King
Kong’s latest movie version may be all the rage
among current cinema-goers, but most of us seniors
have a nodding acquaintance with the monstrous gorilla
that goes back almost three-quarters of a century.
It’s likely we know the difference between the
real thing and a Johnny-come-lately.
I was seven when King Kong and I first met in a neighborhood theater in Brooklyn,
N.Y. My mom and pop probably had no idea of what was lying in wait for us when
they bought the movie tickets. I ended up having the worst fright of my life.
“Some sort of animal movie,” I remember my mother saying. “You
ought to like it.” All went well at first as we settled back with a big
bag of popcorn and watched the movie begin. On screen, we were watching a desperate
search by movie impresario, Robert Armstrong, for a female lead on the streets
of New York. He finally came up with a job-hungry Fay Wray, playing unemployed
actress, Ann Darrow. Career-wise, she probably had no idea she was on her way
to Hollywood immortality for the wrenching cacophony of her screams while in
the hands of King Kong.
When the big ape finally made his appearance and carefully placed a terrified
Fay Wray on the palm of his hand, I joined Miss Wray in whimpering, then slipped,
cowering, under the theater seat. “I think we should go home,” my
mother said. And so we did.
It was almost ten years later that I finally got to see the rest of “King
Kong”, just before being drafted into the Army. It had been revived in
another local movie theater, and I sat through the whole thing without flinching.
With military service looming, I was at last ready to serve my country. Even
then, ten years after the movie had first made its debut, “King Kong” seemed
an impressive achievement.
Remember, back in 1933, talking motion pictures had been introduced only six
years earlier. Somehow, that period’s film technology was able to produce
remarkably realistic movements by a giant ape and other monsters — huge
dinosaurs and the like — that inhabited the jungle depths of Skull Island,
King Kong’s home.
And the movie’s most vivid climactic moments—the conflict between
beauty and beast, and King Kong’s final shoot-down from the top of the
Empire State Building by a squadron of World War I era planes, created durable
cinema legends.
In 1976, there was a remake of “King Kong” featuring Jessica Lange
in the Fay Wray role, which failed to impress and did nothing to dilute the original’s
reputation as the only version worth remembering. I never saw that one, but reviews
at that time dismissed the movie as a campy, almost amateurish remake of what
had become an undisputed classic. My ever-faithful 1987 edition of Leonard Maltin’s “Movies
and Video Guide” gave the 1933 “King Kong” four stars — its
highest rating — calling it “a movie-going must….special effects
of monster Kong still unsurpassed ... final sequence atop Empire State Building
is now folklore.”
The recent news that a 21st century version of the old classic was about to be
released evoked considerable interest and nostalgia about a film story that has
links all the way back to my early childhood. My wife and I arranged with friends,
Sara Osoffsky and Maurie Einhorn—also fans of the original version—to
see the new movie together at the Century Theater on Arden Way.
According to advance reports, the new “King Kong” would be to be
187 minutes long—more than three hours—almost twice the length of
the 1933 version. That puzzled me. The old “King Kong” story had
fit neatly into its 100-minute length, providing just about everything anyone
would need to know all about the huge beast. We figured that popcorn would keep
us nourished as we hunkered down in our seats.
The movie opened as the old one did, in New York, with the movie impresario looking
for a female actress to accompany the ship’s company to Skull Island. He
came up with the new Ann Darrow, Naomi Watts, a dead-ringer for Fay Wray, although
less vocally strident. A stage acrobat in need of a job, Watts/Darrow were able
to charm King Kong by pirouetting and turning handsprings, techniques not used
by Fay Wray.
In the end, Watts/Darrow seemed generally fond of the big guy and actually tried
to stop the planes from shooting him off the Empire State Building. The special
effects were overpowering. While the 1933 movie producers contented themselves
with a single specimens of stegosaurus, brontosaurus and tyrannosaurus at long
range, the 2006 movie moguls marshaled dozens that literally stormed the screen
and tromped all over the ship’s crew without hurting them.
New life forms made their appearance for the first time, among them giant worms
and cockroaches. But somehow, they didn’t seem as frightful as the primitive
monsters of 1933. No doubt the times had something to do with this. In the earlier
part of the 20th century, the movie technology was new, so what was accomplished
in the first “King Kong” was awe-inspiring and genuinely scary. By
now, we’ve become so used to whatever is turned out that it’s hard
to impress us any more.
Over dinner after the show, Sara and Maury agreed with us that the new “King
Kong” was overlong, to the point that it had almost become tiresome—although
we did enjoy it. Later, a check of several movie reviews via the Internet showed
mixed reactions. Roger Ebert, one of my favorites, was among the new Kong’s
biggest fans.
“One of the year’s best films,” he wrote “outdoing the
original classic film.” But he conceded that three hours and seven minutes
was a bit long, even for a top-notch movie. New Yorker magazine was less fulsome
in its praise, calling the movie “high-powered entertainment that loses
its momentum…over more than three hours…the story was always a goofy
fable, but even a well-told fable knows when to stop.”
Some years ago, the BBC (Britain’s) Internet movie page took another look
at the 1933 “King Kong” and concluded it should remain as the standard
for horror movies. “(The old) King Kong was created to grip and thrill
like no movie before it….Treat yourself to (the old) King Kong and you’ll
see how a monster blockbuster should be made.” And that’s the way
that most of us feel who knew “King Kong” when it was first born
and we were kids. When it comes to “King Kong,” they’ll never
make it like they once did!
