Review of King Kong

Introduction

Of all the monster movies of the 1930s, RKO Pictures` "King Kong" is possibly the most famous. Although Universal had its cadre of classic monsters such as Frankenstein and Dracula, they never had anything that caught the public imagination the way the big animated monkey did.

Kong, for he was only crowned King shortly before the premiere, was the brainchild of adventurer-moviemaker Merian C Cooper and his cinematographer and creative partner Ernest B Schoedsack. Cooper and Schoedsack had made names for themselves making exotic adventure movies that were genuine expeditions for the filmmakers. Kong (Production 601 as it started out) was their most ambitious project.

Author of repute Edgar Wallace was drafted in to develop Cooper`s basic concept but in the long run the story was Cooper`s (Wallace passed away from pneumonia while the project was in its early development stage). The screenplay was developed by James A. Creelman but the energy and heart of the tale came from Schoedsack`s first-time writer wife Ruth Rose.

Mrs Schoedsack delivered exactly what was needed. Chief protagonist Carl Denham was a version of Merian C Cooper; Ruth Rose identified with heroine Ann Darrow (although she would dispute any similarity) and stalwart hero Jack Driscoll had a lot of her husband in his makeup.

To play the characters, Cooper hired established movie heavy Robert Armstrong to play the ultimate showman Carl Denham. Executive producer David O Selznick had discovered Bruce Cabot, who would play hero Jack Driscoll. For the beautiful Ann Darrow, Cooper cast an actress he had first used in the silent "The Four Feathers" and "The Most Dangerous Game". Fay Wray.

That of course left Kong himself, and to that end Cooper recruited the man who most modern day effects people would call the grandfather of visual effects - Willis O`Brien. "Kong" was to be the biggest effects show of its era, the "Star Wars" of its day. During its production it would pioneer a great number of effects techniques that are still used today. Stop motion animation, travelling matte, back projection and high speed camera. O`Brien`s team turned an eighteen-inch posable model into the eighth wonder of the world.

This edition of the movie was issued in 2001, and currently (as of June 2004) offers the only version of the movie available on DVD.

Video

The movie is, of course, presented in the original 1.33:1. The passage of time and changes in ownership (including a spell in the public domain) have not been kind to "King Kong". Various edits made in the film for reissue, the malign hand of censors and film elements simply being lost over the years have made restoring the movie to its original 1933 state well nigh impossible. In 1938, the Hays Office had ordered three minutes of scenes to be cut for a reissue. 1942 and 1952 reissues were not even struck from the original negative. In 1956, the movie started its regular outings on television and an attempt was made to restore missing footage, but a search of the vaults proved fruitless.

An attic in Philadelphia proved to be the final resting place of the missing footage and in 1971 the material was restored to the film by its then copyright holder Janus Films. In view of the lack of success finding deleted material from the film in 1956, it may be optimistic to hope any footage (such as the legendary spiders footage) has survived beyond what is currently available. The original 1933 titles are sadly missing.

The source material this DVD is made from suffers from standard tv misframing - trimming a margin off the top, bottom and left-hand edges of the frame. You can of course see more of the frame on a computer monitor. The framing only affects the titles to any great extent, and the cast list at the end loses the first couple of letters of each of the character names.

There is a lot of wear and tear on the print, but not really any more than movies of the same era, like the Universal Horror releases. Contrast, however, is quite a bit higher than the Universal releases but matches the contrast range of any published production stills of the movie. The 1971 restoration material doesn`t cause any kind of quality jump, and the big head rig chewing the native is there in all its glory.

Audio

The sound is fuzzy - as you should expect from a movie of this era. If the sound is too clear and there isn`t any hiss or crackle then somebody`s been fiddling around with the sound recording. Thankfully "King Kong" has not been tarted up soundwise and the original mono mix is reproduced faithfully as Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono.

"Kong"`s sound was the responsibility of sound engineer Murray Spivack, who proved a number of the blood-curdling screams of the ape`s victims. Spivack appears in the 1992 retrospective documentary "It Was Beauty Killed The Beast" included on the disc.

The movie was scored by film music legend Max Steiner (reportedly Cooper paid for the score himself when the RKO suits pulled the budget). It is widely regarded as a masterwork and one of the more influential scores in Hollywood history.

Features

The major extra on the disc is the 1992 retrospective documentary "It Was Beauty Killed The Beast", made by Turner Home Video. Anybody familiar with the Universal Horror releases will feel right at home with the presentation of this 25 minute piece, featuring regular Universal Horror historian Rudy Behlmer. Other contributors include author George Turner, Richard Edlund of Boss Film Effects, Murray Spivack, Linwood Dunn (one of the great pioneers of optical effects), and composer Jerry Goldsmith.

There is also a set of text notes on "The Films of King Kong". Unfortunately, there are no subtitles for the movie or the documentary.

Conclusion

One of, if not the most fondly remembered monster movies of all time. "King Kong" was a movie original, a concept born of the cinema without any literary forebears. Regularly reissued and rediscovered by successive generations of film nuts and inspiring generations of budding filmmakers, Kong continues to be one of the most influential movies ever made. It is certainly the most accessible of that most rarified variety of motion picture.

It`s the horror film most of us cut our movie-viewing teeth on - scary enough to send you scurrying behind the settee but fun enough not to do any lasting damage. I adore this original, definitive version of King Kong, and my warm feelings for it extend to feeling charitable about Dino DeLaurentiis`s ill considered 1976 remake. 2005 should see the release of Peter Jackson`s version. I have great hopes for this latest remake as Peter Jackson is a dyed-in-the-wool Kongophile. However it turns out, it will be a movie to queue for although this version is the toughest act to follow.

This is an authentic classic, the sort of thing that should be taught in film school. Horror fan, monster-movie fan or cinephile, this is one movie that should be in everybody`s collection and currently budget-priced there should be no excuse for not having it in your collection, even if you`re holding out for some elusive or distant super-duper restoration version.