charitably: acting in 1933 was very very different than what we're used to now.

But yeah, the scene between Ann and Driscoll ... "say, I think I love you." is just cringe-worthy.

[Mann Slaughter]

Originally Posted by mbh

I saw the 1976 version and the 2005 version in the theaters. At some point in between, I rented the 1933 version on VHS.

The 1933 version is still the best.

Most people seem to hate the 1976 version, but I enjoy it. Yeah, sure, it's a guy in an ape suit, but Rick Baker did an excellent job of putting emotion into his eyes.

I like the 2005 version, but I don't love it. Peter Jackson has a tendency to go overboard with the CGI. The action scenes were a little too thrilling: I had difficulty believing that the men could survive the sauropod stampede, or that Kong's juggling act would not break the woman's neck.

I'm a 49 y.o. male who grew up on monster movies!
I have watched nearly all the Kong films SEVERAL times, in their entirety:

King Kong (1933)
[The leering, full-sized "Kong Head" who just rolls his eyes left to right like one of those old 'Kit-Cat Wall Clocks' sends me rolling every time!]

The Son Of King (1933)
WHAT!?! Only 33% on RottenTomatoes?? I think it's a great sequel!

Mighty Joe Young (1949) [I know it's not Kong, but...!]

King Kong vs Godzilla (1962)
I just watched it about 3 months ago. Yes, it's goofy, but still fun.

King Kong (1976)
My personal favorite, as well as our introduction to the lovely Jessica Lange.
I first saw this at 13 during its theatrical release and was awestruck by the power, and fury displayed as Kong smashed the village gate in his failed attempt to retrieve his blonde Barbie-doll, Dwan.
Yes, I was only 13, (what's a 13 y.o. know about what makes a good movie?) but this scene along with Kong's 1976 death left a lasting impression on me.

King Kong Lives (1986)
The less said about this abortion, the better!

King Kong (2005)
Maybe it was the combination of Naomi Watts, (meh) and Jack Black (ugh!) that rubbed me the wrong way, but I simply couldn't get into this AT ALL!

-Slaughter

[Zebra]

I have seen it many times. I own a copy. One of my favorite films.

Carl Denham is first class bastard.

Man: The airplanes got him in the end.

Carl: No, twas beauty that killed the beast

Me: Actually Carl, I think this is all your fault.

[Maus Magill]

Originally Posted by Zebra

I have seen it many times. I own a copy. One of my favorite films.

Carl Denham is first class bastard.

Man: The airplanes got him in the end.

Carl: No, twas beauty that killed the beast

Me: Actually Carl, I think this is all your fault.

That's something PJ got right in his version of King Kong: Jack Black was Carl Denham.

[Tamerlane]

Originally Posted by CalMeacham

When I was growing up it was on WOR channel 9 in New York all the time, usually on Million Dollar Movie, often twice in a row. Later, they broadcast it, along with Son of Kong and Mighty Joe Young, on Thanksgiving, because they couldn't compete with the parades and Football that ran on the big stations.

This was almost certainly my exposure as well ( I'm not quite 46 ). For some reason Son of Kong, Mighty Joe Young and the "glory" that was Godzilla vs. King Kong all seemed more ubiquitous in my possibly shaky memory ( but see below ), but I've definitely seen the original several times. All before third grade ( when we moved out of NYC ) and never since.

Odd that. I've never really thought about it, but I've never seen the original as an adult. I believe the SF Bay Area's great Creature Features w/ Bob Wilkins showed several of those ape films, but I don't recall seeing the original on that program. My only current memory is from NYC.

[Tixenfleaz]

Own it, love it, and watch it several times a year. Even after factoring in the age, I still consider it one of the best movies of all time.

It's a pretty hard nosed flick. The deaths are brutal, and they don't attempt to make Kong very sympathetic. Hell, he pulls a terrified blonde out of her room and then throws her to her death at one point. And yet you end up feeling sorry for him anyways.

Don't care much for the remakes, though I wanted to. They take a force of nature and turn him into a schmaltzy, love-besotted anti-hero.

(I still don't get why the village wall has giant doors, however. Those must've been a bitch to hang.)

[TriPolar]

Originally Posted by Tixenfleaz

(I still don't get why the village wall has giant doors, however. Those must've been a bitch to hang.)

I don't remember the details, but in King Kong vs. Godzilla the big guy comes into the village to save them from the giant octopus. Maybe they opened the door for him in circumstances like that. But it seems like he could have just climbed over the wall anyway so I don't even see the wall as doing that much good.

[CalMeacham]

Originally Posted by Corcaigh

Oh? I seem to remember the show I saw they didn't realise they'd marked Kong's fur until they watched the whole sequence and realised what was causing the rippling.

But that was on the BBC so probably a different source material.

According to The Making of King Kong by Orville Goldner and George El. Turner (1975) (Goldner was one of the effects crew on the original Kong, so he knew whereof he spoke):

"Kong was eighteen inches high," Delgado says. "The skeleton was made of high-tempered dural and I gave him muscles that react, which is why Kong looks alive instead of stiff. I was given pruned rabbit fur to cover him with and I was never satisfied cwith that because I knew it would show the fingerprints of the animators."

(p. 58)

Kong's fur, as Delgado had predicted, proved to be a problem in animation. Cooper and Schoedsack were appalled when some RKO executives joined them in viewing animation rushes. Their hearts sank as they watched the hair of Kong's head and shoulders ripple with each touch of the animator's fingers. The unwelcome effect was emphasized by artful backlighting.

"Hey, Kong is mad!" one of the officials cried delightedly as Kong roared his defiance. "Look at him bristle!"

p. 131


Marcel Delado was the chied model maker, who'd worked with O'brien for years, and certainly wouldn't have kept quiet about any misgivings.


Goldner and Turner's book was republished in what was advertised as an "expanded": edition as Spawn of Skull Island several years ago, but that edition severely reduced the sizes of many of the originally full-paged illustrations, and reproduced them badly. I think they may have left some material out, too. The added material doesn't make up for it.

[Scumpup]

Is their any record of what ever became of the original rabbit fur Kong model?

[CalMeacham]

Originally Posted by Scumpup

Is their any record of what ever became of the original rabbit fur Kong model?

There were multiple armatures built and used for the film. One was re-used for Son of Kong. Over the years most vanished. One of them was on display at a place called Movie World in California when I was a kid. I never got out there, but there were pictures in Famous Monsters of Filmland. It had long ago lost the fur and the foam rubber musxcles, and was just a bare skeleton*.

It's now in the possession of film historian Bob Burns:

http://hollywoodlostandfound.net/props/kingkong.html




*Animation models have a surprisingly short lifetime, and begin to fall apart almost after the film is finished, it seems. When I saw pictures of Harryhausen's models through the years, they were frequently spalling and peeling.

[CalMeacham]

Christies auctioned off what was claimed to be an armature a couple of years ago. I don't think it's the Burns one. It might be one of the other Kong armatures said to have been made

http://www.originalprop.com/blog/200...n-photography/

This Christie's site says that it's the armature used for the Empire State Building scenes:

http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/m...2-details.aspx

[CalMeacham]

More discussion than you probabnly want on armatures from Kong:

http://monsterkidclassichorrorforum....matures?page=5

[jsc1953]

Originally Posted by Tamerlane

I believe the SF Bay Area's great Creature Features w/ Bob Wilkins showed several of those ape films, but I don't recall seeing the original on that program.

Bob Wilkins never showed anything anywhere near that good. A lot of movies that showed up later on MST3K, I saw previously on Creature Features ("Horror of Party Beach" was definitely one)

[Quimby]

Thought this Youtube link would be relevant.

[Bosda Di'Chi of Tricor]

Seen it, loved it, own it.

[Slithy Tove]

"Hattie McDaniel's sister in a coconut bra."

Now there's where you bring your A game to bar trivia night.

[Ethilrist]

I saw the full-length (or fuller-length than shortened... whatever...) version as a kid, and I remember being absolutely terrified by all the jungle scenes, particularly with everybody falling to their deaths and getting stomped on by Kong. And, in Faye's case, stripped. Once they got back to the US, the movie kinda screeched to a halt.

But, still, a great movie.