"KONG" SCALES MOVIE HEIGHTS

          The one, the only, the great original.
          An enthusiastic movie director happens on a map, and with a roll of the dice risks lives taking a steamship around the world hoping to bring back something huge, something the so-called civilized world never imagined even existed.
          And to ensure that the swell picture which the director sweats blood to make brings back big money at the box-office, he's determined to find a pretty girl to star as the film's love-interest.
          King Kong (1933) is unquestionably the greatest film to feature a director trolling around a women's shelter. It's also regarded as the greatest horror film, but that genre classification lacks accuracy. More of a fantasy adventure, really. Either way, King Kong is the most technically advanced movie of Hollywood's Golden Age.
          Featuring Fay Wray as the beautiful and brave Ann Darrow, Robert Armstrong as the director, Carl Denham, and Bruce Cabot as the big lug, Driscoll. And most of all, starring...KONG, The Eighth Wonder of the World!
          For many years, a Hollywood hoax has circulated that King Kong was merely a toy figure, positioned and photographed countless times in the laborious stop-motion animation process. This is of course pure hogwash. Kong has to have been real, he just has to.
          The lead animator, Willis O'Brien, had directed his own short film, The Dinosaur and the Missing Link, back in 1915, so he already had about 17 years of experience using stop-motion to film fights between dinosaurs and big apes.
          The person most responsible for bringing the monarch of Skull Island to life was Merian C. Cooper, a decorated war hero who spent 9 months in a Soviet POW camp. Cooper and Edgar Wallace came up with the idea for the story; Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack produced and directed the RKO colossal smash hit. (Both Cooper and Schoedsack appear in an airplane which shoots at Kong atop the Empire State Building.) Interestingly, according to IMDb, Cooper died in 1973 only one day after the passing of actor Armstrong, who worked in many a Cooper-produced picture.
          What exactly is Kong? He's not a gorilla. Indeed, Skull Island is nowhere near Africa, but rather somewhere west of Sumatra. That said, try explaining this to the people of the island. Yes, King Kong has racist overtones with which one must kindly cope in order to appreciate the film's escapist Depression-era appeal.
          Since its release, many attempts have been made to ape the runaway success of King Kong, including Son of Kong, Mighty Joe Young, a 1970s re-make with Jeff Bridges and Jessica Lang, the 2005 re-make directed by Peter Jackson, and Kong: Skull Island (2017). But not one of these releases can compare with the real thing. Most don't have the classic look, and all the computer animation in the world can never bring back that original charm.
          Eminently available online.


KING KONG
Starring Fay Wray,
Robert Armstrong,
Bruce Cabot,
Noble Johnson,
Frank Reicher,
Steve Clemente
Directed by Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack
Written by James Ashmore Creelman, Ruth Rose
From an idea conceived by Merian C. Cooper and Edgar Wallace
Runtime 100 minutes

Stewart Kirby writes for
THE INDEPENDENT
and
TWO RIVERS TRIBUNE