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Title: King Kong (1933) |
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Review of King Kong (Two-Disc Special Edition)
- DVD Features:
Audio Commentary
Documentaries
Other
Theatrical Trailer
Description
- "Now you see it. You're amazed. You can't believe it. Your eyes open wider. It's horrible, but you can't look away. There's no chance for you. No escape. You're helpless, helpless. There's just one chance, if you can scream. Throw your arms across your eyes and scream, scream for your life!" And scream Fay Wray does most famously in this monster classic, one of the greatest adventure films of all time, which even in an era of computer-generated wizardry remains a marvel of stop-motion animation. Robert Armstrong stars as famed adventurer Carl Denham, who is leading a "crazy voyage" to a mysterious, uncharted island to photograph "something monstrous ... neither beast nor man." Also aboard is waif Ann Darrow (Fay Wray) and Bruce Cabot as big lug John Driscoll, the ship's first mate. King Kong's first half-hour is steady going, with engagingly corny dialogue ("Some big, hard-boiled egg gets a look at a pretty face and bang, he cracks up and goes sappy") and ominous portent that sets the stage for the horror to come. Once our heroes reach Skull Island, the movie comes to roaring, chest-thumping, T. rex-slamming, snake-throttling, pterodactyl-tearing, native-stomping life. King Kong was ranked by the American Film Institute as among the 50 best films of the 20th century. Kong making his last stand atop the Empire State Building is one of the movies' most indelible and iconic images. --Donald Liebenson
DVD features
Not surprisingly, the eighth wonder of the world’s DVD treatment is nothing short of spectacular. The newly restored, digitally mastered print of the 1933 version of King Kong is sharp, well balanced, and given that this film is seventy years old, has very few scratches or blemishes. The restoration is nothing short of amazing. What may frustrate some is the audio. Though crystal clear, it is still in 2.0 Mono. The soundtrack on Kong is such an integral part of the film you really wished they could have pulled it out to at least 2.0 Surround; but this is a minor criticism. The bulk of the commentary track is by visual effects veterans Ray Harryhausen and Ken Ralston joyfully discussing the special effects of the film and discussing why King Kong is such a favorite and important film to the community of visual effects artists. Spliced between their commentaries are colorful and humorous anecdotes from director from Merian C. Cooper and Fay Wray. The two documentaries on disc two run over three and half hours long. I Am Kong! The Exploits of Merian C. Cooper is an engaging documentary on the renegade, Hemingway-like director. It is fascinating to learn that Cooper was every bit the adventurer that the fictional director Carl Denham in King Kong was in the film. RKO Production 601: The Making of Kong, Eighth Wonder of the World is a two and a half hour documentary broken into 7 parts: "The Origins of King Kong," "Willis O'Brien and Creation," "Cameras Roll on Kong," "The Eighth Wonder," "A Milestone in Visual Effects," "Passion, Sound and Fury," "The Mystery of the Lost Spider Pit Sequence," and "King Kong's Legacy." Also included is complete footage of the legendary "The Lost Spider Pit Sequence." Presenting the segments are various film historians and filmmakers including Rudy Behlmer, Cooper biographer Mark Cotta Vaz, the Chiodo Brothers (of Team America: World Police special effects fame), and directors John Landis and Peter Jackson. Here you will learn everything you would ever want to know about the making and importance of King Kong, including that the producer/director team of Cooper and Schoedsack played the pilots who shoot Kong off the Empire State Building. The highly anticipated, long-awaited release of King Kong will meet most viewers' expectations, and exceed everyone's else. --Rob Bracco
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Comments for King Kong
- Posted on 2008-06-03
Long Live The King
Can you imagine being a teenage kid, or even an adult, back in 1933 when this classic first hit the movie theaters; sitting there staring up at the big screen and watching this wonderful movie, which I'm sure more than a few people in the audience proclaimed as being the greatest adventure story they've ever seen in their lives.
Little did those people know that 75 years later KING KONG would still be unmatched in its cinematic greatness, or in it's ability to enthrall and delight the observer.
KING KONG is non-stop action from beginning to end, featuring great acting, great writing, great theater, and great special effects.
It also features the greatest heavyweight fight in cinematic history, when Kong and the T-Rex go at it for one round.
Also, there's just something about the Black and White format in which this picture was shot, and I believe that that in itself lends a lot to this movies timeless appeal.
Carl Denham: the guy who is always behind the camera in the movie, also utters one of the classic--and overlooked lines--in Hollywood history, when he refuses the African Chieftans offer to trade 6 native girls for 'the golden woman', stating under his breath that "Blonds are scarce around here." That line cracks me up every time I hear it, and I've heard it a hundred times.
KING KONG is truly a delight to watch, and any parent who wants to share a truly memorable movie watching experience with their movie loving offspring, owes it to their child to turn them on to this movie.
Yes, it was "Beauty killed the beast," but this movie will live forever.
The King is dead... yet he'll outlive us all. Long live the King of all adventure movies.
Score: 5
- Posted on 2008-02-22
King Kong 1933
Most classic movie of all. Movie maker Robert Armstrong hires Fay Wray to be his star. They sail to Skull Island in Indonesia where evolution has gone awry. Dinosaurs roam, and a gigantic ape rules. Natives have built a wall to contain King Kong. They capture Wray and offer her as a sacrifice. Armstrong and his crew rescue her and transport Kong to Manhattan's Great White Way as a headliner. He breaks loose and terrorizes yet another island. He climbs the Empire State Building with Wray and is riddled with bullets from planes. He falls to his death. King Kong is a film which touches modern consciousness. It shows man clashing with the nature of which he is a part. There are interracial overtones. Armstrong declares, "It was beauty killed the beast." Fay Wray lived with the film and finally accepted it as a classic.
Score: 4
- Posted on 2008-02-11
LET'S TALK ABOUT ALL KING KONGS
First there was KING KONG 1933. This is the unsurpassed classic fantasy, but I'll get back to that in a bit. Then there was KING KONG APPEARS IN EDO (Japanese) 1938. Unfortunately it's been reported that the film has been lost or destroyed. Maybe a copy will surface someday. Then there was KING KONG vs GODZILLA 1962. This was honestly meant to be a tribute to the original classic for inspiring the Godzilla franchise. Why King Kong looked the way he did I'll never know. He looked pretty bad. But I still love that film. Then there was a King Kong cartoon called THE KING KONG SHOW 1966 where Kong is a friendly hero which inspired the live action movie KING KONG ESCAPES 1967. Which had by far the worst looking Kong suit, but for some reason I always enjoy that one too. Maybe because of Dr. Who voiced by Paul Frees (American dub) and Robot Kong. Now he looked awesome. Basic, but awesome. Speaking of Robot Kongs this leads to KING KONG 1976. If you were alive and aware of your own existance in the 70s You couldn't help but hear the hype of a brand new King Kong movie that was going to use a full sized mechanical Kong to star in this movie. But that just wasn't the case. The robotic Kong looked so terribly unconvincing they had to hire a man to design and wear a suit. At the time seemed to look convincing, but doesn't compare to the very realistic looking Peter Jackson's KING KONG 2005. More of that in a moment. Then of course there was the forgettable KING KONG LIVES. Year of release also forgettable. KING KONG 2005 had the potential to be a fierce competitor to the original 1933 classic, but dropped the ball big time by overdoing unecessary human character development and wasteful silly Kong moments. My personal edited version is really cool. It runs 2 hrs and 15 mins and makes perfect sense. The one thing that really stands out in my mind is; The natives in the 2005 version were truly horrible nasty people. If anyone should have been "Kong stomped", it was definately them. Women and children included. I now return to the 1933 masterpiece. Regardless as to the faults that people point out, this movie is perfection unto itself. The pacing is perfect. The matte shots are breathtaking. The acting is as it should be. Every moment counts. A terrified screaming female makes the most sense. Let's face it, no girl is going to fall in love with a 25 foot gorilla that kills innocent people no matter how sweet the music soundtrack is. The puppet animation in this movie set the standard for many generations to come and has never really been improved upon. I'm not referring to CGI, only Stop Motion filming. I remember one time they showed a heavily edited version of this on Channel 9 New York, five days in a row at 1 pm. I believe it was during the winter recess in the late 1960s. (Please chime in if you remember this or have factual information). No matter how you slice it Kong had to be killed off. He was a brutal vicious murderous beast, even in the sappy versions. Even with the technology of today if anyone attempted to duplicte this movie exactly as it is. They would fail miserably because magic can't be duplicated. Thank goodness for this DVD.
Score: 5 - Posted on 2008-01-08
Kingdom Kong
What can I say? This film was one of the reasons, along with Fantasia, Jaws and Gone With the Wind, that I wanted to get into filmmaking when I was a boy.
I watch it now, in this amazing restoration, and realize that even then I thought the acting was atrocious. The best thing that could happen to these shallow people is having Ann Darrow snatched up by a giant gorilla, who apparently has more personality than even the leads.
As a milestone in filmmaking, nothing beats this thing. I saw the film projected, for the first time, on the big screen here in Hollywood and during the battle with the T-Rex (actually an Allosaurus) this sixteen year old girl sitting behind me said, "That is so f$%king cooool!" The sound design is jaw-dropping, especially since sound had only entered movies a little over four years earlier.
The movie is actually quite disturbing, because as soon as the crew of the SS Venture get to the island, it's kill, kill, kill, kill. Man kills Dinosaur, Dinosaur kills Man, Beast kills Man, Beast kills Native, which is also man but not according to 1933, Beast kills New Yorker, which is Man in a suit, then Man kills Beast then says Beauty killed the Beast.
This two disc set is worth every death. The image is clean and stable, but still looks like film. The documentaries are wonderful, especially the Marion Cooper doc. The recreation of the Spider Pit sequence is rhetorical, since we'll never really know what it looked like. (There was a customer on Amazon a couple of years ago who claimed he had that scene preserved in a battered 16mm print but that Warners wouldn't meet his price. I never found out what happened to him).
Though dated and racist and clumsy as hell, the editing, the sound, Max Steiner's grandfather of all film scores, and especially Kong himself, make this a film I need to see every once and a while just to remind me of why I got into this crazy business.
Score: 4 - Posted on 2007-11-16
Eerie, terrifying, unsettling, even today....
I just saw this again on TCM, and the surprising thing about this film is that despite the fact that it's over 70 years old, its power hasn't diminished at all. Despite 2 remakes and countless parodies (The Simpson is especially fond of parodying this film), it is still a great motion picture. It is very intense and surprisingly terrifying, especially in the uncut version. Despite the "advances" in SFX today, these effects don't feel dated, because you're so drawn into the story, and you really care about the characters. Fay Wray and Carl Denham are real people, not just stock characters reading movie lines (ironically, Denham is a film producer here). The scenes where Kong battles prehistoric creatures are unnerving and still unsettling even today (in some reissues, these scenes were cut, but have been restored for all subsequent DVD editions).
As much as I admire Peter Jackson, I cannot understand why he would want to remake/"reimagine" this film, as it is his favorite film. He is an excellent filmmaker (the scope of the Lord of the Rings films is amazing, and he should commended for that), but how can you remake something you love? I don't understand it at all, and especially when the original film has so much force, power, and depth to it. It's like remaking The Wizard of Oz or Gone with the Wind.
Regardless, the original King Kong is magnificent, one of those movie classics that more than lives up to its reputation.
Score: 5