King Kong (DVD)

At last, the first--and best--of the classic B/W monster movies has been transferred to DVD. But not just transferred. Warner's restoration is excellent, and with this new print we learn a number of interesting things:- Kong now has a friend named Biggs.- When the airplanes confront Kong at the top of the Empire State Building, Kong shoots first.- Jar-Jar has been added to Skull Island.- The hunters' rifles have been replaced by walkie-talkies.- A scene has been added that shows them bringing Kong into New York. When asked for ID, Carl Denham says, "You don't need to see his identification. This isn't the gorilla you're looking for."- The last line has been changed from "Beauty killed the beast" to "Kong was your father!"Okay, okay, I'm kidding. Fortunately, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg had nothing to do with this release. The present restoration really is excellent, though, for a 70+ year-old film. They found this print in England, where, despite their own censorship board that required a "certificate of approval" to be placed at the start of every movie, they still didn't feel it necessary to cut out scenes that American censors snipped when the film was rereleased in 1938. (There was no Hollywood censorship board when the film originally came out in 1933.) The scenes cut were Kong peeling Fay Wray like a banana and sniffing her naughty bits, Kong stomping on natives, Kong biting natives' heads off, and Kong tossing a woman who was not Fay out her New York apartment window to her death. All were deemed too violent, or, in the case of peeling Ms. Wray's clothes, they felt there was too much monkey business going on.But all the scenes are back in this new print (actually they had been restored years ago, but they're in better condition here than ever before). There's also commentary by special effects whiz Ray Harryhausen (I didn't know he was still alive, to tell you the truth) and Ken Ralston, with additional comments here and there from producer Merion C. Cooper and, of course, Kong's squeeze, Fay Wray. I would have liked more commentary from Wray and Cooper and less from Harryhausen and Ralston, especially since Ralston contributes nada that's worthwhile and I understand Wray has done more extensive commentaries for a laserdisc version that could have been used here.Disc two is mainly two documentary features, a look at the rough and tumble life of producer Merian C. Cooper and a lengthy look at the making of Kong. The story of Cooper is probably the most eye-opening item on this DVD. There was so much about the man I didn't know, and I have to confess I had no idea he did so much, both on and off the screen. He's really one of the great Americans, yet you rarely hear his name mentioned today for anything other than King Kong. Funny how one thing can eclipse everything else you do. Cooper was such a war hero that he was actually allowed on the battleship Missouri for the signing of the treaty ending WWII hostilities. And in WWI, he was shot down, captured by enemies, and nearly died--twice! Cooper obviously modeled swashbuckler character Carl Denham on himself (even physically), just as love interest Jack Driscoll was modeled after the film's other producer, Ernest B. Schoedsack.The second documentary is largely the work of Peter Jackson, who is currently finishing up his remake of King Kong. Jackson truly is the Kong fanatic. He is not only remaking the film, he also reconstructed and reshot the famed "Lost Spider Pit Sequence" for this original film. Using two still photos, numerous production sketches and a shot-by-shot script, Jackson and pals reenacted the scene on a small soundstage and then, using authentic 1930s technology, stop-motioned in the spiders and other creatures. They then degraded the film with computers to match the quality of the 1933 print and spliced it in. (After the premiere Cooper cut the spider scene out, feeling it slowed the picture and was too shocking in its own right.) Jackson's work is shown in a roughly ten-minute excerpt on disc two. (The actual movie on disc one is spider-free.) While I appreciate the effort and the attention to detail, I'm somehow underwhelmed, though it's hard to say exactly why. Despite all the frenetic action, Jackson doesn't direct with the rawness of the original--the spider scene was supposed to be the most horrifying moment in the film, yet the scenes where Kong munches on the natives pack more punch. Also, the stop-motion animation of the sailors on the rock looks more like Ray Harryhausen than Willis O'Brien. (I was slightly underwhelmed even when I first stumbled on this extra and played it without knowing it was a recreation--at first I thought they'd *really* found the spider pit sequence!) Although Jackson dominates the second documentary, there are also sections on Max Steiner, who wrote the very effective score (its influence on William's Star Wars music is obvious), Murray Spivack, who recorded the impressive sound effects (Spivack himself voiced Kong's soft "grunts") and others who contributed to the film. I wish they would have revealed how much the film actually cost and talked more about how the history of RKO and how the studio had everything riding on this picture. Instead we get, in my opinion, a little too much screen time with today's Kongophiles talking about how this movie profoundly changed their lives. (They get a little over the top after a while. One also wants to buy Peter Jackson a comb, or maybe just take him to a barber.)There's also a second, separate track of the Jackson spider footage--redundant since it's also on an isolated track inside the second documentary. Finally there's the original test footage for Creation, with commentary from Harryhausen again. Creation is the project O'Brien was working on before Kong. Cooper and Executive producer David O. Selznick liked Obie's work but were not impressed with the story behind Creation, so they scuttled the project, and O'Brien was brought in to do Kong instead.As for the movie itself...well, I'm not bothering with a review, because anyone who's reading this has already surely seen Kong a million times over the years. But one has to ask, why all the interest in a creaky, 72-year-old film? How is Kong relevant today, as anything more than ancient cinema history? In some ways the film is a product of its time, with stilted dialogue, hokey setups, and some horrible stereotypes, against both Africans (or "natives" as they would say in the film) and women, who do little here except faint. But in other ways the picture was light-years ahead of its time. The thorough and seamless use of every special technique then possible (many of them invented for the film itself), the wall-to-wall music filled with leitmotifs for every character and exotic locale, the chases, the narrow escapes, the aerial battles at the end, the clean, three-act screenplay, the strong sense of atmosphere, the quick pacing, the superb production design, the advanced sound effects, the mythological or fairy-tale elements, the whole awesome spectacle of it all--does this remind you of some other ground-breaking film you probably grew up with? One that takes place a long time ago in a galaxy far far away? Many of the techniques that have made Lucas and Spielberg incredibly rich were pioneered with Kong, and conceptually, if not necessarily in scene-for-scene execution, King Kong is as "modern" as any film today. Amazingly so.Just has Kong came in two heights--about 15 feet on Skull Island and 25+ feet in New York City, King Kong the DVD is available in two sizes. The standard release is the double-DVD set in the usual cardboard packaging. The "Collector's Edition" contains the same two discs in said packaging, plus miniature reproductions of Kong movie posters (plus an offer to get a free full-sized one suitable for framing), and a reproduction of the original Grauman's Chinese Theater premiere booklet (interestingly, the booklet talks about the spider pit sequence that would subsequently be cut), all inside a larger, metal hinged case. This larger case may not fit on all DVD shelves--but that's only appropriate for such a big movie about such a big ape, isn't it?

The Commentary Track is on the 2006 1-disc DVD issue of the original 1933 "King Kong". The commentary was recorded while Peter Jackson's 2005 remake was in production, and the remake is mentioned a couple of times. Commentators are Ken Ralston and Ray Harryhausen. Ralston was one of the founders of Industrial Light & Magic and has won 5 Academy Awards for Best Visual Effects. Ray Harryhausen is the father of stop motion animation. He calls Willis O'Brien, the "Chief Technician" of "King Kong", the grandfather of stop motion.The two introduce themselves at the beginning of the commentary, with Harryhausen saying "We're both in love with the same picture, 'King Kong'!" Ray, born in 1920, saw "King Kong" in 1933 at the fabled Grauman's Chinese Theater. O'Brien (O.B. as he and Ken call him) was his mentor. There are also a few places in the commentary track with inserts from archival interviews with Merian C. Cooper, director and co-producer, and Fay Wray, who, of course, played Ann Darrow, the beauty to Kong's beast.At one point, Merian says that the last line in the film was one he'd had in mind for many years: "It was beauty killed the beast". And, in case you're wondering, he made up the "Old Arabian Proverb" at the beginning of the movie.Both Ken and Ray are very complimentary to Max Steiner's great score. Harry: "I can't stress [enough] how important music was to this film." Ken: "I remember hearing this, and it may be wrong, but technically, they had less ability to do a lot of levels of sound effects, and ... nuances like that. So for Steiner, he was adding a lot more musically to this. [Music] that took the place of what would now be the sound effects realm basically burying the music. This is like an opera piece, where you've got great music and visuals going through the whole piece." Harry: "And each character has their own leit motif ... It's just marvelous."I couldn't agree more. For example, it is a masterwork how Steiner's music builds the tension as the kidnapped Ann is kneeling in front of the giant gate, and then it opens and she is dragged through to the columns where she is tied. Then the music STOPS. The gong is struck. Then the music starts low, again, as you hear growling, then trees crashing, and then....But it's not just the music. I love the expert scene composition. When Kong beats his way through the giant gates, you see him from below, the torches lighting him up with his eyes blazing, while silhouettes of terrified villagers run towards you on your level. Great stuff!Ken reminds us: "When this was released, this was their 'Jurassic Park'. When this came out, Kong blew everyone out of the theater, totally took them by surprise .... It raised the bar on visual effects." Merien adds: "Willis O'Brien was a technical genius. In this picture, we had to invent 11 new processes [for visual effects]. This was the first time that rear projection was really ever used. There had been 2 or 3 [prior] tries at it."Then there was Ruth Rose's dialogue. As Ray says, "You notice the dialogue is so tight. There's no superfluous inferences.... [The script] takes you by the hand from the depression era to the most outrageous fantasy." This brings up the TV versions of "King Kong". You must view the fully restored movie if all you've seen is the TV version. It wasn't just the censorship of scenes like Kong or the lagoon dinosaur chomping on the crew. They cut out huge swaths of the beginning of the movie, where the stage is set, where the characters are filled out, where the mystery starts to build, of, just what the heck is Carl Denham up to?I could go on and on about favorite comments in the commentary, but you get the idea. I loved this original "King Kong" before, but watching it through the eyes of Ray Harryhausen and Ken Ralston added to my enjoyment immensely.If you're interested, you can get many CD's of Max Steiner's film work. Probably his most famous soundtrack is for 1939 "Gone With the Wind". Here's the CD of the 1933 "King Kong"King Kong: The Complete 1933 Film ScoreI love Peter Jackson's "King Kong" - Jack Black and Naomi Watts took iconic characters and made them their own - but I will always have a place in my heart for the original "King Kong".Happy Reader