King Kong Vs. Godzilla 1962!

What a pair! The evolution of the giant monster movie is amazing to study, but always you know the two biggest beasts on the beat are King Kong and Godzilla, the latter having been inspired to some extent by the former.

These titans clashed in the third of Toho's blazingly entertaining Godzilla flicks  and apparently was the most popular of the lot despite the movie's odd tone. I've only ever seen the movie in the American version, and like many others was under the misunderstanding that the Japanese variation ended differently with Big-G on top.

Of course that's not true. In both versions of the movie the epic contest ends with Kong swimming to home and Godzilla beneath the waves, gone but not forgotten. I finally at last got to see the Japanese version when I picked up the delightful new Blu-Ray set of the Showa movies from Criterion. The Japanese version is superior in my estimation for the simple reason the comedy is suppressed and evident night scenes obscure in many scenes the tattered weaknesses of the Kong suit. The original music helps immensely to give the film an epic scope.

While there is comedy in the show, there is less a feel of out and out farce, a greater sense of threat from these two mighty monsters. As it should be.

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The Eighth Wonder Of The World!

There is nothing to match the wonder and magic and horror of the original King Kong. Whatever was in the brew when they concocted this delightful entertainment so many decades ago, a time when sound was still relatively new to movies and the Empire State Building was brand new proof that man was nigh invincible in his struggle against nature, King Kong sailed into theaters and wowed the crowd then and still does today. There has never been a place like Skull Island save inside the magic of that movie and save in our memories of it, a wild haunted dangerous territory lorded over by a king unlike any in all the rest of the world -- Kong!

The blending of the chutzpah of Merian C. Cooper and his film making partner Earnest Shoedsack with the visual alchemy of Willis O'Brien and his gang of stalwarts gave the world something distinct and wonderful and awe-inspiring and lasting.

There's little convincing modern audiences that what they are seeing is beyond delight, inured as they have become by movies filled with flying men, warlike women, sprawling machines and more and more and more and yet more, but maybe just maybe we can try to leverage a little of this fantastic concoction and insert it into the modern imagination.

King Kong is the finest piece of cinema ever manufactured and spread to the masses. I know others will leap to suggest this one and that one and the other one, but none of them are like the mighty King Kong and they know it.

One feels sorry for Son of Kong, the quickie sequel that dashed into theaters to take advantage of the fuss caused by its daddy. The story picks up and we follow our brave hero this time (the showman who captured Kong the first time), a man made humble (a little) by his collision with Kong and a man looking to for another bite at the apple but not really expecting it. He wants still to be rich, prove he can do what other have not done and instead in this movie he finds a creature who is a pale shadow of his kind and he finds a girl who is looking for a man who is reliable and responsible and who will be with her when times are tough.

The Son of Kong is a love story like what came before, but with a difference in that the changes in the people have already happened before they meet and they are lucky to cast their lot with one another. It's not as good as what came before, but it's still pretty good.

It's been a good countdown to Halloween, and tomorrow we wrap it up with even more Kong. Be here.

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The Ghost Of Slumber Mountain!

The Ghost Of Slumber Mountain is Willis O'Brien's test film for the silent classic The Lost World. It's short, running under twenty minutes and the stop-motion action is limited. But it establishes the concept of stop-motion animation blending with live action and being apprehended by the viewer as one experience. That was the key to what made King Kong such a phenomenon, and you can see that formula getting a workout here.

The characters and action are quaint today, perhaps they were even quaint by the standards of the day, but the line from this short movie to King Kong is easy to see.




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Finding The Lost World!

I snagged an entertaining gem, Irwin Allen's The Lost World starring Claude (Invisible Man) Raines, Michael (Klaatu) Rennie, David (The Fly) Hedison, Jill (Tiffany Case) St.John, Fernando (It is better to look good than to feel good) Lamas, and many more. (Surprisingly large cast given a "lost world".) It also features one of the most annoying animals ever in a movie, Frosty the Poodle, a beast you are actually eager to see gobbled up by a big old lizard. (I posted on this movie here a few years ago after seeing part of it; my opinion of the action is the same though overall it's a better story than I thought then.)

This is a project presumably that Willis O'Brien and perhaps Ray Harryhausen were scheduled to do, but which slipped away because of time and costs. So what you get here are giant lizards with stuff glued on them for dinosaurs. It's pretty ho-hum save actually when two of them fight and it's surprisingly intense. The acting is blah, the story is coherent, the sets are pretty fine, and the wardrobe offbeat and distracting in a movie supposedly set in the Amazon. St.John wears some distracting pink boots and pants through most of it, but then she might be distracting regardless. After they get to the Amazon the night before they helicopter onto the "lost world", they lounge around a pretty remote looking outpost in ties and dresses, looking way too slick for the outdoors. The whole of the production has that patented Irwin Allen antiseptic look to it, that might cut it on TV, but tears into the "realism" of a larger effort. But that didn't stop me from finding some enjoyment in this one, after finally getting to see it all the way through.

But what really got me to buy this wasn't the 1960 version, but the fact this package also included a restored version of the 1925 original with Wallace Beery and special effects by Willis O'Brien. I have this on VHS but this is a much better copy with many added scenes and much greater clarity. As one review put it, at last I got to enjoy this movie on its own merits as a story that actually captured me and moved me along, rather than endure a truncated version primarily to get to see some great special effects. The Missing Link character is in full form here and comes across much more menacingly. The Challenger character by Beery is hilarious and actually a bit scary from time to time. The dinos are great and the especially the bronto in London, a great great sequence. They used tones on this print, using sepia for day shots and blue for night shots adding to the emotional range of the movie. The organ music background was adequate and actually keyed to the action. All in all worth the price of the package all on its own.

And then there are the other extras, such as really lush galleries of photos and promotional materials. Included also is the complete Dell comic book adaptation by Gil Kane or maybe Alex Toth, there seems to be disagreement. That's a real treat, since I've seen a few pages but never the whole thing. It follows the movie fairly closely and those pink pants are just as distracting when Kane/Toth renders them. I see a lot of Kane here by the way, though I don't rule out Toth's hand.

All in all this is a dandy little package, well worth the bucks, and more so if you can scrap up a few coupons like I did.

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