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 (010606) With
its 1933 release of King Kong, RKO saw that it had a huge
hit on its hands and as a consequence, had considerable
confidence in its choice of Merian C. Cooper as the studio's
new production chief. The film was the culmination of a
dream by Cooper (and his close friend Ernest Schoedsack who
co-directed the film) and also the vindication of his faith
in the concept when most of the Hollywood establishment
refused to back his idea. The "beauty and the beast" story
of a giant gorilla found on a remote island and brought to
New York as an entertainment attraction for the masses
seemed to strike a chord with moviegoers due both to the
film's shock value as well as the sympathetic manner in
which Kong was portrayed. The film returned $2 million on a
cost of under $700,000 and occasioned a re-release only five
years later.
Viewed some 70 plus years after its initial release, King
Kong might seem like just another monster flick to the
uninitiated. But it's far more than that. Filmgoers had
never seen anything quite like Kong on the screen. Oh,
actors had dressed up in ape suits for both horrific and
comedic effect before, but the end result was just what you
might expect - unconvincing at best and laughable when it
wasn't supposed to be. Kong was different. He looked big; he
looked real; and he looked scary. He had a personality of
his own and he projected human characteristics that a viewer
could identify with as well. Yet Kong was never more than an
18-inch flexible doll (except for a few scenes that required
the construction of a giant-sized head, a hand, and a leg).
What brought so much of it all to life was the magic of
stop-motion animation. It was animation that basically
involved setting up the desired action on a table that
included the model of Kong amongst whatever scenery was
called for and then exposing one frame of film. Adjustments
were then made to the Kong miniature on the special effects
table to reflect the next step in the desired action and
another frame of film was exposed. With film passing through
a camera at 24 frames per second, one can appreciate how
long it would take to get even one minute of completed
filming and the degree of exactness and patience in working
that was required. Fortunately, RKO had Willis O'Brien on
its staff. O'Brien was the pioneer of stop-motion work and
had previously had some success with it in 1925's The Lost
World. He was now experimenting with more elaborate effects
for a film that was to be called Creation. It was never
completed, but the work that O'Brien was doing on it did
serve as inspiration for many of the Kong effects and
techniques.
The special effects work on Kong went far beyond the basic
stop-motion activity. It included elaborate miniature sets
that combined the stop-motion tables with matte paintings
behind them and paintings on glass in front. In addition,
live action footage of the film's human stars was shot and
later projected on miniature screens placed within the
stop-motion sets. Thus were created many of the scenes that
show Kong interacting with those characters.
In addition to the realistic visual effects, Cooper and
Schoedsack were also looking for the right sounds to enhance
the spectacle. Murray Spivack was tasked with producing all
the sound effects for the film and he found himself
developing new ways of creating and mixing sounds that would
become industry standards. For the first time also, an
entirely new motion picture film score was created
especially for the film incorporating many of the music
score forms that would also become standard procedure in
later years - for example, themes for each of the main
characters that would recur at appropriate times throughout
the film. For this, credit goes to composer Max Steiner who
would come to be recognized as one of the giants of motion
picture scoring.
With all the attention to Kong, one can tend to overlook the
flesh-and-blood actors in the film. Robert Armstrong plays
the adventurer and showman, Carl Denham, who brings Kong to
New York. Denham was obviously modeled on Merian Cooper
himself, just as Ernest Schoedsack had himself immortalized
in the cast as the Denham's co-adventurer Jack Driscoll, as
portrayed by Bruce Cabot. Fay Wray, of course, is the
best-remembered member of the cast as Ann Darrow who gets
captured by Kong on the island where he is first found and
later finds herself carried to the top of the Empire State
Building by Kong. Armstrong and Wray particularly give
reasonable portrayals, given their clichéd parts, that for
the most part manage to avoid the rather mannered
performances that tended to dominate more than a few early
sound films. Viewers should keep their eyes open for Cooper
and Schoedsack themselves, as they make cameo appearances as
the flyers of the plane that's responsible for the film's
climactic moment.
Warner Bros.' two-disc release of King Kong on DVD has been
a number of years in coming as the studio tried to find the
best possible elements to work from. It's an understatement
to say that the wait has been worth it. Although the film's
original elements no longer exist and a version edited to
fit the needs of the Production Code in the late 1930s had
been the standard available for many years, Warners was able
to utilize various versions of film available domestically
and abroad in a thorough restoration that recreates the
original film quite majestically. The full frame image
offers very fine image detail and moderate film grain that
gives a very film-like viewing experience. Contrast is good
with blacks being very deep and whites acceptably clean.
This is far and away the best I have ever seen the film
look. The mono sound is in great shape offering clear
dialogue and nicely-defined sound effects. There is some
minor background hiss, but it's never intrusive. Max
Steiner's score sounds fine and the film's overture is
included. English, French, and Spanish subtitles are
provided.
The set's supplements are superb. The first disc contains an
audio commentary by visual effects veterans Ray Harryhausen
and Ken Ralston, with comments interpolated from past
interviews with Merian Cooper and Fay Wray. The commentary
is an entertaining one, using what's on the screen to prompt
memories that result in great reminiscences or anecdotes
rather than providing in-depth analyses of methodologies and
the like. Cooper and Wray's comments are limited, but
usually pertinent. The other supplement on the first disc is
a trailer gallery of eight films with which Cooper was
involved. The titles are: Flying Down to Rio, King Kong, Son
of Kong, Fort Apache, 3 Godfathers, Mighty Joe Young, She
Wore a Yellow Ribbon, and The Searchers.
Disc two contains three supplements. The first is a detailed
profile of Merian Cooper prepared by Kevin Brownlow's
Photoplay Productions, entitled I'm King Kong! The Exploits
of Merian C. Cooper. Clocking in at just under an hour in
length, this gives good insight into Cooper's career
utilizing plenty of film clips and comments from various
film historians and Cooper biographers. Even more impressive
is a two-and-a-half hour documentary in seven parts that
conveys everything you could possibly want to know about the
making-of the film. RKO Production 601: The Making of Kong,
Eighth Wonder of the World is accessible by play-all or
individual chapter options. Its highlight is the section
dealing with the re-creation of "The Spider Pit", one of the
film's sequences that was cut from the final version because
Cooper felt that it slowed down the action. Peter Jackson,
director of the new forthcoming King Kong theatrical
feature, along with his associates managed to recreate the
sequence using existing historical information on it and
stop-motion techniques replicating the original methods. The
resulting six-minute sequence (which is included on the
disc) is amazingly faithful to the look and feel of the
original feature. It was obviously a true labour of love and
is almost worth the price of the disc alone. Rounding out
the second disc is original footage from the Willis O'Brien
Creation film, accompanied by narration by Ray Harryhausen.
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