Mighty Joe Young (1949)

As I had stated yesterday, we were not done with our look at gigantic apes in movies. That's why today, I will be looking at the 1949 classic, “Mighty Joe Young.”

Merian Cooper and Ernest Schoedsack, who came together as producer and director to give everyone the masterpiece of “King Kong” in 1933, collaborated again with another fantastic movie in “Mighty Joe Young.” In this new movie, the producers are attempting to make the whole world love, or at the very least feel a deep sympathy for, their gigantic, robot-like gorilla.

The emphasis is on comedy and the huge Joe Young of Africa, to give the star of the film full credit, can be frighteningly funny and appealing at times, it's got to be admitted. However, Mighty Joe Young also as a streak of viciousness that is all around as awesomely horrifying as was the rage of King Kong. Let that statement stand as fair caution just in case young children may have close to nightmares.

We first see Joe as a baby when he is adopted as a pet by the young daughter (Lora Lee Michel) of a trader (Regis Toomey) in Africa, who feeds the gorilla through a baby bottle and rocks him to sleep in a cradle to the sounds of “Beautiful dreamer.” Twelve years later, the full-grown gorilla and his friend, Jill Young (Terry Moore), are brought to Hollywood by a night club promoter (Robert Armstrong and Ben Johnson) as the stars of an incredible jungle floor show.

The gorilla is a shocking attraction, holding Jill and a piano on a platform above his head, playing tug-of-war with a dozen strong athletes, including Primo Carnera and Man Mountain Dean, and basically putting on a good show until a trio of drunks (Paul Guilfoyle, Bess Flowers and Nestor Paiva) supply him with liquor and torment him into a scaring rage.

Poor Joe goes crazy, trashes the night club, lets a herd of lions out of a glass-enclosed exhibit behind the bar and is sentenced to be shot for his mistreatment for the laws. Jill, Max O'Hara (Armstrong), the night club owner, and a cowboy who is in love with Jill (Johnson), cook up an elaborate plan to get Joe safely on a boat to Africa. Their wild escape in a movie van stops as they reach an orphanage on fire where Joe, in a brilliant, favorite effort, helps rescue a trapped child.

T.M.P. posted in their review, “It is this spectator's opinion that "Mighty Joe Young" is not nearly as consistently funny as the producers hoped it would be, but it certainly is a most unusual show. For sheer, incredible make-believe there is nothing to quite equal the comic scramble of a group of O'Hara's cowboys attempting to capture the jungle giant by lassoing him. On the other hand, the rampage in the night club is violent action, unrelieved by any genuine comic inventiveness, which is what this part of the picture desperately needs.”

The magic of “Mighty Joe Young” is the quality of the mechanical ape, but even that originality wears thin after a while. The human actors are, considering the circumstances, quite good. Terry Moore is the girl, Robert Armstrong the nightclub owner and Ben Johnson, the cowboy. Johnson is an attractive newcomer with a heavy Oklahoma accent.

This is a completely amazing movie that I highly recommend everyone to check out, if you loved “King Kong.” It may not be as good, but it is definitely a movie that everyone should watch.

If you could believe, but I'm pretty sure everyone knows this, but Walt Disney actually remade this movie in the late 90s. I first heard about it when I saw the ad in the beginning of my “Lion King 2” VHS. How is it? Stay tuned tomorrow to find out in “Halloween Month.”

Beasts of the Southern Wild

I know that this is strange that I am posting another review, that to during “Halloween Month.” However, there is an explanation for this. I am an assistant for an English 101 class at my old Community College twice a week at night, and one day we were watching a film. When I had informed the professor that I have a blog where I talk about films, she asked if I could review the film we watched in class since the students will be writing a Rhetorical Analysis paper on the film, and that way they can reference it in their paper, along with other critics who reviewed this film, like Roger Ebert. The title of this film is called “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” released in 2012.

Now, if you haven’t heard of it, don’t feel bad. I hadn’t heard of it until the professor had mentioned it to the students, so I decided to check out the film with the class. The basic story of this film is that it’s about Hushpuppy (Quvenzhané Wallis) and her father, Wink (Dwight Henry), and how they are surviving in their town called “The Bathtub,” which looks like a city post-Hurricane Katrina.

This is a directorial debut of Benh Zeitlin, who based this on a screenplay and stage play by his partner, Lucy Alibar. Here’s a trivia: they actually found post-Katrina locations in the damaged bayous of Louisiana, and made this movie on a small budget shooting it at this realistic and particularly detailed town. Everyone in the Bathtub knows one another, since this is a small place, and, if you can believe it, they all look around the age of the people who were hit with Katrina.

One night in class, the professor had told the students that one time, she had a student who was from Pakistan and told the entire class that they were spoiled since they had not believed that there were actually places like the Bathtub in this movie. I would have to agree with the student, because as a son of parents who are from Pakistan, I have gone back and seen the places there both alone and with my parents, so I can definitely relate to this film. Also, during the Winter session of 2010, when I was a student at my Community College, I went on a Study Abroad Program to Mexico, which also is a country that is strong in poverty. Little children would be coming up to us and asking if we wanted to buy some gum, which really made us sad. When those kids get older, they would be selling jewelry in a booth on the Zocalo. Whatever we try to do, we cannot seem to convince the people who can stop poverty make it stop, which is a sad fact of life. I would be really surprised if people think that there aren't places with extreme poverty because it shows that they were living under a rock and not going out to see the world. If they go out and see those places, then they would know and understand. Believe it or not, there are places like the Bathtub where people do not have all the resources that we have and have to really struggle to survive by scrounging up whatever they can to eat. Especially since the technology that we get shipped here are made by slave labors that are homeless and have no family or place to go. A lot of people aren't spoiled since they don't have the resources that we have, and this film clearly shows that.

After you see this movie, I would hope that all of your eyes will open up and you will know, if you have never known before, that there are places like the Bathtub that are really common amongst “Third-World Countries.” Not everyone has the resources that many people do since places can’t give the people clean water or neat clothes or even good food to eat. The world is a scary place that people should realize is not full of sunshine and rainbows, even though we are taught that from childhood. If only everyone had a clear vision and idea of that saying, then they would realize the true meaning behind it.

Wallis and Henry are actually really believable in their roles of Hushpuppy and Wink. They play a father and daughter who are struggling together to survive. The mother is absent for unknown reasons, but we as viewers can speculate that maybe she died in the Hurricane. That would be my best guess, but I’m not saying that I would know for sure. However, since Hushpuppy is all Wink has left, he is trying to do the best he can to take care of her, even though it may seem farfetched with the methods he uses. In the end, he does make her strong and stand up to certain things like finding out how to survive with making food and facing fears. Hushpuppy really grows in this movie and does show that there are kids her age that are strong kids that will learn how to take care of themselves if something bad were to happen. I really liked this relationship, although there were things about Wink that I didn’t like. For instance, he is an alcoholic, but that’s probably common amongst a lot of families.

Overall, this is a powerful movie with a very powerful message. Even though there are people that are telling the citizens of the Bathtub that they are not allowed to stay there and must evacuate, they don’t want to leave their home since they are comfortable where they’re at and feel like they don’t need help since they feel harmed or threatened.

I highly recommend everyone to see this movie. You will not be the same after seeing it. It will open your eyes up to a whole new part of the world that you probably didn’t know existed. Since I was already familiar that there are cities and towns with the citizens in poverty, it wasn’t new but still left a powerful impact after I finished it. This film will teach you that you need to survive and learn how to be strong individuals after you’ve seen it.

Roger Ebert admitted in his review, “I met Dwight Henry, who plays Wink. He owns his own pastry shop, and the casting people had to visit him in the middle of the night because he bakes all night. He said he's not interested in an acting career. His life is centered on his wife and five children. They are his bedrock, and that is the conviction he brings to the role of Hushpuppy's daddy. This movie is a fantasy in many ways, but the authenticity and directness of the untrained actors make it effortlessly convincing.” That’s actually nice since Dwight Henry probably knows all the headache of being an actor. Constantly traveling, not getting enough sleep, not seeing your family as much, offering roles that you don’t feel comfortable with, being chased by the media and paparazzi, etc. I don’t mind that he won’t become an actor.

Anyways, I hope everyone liked my review of the film. Stay tuned tomorrow when I pick back up on “Halloween Month.”

King Kong (2005)

Now it’s time to wrap up the King Kong movies with the 2005 Peter Jackson remake, “King Kong.” There are amazements to see in this movie, but one sequence, fairly controlled, holds the key to the movie’s success. Kong has captured Ann Darrow and carried her to his land high on the mountain. He puts her down, not roughly, and then starts to roar, bare his teeth and beat his chest, Ann, an unemployed vaudeville gymnast, somehow automatically knows that the gorilla is not threatening her buy trying to impress her by behaving as an alpha male – the King of the Jungle. She doesn’t know how Queen Kong would respond, but she does what she can: Roger Ebert said, “She goes into her stage routine, doing backflips, dancing like Chaplin, juggling three stones.”

Her instincts and compassion serve her well. Kong’s eyes widen in curiosity, wonder and finally what may pass her enjoyment. From then on, he thinks of himself as the girl’s owner and protector. Ebert describes her as “a tiny beautiful toy that he has been given for his very own, and before long, they are regarding the sunset together, both of them silenced by its majesty.”

The scene is important because it takes out the element of scariness in the gorilla/girl relationship in the two earlier “Kong” movies (1933 and 1976), creating a wordless bond that allows her to trust him. When Jack Driscoll climbs the mountain to rescue her, he finds her comfortably huddled in Kong’s big palm. Ann and Kong in this movie will be threatened by dinosaurs, man-eating worms, giant bats, loathsome insects, spiders, machine-guns and the Army Air Corps, and could fall to their death into gaps on Skull Island or from the Empire State Building. However, Ann will be as safe as Kong can make her, and he will protect her even from her own kind.

The movie more or less faithfully follows the summarizes of the original film, but this fundamental change in the relationship between the beauty and the beast gives it heart, a quality the earlier film was lacking. Yes, Kong in 1933 cares for his hostage, but she doesn’t care so much for him. Kong was always misunderstood, but in the 2005 film, there is someone who knows it.

As Kong climbs the skyscraper, Ann screams “don’t” because of the gorilla, but because of the attacks on the gorilla by a society that guesses he must be destroyed. Ebert comments, “The movie makes the same kind of shift involving a giant gorilla that Spielberg's "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" (1977) did when he replaced 1950s attacks on alien visitors with a very 1970s attempt to communicate with them (by 2005, Spielberg was back to attacking them, in "War of the Worlds").”

“King Kong” is a magnificent entertainment. Ebert mentioned, “It is like the flowering of all the possibilities in the original classic film.” Computers are used not only to create special effects, but also to create style and beauty, to find a look for the film that fits its story. Also, the characters are not cardboard heroes or villains seen in harsh outline, but original individuals with personalities.

Look at the difference between Robert Armstrong (1993) and comedian and musician Jack Black (2005) as Carl Denham, the movie director who lands a naive crew on Skull Island. Ebert commented, “Hollywood stereotype based on Cecil B. DeMille has been replaced by one who reminds us more of Orson Welles.” Also, in the starring role of Ann Darrow, the hot Naomi Watts expresses a variety of emotion that Fay Wray, rest her soul, was never allowed in 1933. Never have damsels been in more distress, but Fay Wray mostly had to scream, while Watts looks into the gorilla’s eyes and sees something beautiful there.

Ebert mentioned that:

There was a stir when Jackson informed the home office that his movie would run 187 minutes. The executives had something around 140 minutes in mind, so they could turn over the audience more quickly (despite the greedy 20 minutes of paid commercials audiences now have inflicted upon them). After they saw the movie, their objections were stilled. Yes, the movie is a tad too long, and we could do without a few of the monsters and overturned elevated trains. But it is so well done that we are complaining, really, only about too much of a good thing. This is one of the great modern epics.

Jackson, fresh from his “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, cleverly doesn’t show the gorilla or the other creatures until more than an hour into the movie. In this he follows Spielberg, who fought off producers who wanted the shark in “Jaws” to appear nearly in the opening titles. Ebert mentioned, “There is an hour of anticipation, of low ominous music, of subtle rumblings, of uneasy squints into the fog and mutinous grumblings from the crew, before the tramp steamer arrives at Skull Island -- or, more accurately, is thrown against its jagged rocks in the first of many scary action sequences.”

During that time, we see Depression-era breadlines and soup kitchens, and meet the unemployed protagonists of the film: Ann Darrow, whose vaudeville theater has closed, and who is faced with humiliating herself in mockery; Carl Denham, whose footage for a new movie is so unconvincing that the movie’s promoters want to sell it off as background footage; Jack Driscoll, played by Adrien Brother, a playwright whose dreams lie Off-Broadway and who desires 15 pages of a first draft screenplay at Denham and tries to disappear.

Everyone find themselves aboard the tramp steamer of Captain Englehorn, played by Thomas Kretschmann, who is persuaded to sail off just as Denham’s creditors arrive on the docks in police cars. They set course for the South Seas, where Denham believes an uncharted island may hold the secret of a box office blockbuster. On board, Ann and Jack grow close, but not too close, because the movie’s real love story is between the girl and the gorilla.

Ebert mentioned, “Once on Skull Island, the second act of the movie is mostly a series of hair-curling special effects, as overgrown prehistoric creatures endlessly pursue the humans, occasionally killing or eating a supporting character.” The bridges and logs over gorges, so important in 1933, are even better used here, especially when a variety of humans and creatures fall in phases from a great height, continuing their deadly struggle whenever they can grab a convenient vine, rock or tree. Two story lines are intercut: Ann and the ape, and everybody else and the other creatures.

The third act returns to Manhattan, which looks strangely reminiscent and atmospheric. It isn’t precisely realistic, but more of a dreamed city where key elements mix in and out of view. There’s poetic moment where Kong and the girl find a frozen pond in Central Park, and the gorilla is lost in happiness as it slides on the ice. It’s in scenes like this that Andy Serkis is most useful as the actor who doesn’t so much play Kong as represent him for the Special Effects team. He adds the body language.

Some of the Manhattan effects are not completely convincing (and earlier, on Skull Island, it’s strange how the escaping humans seem to run beneath the beating feet of the T-Rexes without quite occupying the same space). However, special effects do not need to be convincing if they are effective, and Jackson trades a little practicality, for a lot of collision and energy. The final climb of the Empire State Building is magnificent, and for once, the gorilla seems the same size in every shot.

Although Naomi Watts makes a wonderful heroine, there have been complains that Jack Black and Adrien Brody are not precisely hero material. Ebert commented, “Nor should they be, in my opinion. They are a director and a writer. They do not require big muscles and square jaws. What they require are strong personalities that can be transformed under stress.” Denham the director grips to a great extent to his camera, no matter what happens to him, and Driscoll the writer beats a planned escape before basically rewriting his personal role in his own mind. Bruce Baxter, played by Kyle Chandler, is an actor who plays the movie’s hero, and now has to decide if he can play his role realistically. Also, Preston, played by Colin Hanks, is a production assistant who, as is often the case, would be a hero if anybody would give him a chance.

The result is a surprisingly involving and rather beautiful – one that will demand strongly to the primary action audience, and also cross over to people who have no plans to see “King Kong” but will change their minds the more they hear. Ebert said, “I think the film even has a message, and it isn't that beauty killed the beast. It's that we feel threatened by beauty, especially when it overwhelms us, and we pay a terrible price when we try to deny its essential nature and turn it into a product, or a target.” This was one of 2005’s best films.

In the end, I would have to say that while I really liked this movie, the 1933 movie is better. Simply put, that movie was quick and went straight to the point. In this remake, we spent way too much time on the boat and Adrien Brody was just a bore. However, that’s not to say that it takes away from the movie, as I do think it’s faithful to the original compared to the 1976 movie. Final verdict: do check this film out, but do bear in mind the length of the movie. You’ll like it, but if you prefer this one over the 1933, then that’s fine, but if you prefer the 1933, I’m in the same boat with you.

We are not done with the ape movies yet. There are still two more that I want to cover. What are they you ask? Stay tuned tomorrow to find out in “Halloween Month.”

King Kong Lives

I must get this sequel out of the way because of how horrendous it is. This is the sequel to the 1976 “King Kong” remake, “King Kong Lives,” released in 1986. Nobody gets thrilled in the movies anymore. They have seen it all.

King Kong, played by Peter Elliott, is a gorilla that has got to be at least 50 feet tall, and everyone takes him for granted. For instance, four hunters (John Aston, Jonathan Canfield, Jack and Joe Wheeler, and David Hartzell) chase him into the woods and set off some dynamite to trap him under tons of rocks, and then tease him with burning logs. If these hunters were sensitive and thoughtful like the people in the National Rifle Association ads, they wouldn’t tease Kong. They would regard him with a sense of quite awe and respect, after setting off the dynamite.

Or take the head of the research institute, played by Peter Michael Goetz. He’s in charge of a project to transplant an artificial heart into Kong. When he’s told that the operation is impossible because of Kong’s low blood plasma level, he goes ballistic: “That heart cost $17 million!” Roger Ebert commented, “In real life, he would have cackled, "...and now we're going to need another huge injection of government research funds to study gorilla blood!"” The problem with everyone in this movie is that they’re in a boring movie, and they know they’re in a boring movie, and they just can’t beat themselves to make an effort. Ebert mentioned, “Even the lowliest extras in a 1950s' B picture would have been able to scream better and roll their eyes more than the actors in this film.” They act like they’ve used Kong’s tranquilizer gun for target practice on themselves.

The movie’s big news: Kong did not die after being machine-gunned and falling from the top of the World Trade Center. (Ebert said, “I guessed that from the last picture, in which Kong looked remarkably intact after arriving at street level.”) The injured Kong was taken to a university research center outside Atlanta, where he has been in a coma for a decade, awaiting an artificial heart.

Anyway, wouldn’t you know that just when things look horrific for Kong, a big-game hunter (Brian Kerwin) finds a female Kong (George Yiasoumi) in the jungles of Borneo, and brings her to the research headquarters for a transfusion that will make it possible to implant Kong’s artificial heart?

After the operation, romance starts between the two apes, who break their restraints and escape into the woods, where the Army attempts to shoot them down, while the female heart specialist, played by Linda Hamilton, and the big game hunter (who have shared sleeping bags while out) use computers to monitor the giant ape’s condition.

Every movie like this at least has one amazing line of dialogue. Ebert commented, “I especially liked it when the heroine cried to the Army troops: "Don't shoot the female! She's gone into labor!"” This moment was especially amazing since the two Kongs had mated for the first time three days prior to them tracking the apes down. Ebert commented, “With a turnaround time like that, it's remarkable that there isn't a little Kong in every one of the holiday movies.”

Like I had mentioned yesterday, if you get the chance to pass this one up, do so. I seriously think everyone should avoid this movie because of how bad it is. This is a giant insult for King Kong and I don’t think that anyone who likes Kong should watch this and be enraged at how boring and ridiculous they made this movie.

That entire rant aside, there is still one more King Kong movie that I have to cover. Stay tuned tomorrow in the finale of “Kong-a-thon” to find out if it’s good or bad.

King Kong (1976)

Can you believe that they actually remade “King Kong” in 1976? Believe it or not, they did and it’s one of those movies that deserve a passing if you don’t want to watch it. Why, you may ask? Here is why:

Ever wondered what a “truly” bad movie looks like? You might have already seen them. The greatest work of entirely unwelcome (to say nothing of awful) remakes of classics, Dino de Laurentiis’ “King Kong” is a strikingly broad mixture of truly miserable works. You name an area of filmmaking and it’s poorly represented here. Final verdict: when people use the saying “so bad it’s good,” this one is precisely the kind of garbage they’re talking about.

Where to start? Maybe Jessica Lange is a good silly place to start. Scott Weinberg from filmcritic.com said in his review, “she’s so bad here that I’m stunned she somehow survived to become one of America’s best actresses.” Movies as bad as this one have hurt more than one leading lady’s career. Pricing just as goofily are Jeff Bridges (as the anthropologist protagonist) and Charles Grodin (as the mandatory capitalist), though both give performances perfectly in sync with a movie this enthusiastically campy.

Special effects….yeah, right. The only thing more hilariously hilarious than the monkey effects in this movie is the fact that they somehow earned an Academy Award! (And it’s not just because of outdated technology. These effects truly are bad.) Weinberg commented, “Try not to catapult popcorn out of your nostrils as Kong attempts to give Lange (stupidly named “Dwan” here) an industrial-strength blow dry, and be sure to keep an eye out for the chintziest-looking giant snake this side of Anaconda.”

The dialogue borders on mysterious mockery, the “modernizations” to the source movie are inaccurate at best, plain old stupid at worst. Weinberg mentioned, “The editing is scattershot and static, the musical score is bombastic and repetitive,” and the cinematography…actually is not that awful. More is the pity that DP Richard Kline’s camerawork is swamped in such a goofball flick.

Weinberg goes on to say, “The word “goofball” is why I can unmercifully trash a movie like this, yet still like it in a perverse sort of way.” To say this one doesn’t measure up to the original film goes without saying, but if you actually enjoy Ed Wood movies and the sort of movies usually seen on “Mystery Science Theater 3000,” odds are you’ll have an enjoyable time laughing at this failure.

Like I have mentioned before, if you want to give this one a passing, do so, you will not regret it at all. This one just slaps the original one in the face for being so good and trying to top that one when they should’ve known that you can’t beat something that everyone loves. I can’t give them credit for trying, but this one is just going to have you question, “Why,” throughout the entire runtime of the movie. That’s exactly what I was thinking when I was watching it and the plot was just ridiculous.

Now there is something hard to believe, they actually made a sequel to this movie. Want to know how it was, if it was better or worse than this one? Stay tuned tomorrow in the continuation of “Kong-a-thon.”

Son of Kong

Welcome back to “Halloween Month,” where I will look at the sequel to the 1933 classic, “King Kong,” which is titled “Son of Kong.” What’s that? You never heard of the movie before? That’s because everyone is spending too much time talking about the first one, which is the reason why people may not know that this movie existed, and it’s one of the first monster sequels and the first “Son Of” movie titles.

Back in March 1933, “King Kong” opened as a huge hit in New York. Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack went to the studio head of RKO Pictures pitching the idea of a “King Kong” sequel. Cooper was saying he wanted the sequel to be even bigger and better. RKO was fine with the idea, under certain conditions. The film would have half the budget of the original, and be finished and released by December. It was 10 months from when they pitched the idea, and had only nine months to complete it. The reason behind this was because the studio wanted the original to still be fresh in everyone’s minds because the idea of making a sequel was new. They didn’t want anyone to forget the original and didn’t want other competitors to come along first and make their own “King Kong” rip-offs. Also, I guess everyone could get this; they wanted the movie in time for the Christmas holidays. That’s more important than making a good movie? Luckily, the creative team did the best they could. No, it’s not a masterpiece but it’s much better than how people may have thought about it when they saw it or heard about it. I have to admit, I didn’t hear about this movie until last year when I saw James Rolfe’s “Monster Madness 8.” After that, I had to go out and see the movie.

This film has been culturally criticized for years because of being released the same year as the original, but the film itself isn’t so bad. Jamie Grijalba said in his review, “It isn’t really horror either, but we’ve come a long way in that discussion and we’re just not moving forward after those early discussions that tried to narrow down, while I’d like to widen the concepts of what a horror film truly can be.” Anyway, King Kong’s son doesn’t appear until 40 minutes into the movie, and we can only see a glimpse over a hill at first, and that’s all we need, if anyone wasn’t concerning with the deep plot featuring Robert Armstrong returning as Carl Denham, the man who brought Kong to New York, Helen Mack as Hilda, Frank Reicher as Captain Englehorn, who first went to Skull Island and John Marston as Nils Helstrom, the man that sold Denham the map to the island in the first place, you could now thanks to the presence of the beloved offspring of Kong. Victor Wong returns as the cook on the ship, Charlie.

However, let’s be honest. If a 70 minute movie where the monster appears at 40 minutes in doesn’t have you hooked or interested, it’s probably atrocious, and this movie is not, because it handles the relations and the drama between the characters extremely well. Every one of them is related because of past fights, relations or even wants of revenge. They all have something against the other, yet they must all work together once they are stuck in Skull Island after they are left alone by the crew of the boat where they arrived. Grijalba mentioned that:

It’s funny how at the time the sailors and other staff of the ship are constantly compared to Russians (communists) but almost as if it were a joke, but later we realize that their ideology isn’t far from that, or at least to the concept that the USA had of communism at the time, where they say that they don’t need captains or chiefs or any authority to run their own. And he’s right, but let’s keep the ideology discussion aside.

The film is good and remains watchable because of how well the human drama is managed and how well the monster work still is at the time the movie was made. Kong’s Son looks nice, even though it was made from the armature of one of the original Kong models, and at times a cartoonish-like model that remains interesting to see react at many of the new things that happens around him. Grijalba ended his review by saying, “Maybe like the Son of Godzilla, this movie remains with its charm and overall well made structure, that is put back because of a messy structure and an overall sense that the movie lacks a lot of budget and a lot of reason of even existing.”

If you haven’t seen this movie, go and see it, especially if you have seen the original. If you have never heard of this movie, now you have. I definitely say give this movie a chance because it still is good, even though it’s not as good as the original, but it’s still worth checking out. Add this on to your list of movies you want to watch for this month. I, myself, wouldn't mind checking this film out again whenever I get the chance, and I'll rewatch it as many times as I can because it's still a good movie.

Hopefully all of you have enjoyed today’s review, stay tuned tomorrow as I continue in the “Kong-a-thon” for “Halloween Month.”

King Kong (1933)

Welcome everyone to my third annual “Halloween Month.” Much like how I did my first year when I started doing “Halloween Month,” I will be looking at different franchises throughout most of the month. Now I think the time is right to review one of the greatest epic masterpieces of all time, the 1933 classic, “King Kong,” which happens to be one of my favorite movies.

Roger Ebert started his review out by saying:

On good days I consider "Citizen Kane" the seminal film of the sound era, but on bad days it is "King Kong." That is not to say I dislike "King Kong," which, in this age of technical perfection, uses its very naivete to generate a kind of creepy awe. It's simply to observe that this low-rent monster movie, and not the psychological puzzle of "Kane," pointed the way toward the current era of special effects, science fiction, cataclysmic destruction, and nonstop shocks.

“King Kong” is the archetype of “Jurassic Park,” the “Alien” films and a handful of other stories where the heroes are scared completely by expert special effects. A movie like “Silence of the Lambs,” where the evil is in a man’s personality, looks humanistic by antithesis.

Ebert admits:

I've seen "King Kong" (1933) many times, most memorably in its re-release in the 1950s, when it did indeed scare me. In recent years I have focused on the remarkable special effects, based by Willis O'Brien and others on his f/x work in "The Lost World" (1925) but achieving a sophistication and beauty that eclipsed anything that went before.

The movie steals every trick in the book to create its illusions, using live action, back projection, stop-motion animation, miniatures, models, matte paintings and sleight-of-hand. That’s not to say that it’s stingy with the effects. After a half-hour of awkward dialogue and hammy acting, the movie gives us Kong and occasionally moves away from parts that need one kind of trickery or another.

When you look at it, “King Kong” is more than a technical success. It is also a curiously touching story where the beast is seen, not as one for destruction, but as an animal that in its own way wants to do the right thing. Unlike the Xenomorphs in the “Alien” franchise, who represent single-minded aggression, Kong cares for his imprisoned human female, protects her, attacks only in defense, and would be perfectly happy if he was alone on his Pacific Island. It is the greet of a Hollywood director that brings out Kong’s anger, and anyone who thinks to showcase the ape on a New York stage in front of a live audience deserves what he gets – indeed, more than he gets.

The movie was directed by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest Scheodsack, and produced with David O. Selznick, who was the head of RKO Radio Pictures at the time and was considered a legend. Selzick took a little credit for this film, saying his main involvement was to piece O’Brien’s special effects together with Cooper and Schoedsack’s story ideas.

Despite this has the capacity and feel of a high-budget film, the budget for “King Kong” was a pretty reasonable budget of about $600,000. Ebert mentioned, “Sequences that would take weeks these days--such as when Kong shakes a log to dislodge the men clinging to it--were done in two days, and the giant wall that separates the island villagers from the monster was a set originally built as the Temple of Jerusalem for Cecil B. DeMille's "King of Kings" (1927).” Even though Fay Wray had been in acting since 1923 and was a B-list actress, her male protagonist, Bruce Cabot, was making his film debut after Cooper found him working as the doorman in a Hollywood club.

The story is not complicated. A movie director, played by Robert Armstrong, gets a ship, his female protagonist from off the streets of New York at the last second, and goes to a mysterious Pacific island he heard about in Singapore. The island has a legendary giant ape, which he wants to use as the star of his movie. Fay Wray plays Ann Darrow, Kong’s co-star, and Cabot is the sailor who falls in love with her and saves her from Kong.

Today’s audience will be moving uncomfortably in their seats during the stereotyping of the islanders at a part where a bride is to be sacrificed to Kong (it is rare to see a coconut brassiere outside of a comedy), but from the minute Kong shows up in the movie it basically never stops to take a break. In a surprising outburst of creative energy, O’Brien and his team (including RKO’s legendary visual effects artist Linwood Dunn and sound man Murrary Spivack) show Kong fighting two dinosaurs, a giant snake, a flying reptile and a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Later, in New York, he will climb to the top of the Empire State Building and smack down a biplane with his bare hand.

Here’s what Ebert mentioned about the effects:

The visual techniques are explained by film historian Ron Haver, whose commentary track on the 1985 Criterion laser disc was one of the first ever recorded. He is amusing in describing how some live-action scenes were miniaturized to make the Kong model look larger; searching for the right screen to project them on, the filmmakers hit on a screen made of condoms, to the consternation of a nearby druggist who could not understand their orders for a gross at a time. Haver also observes how Kong's fur seems to crawl during several scenes; the model was covered with rabbit fur, and the fingers of the stop-action animators disturbed it between every stop-action shot. The effect, explained by the filmmakers as "muscles rippling," is oddly effective. (When a DVD of "King Kong" is finally issued, Turner Pictures would be wise to recycle the Haver commentary.)

Ebert goes on to say:

From the moment of its making, "King Kong" fell under the censors' scissors. Cooper himself removed one notorious sequence after the world premiere: The men shaken from the log fell into a chasm where they were devoured by giant spiders, but the effect “stopped the picture in its tracks,” people walked out, and Cooper cut it. Another scene was taken out after the Motion Picture Code came into being. It shows Kong curiously removing some of Wray's clothes, tickling her, and sniffing his fingers. Closeups of humans being crunched between Kong's jaws were also cut for various versions, but now the movie is intact again--except for the spiders.

How terrifying would that have been? Variety’s original 1933 review agreed that “after the audience becomes used to the machinelike movements and other mechanical flaws in the gigantic animals on view, and become accustomed to the phony atmosphere, they may commence to feel the power.” However, the theater Bible Variety complained, “It’s a film-long screaming session for [Wray], too much for any actress and any audience.” Yes, but nobody has forgotten her performance. (Ebert confessed, “At a Hollywood party in 1972, I saw Hugh Hefner introduced to Fay Wray. "I loved your movie," he told her. "Which one?" she asked.)

Ebert mentioned, “Variety then and now was hard to impress, but my guess, based upon my first viewing as a teenager, is that audiences found it plenty scary.” From today’s standards the movie has aged, as critic James Berardinelli looked at it, and “advances in technology and acting have dated aspects of the production.” Yes, but in the very dishonesty of some of the special effects, there is a scare value that isn’t there in today’s professional, flawless, computer-generated images.

In “Jurassic Park” you are more or less looking at a real dinosaur. In “King Kong,” you are looking at an idea of a dinosaur, created by hand by professionals who are working with their imaginations. When Kong fights the large flesh-eating dinosaur in his first huge battle sequence, there is a moment when he tears its jaws apart, the bones crack, blood falls from the gaping throat, and something urgent happens that is hard to copy on any computer.

There are obviously questions we cannot stop ourselves from asking. Haver asked: Why did the natives build a door in their wall, so that Kong could come through? Common Sense asks: How tall is Kong, really? (The filmmakers take sensitive authorization: He’s 18 feet tall on the island, 24 feet on stage, 50 feet on the Empire State Building.) Even giving its slow start, stiff acting and Wray’s screaming, there is something ageless and ancient about “King Kong” that still somehow works.

As I have stated before in my past reviews, if you haven’t seen this movie, you are missing out. I cannot do this film justice by my review, so you should just see the film for yourself. You have to see this film because it’s one of the most classic and one of the best films ever made. Especially with the last line, “Oh no, it wasn't the airplanes. It was beauty killed the beast.” That is one of the best lines in movie history. Stay tuned tomorrow for more “Halloween Month.”