King Kong is a pre-Code American NR 1933 monster adventure film directed and produced by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack. Scenarios by James Ashmore Creelman and Ruth Rose developed from the ideas conceived by Cooper and Edgar Wallace. It starred Fay Wray, Bruce Cabot and Robert Armstrong, and opened in New York City on March 2, 1933, for a warm welcome. It has been ranked by Rotten Tomatoes as the 5th greatest horror film of all time and the twentieth largest film of all time.
The film tells the story of a great ape-like creature dubbed Kong who perished in an attempt to have a beautiful young woman (Wray). King Kong is best known for its stop-motion animation by Willis O'Brien and Max Steiner's innovative musical score. In 1991, it was considered "culturally, historically and aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation at the National Film Registry. A sequel was quickly followed by Son of Kong (also released in 1933), with several films made in the next few decades.
Video King Kong (1933 film)
Plot
In New York Harbor, filmmaker Carl Denham, famous for making wildlife movies in remote and exotic locations, the captain of Englehorn, Venture, for his new project. However, he can not secure an actress for the role of the woman he is reluctant to disclose. Looking on the streets of New York City, he found Ann Darrow and promised his lifelong adventure. The vessel's venture and depart, where the first couple of boats Jack Driscoll, fell in love with Ann.
Denham reveals to the crew that their real purpose is Tengkorak Island, an uncharted territory. He alluded to a horrible creature named Kong , who is rumored to live on the island. The crew arrived and docked offshore. They found the original village, separated from the rest of the island by ancient stone walls. They witnessed a group of natives preparing to sacrifice a young woman called "Kong bride". The invisible intruders and the native chief stop the ceremony. When he sees Ann, he offers to trade six of his tribal ladies for "golden ladies". They turned it down and went back to Venture .
That night, the natives kidnapped Ann from the ship and took him to their altar, where he offered to Kong, a very similar gorilla. Kong took Ann to the desert when Denham, Driscoll and some volunteers entered the forest hoping to save him. They were ambushed by other gigantic creatures, a Stegosaurus , which they managed to defeat. After encountering Brontosaurus and Kong himself, Driscoll and Denham are the only survivors.
A Tyrannosaurus attacked Ann and Kong, but he killed him in battle. Meanwhile, Driscoll continues to follow them, while Denham returns to the village to get more men. Upon arriving in Kong's nest, Ann is threatened by snakes like Elasmosaurus , who was also killed by Kong. While Kong is disturbed by killing Pteranodon who is trying to fly with Ann, Driscoll reaches him and they climb a vine dangling from a cliff. When Hong Kong watched and began to pull it back, both fell unharmed. They ran through the woods and returned to the village, where Denham, Englehorn, and the surviving crew were waiting. Kong, follow, break open the gate and endlessly rampaging through the village. On land, Denham, now determined to bring Kong back to life, beat him unconscious with a gas bomb.
Shackled in a chain, Kong was brought to New York City and presented to a Broadway theater audience as "Kong, the Eighth Wonders of the World". Ann and Jack are taken to the stage to join her, surrounded by a group of press photographers. Kong, believes that the next flash photography is an attack, unraveling. The audience ran out of fear. Ann was taken to a hotel room on a high floor, but Kong, scaling the building, found it immediately. His hand hit the window of the hotel room, paralyzed Jack, and kidnapped Ann again. Kong ran through the city. He destroyed the overcrowded train and then boarded the Empire State Building. At its peak, he was attacked by four planes. Kong destroyed one, but eventually succumbed to their shots. He ensures Ann's safety before it falls to his death. Ann and Jack were reunited. Denham arrives and pushes through the crowd that surrounds Kong's corpse on the way. When a policeman commented that the planes caught him, Denham told him, "Beauty is the one who killed the Ugly".
Maps King Kong (1933 film)
Cast
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Before King Kong went into production, a long tradition of jungle movies existed, and, whether dramas or documentaries, such films (eg Stark Mad ) generally adhered to the pattern narrative that follows an explorer or scientist into the forest to test the theory only to find some terrible deviations in the bush. In these films, scientific knowledge can be subverted at any time, and this provides the genre with its vitality, appeal, and endurance.
At the beginning of the 20th century, some zoos have primate exhibits so there is a popular demand to see them in the movies. At the turn of the twentieth century, LumiÃÆ'¨re Brothers sent film documentaries to places that Westerners never saw, and Georges MÃÆ'Ã… © liÃÆ'¨s made use of fake photography in a fantasy film depicting him in King Kong >. Forest films were launched in the United States in 1913 with Beast in the Jungle, and the popularity of the film produced similar images such as Tarzan of the Apes. In 1925, The Lost World made a history of movies with special effects by Willis O'Brien and the crew who would later work at King Kong . King Kong producer Ernest B. Schoedsack had previous monkey experiences that directed Chang: A Drama of Wilderness in 1927 (also with Merian C. Cooper) and Rango documentary in 1930, advertised the film as "an undeniable celluloid document showing the sacrifice of a living woman to a mammoth gorilla." Ingagi is now widely recognized as a racial exploitation film because it implicitly describes black women having sex with gorillas, and infant children who look more ape than humans. The film became a direct hit, and by some estimates it was one of the best-selling films of the 1930s at over $ 4 million. Although Cooper has never entered Ingagi between its influence for King Kong, it has long been held that RKO is green-lit Kong because of the bottom line. examples of Ingagi and the formula that "gorillas plus sexy women are in danger equals great profits".
Development
Drafts
The appeal of Merian C. Cooper to the gorilla began with his childhood reading of Paul Du Chaillu Explorations and Adventures in Equatorial Africa (1861) and continued in 1929 by studying baboons in Africa during the filming of The Four Feathers . After reading W. Douglas Burden's
Cooper brought his concept to Paramount Studios in the early years of the Great Depression, but executives shied away from projects that sent film crews on expensive shoots to Africa and Komodo. In 1931, David O. Selznick took Cooper to RKO as his executive assistant and promised that he could make his own movie. Cooper began soon to develop The Most Dangerous Game, and recruited Ernest B. Schoedsack to direct. Set of huge forest stage built, with Robert Armstrong and Fay Wray as stars. After the movie begins, Cooper diverts his attention to the big-budget-out-of-studio fantasy, Creation, a project with animator stopper Willis O'Brien's movement about a group of tourists stranded on a dinosaur island.
When Cooper screened O'Brien's Creation stop-motion recordings, he was not impressed, but realized that he could economically make his gorilla shots by dumping dragons and shooting the expensive locations for O'Brien's animated dinosaurs and forest set studios which exists. It was at this point that Cooper might throw his gorillas as a giant named Kong, and planned to make him die in the Empire State Building. The RKO Council was wary of the project, but gave its approval after Cooper organized presentations with Wray, Armstrong, and Cabot, and O'Brien's dinosaur model. In his executive capacity, Cooper ordered the production of Creation to be shelved, and placed his crew to work in Kong .
Scripts
Cooper commissioned recently hired RKO screenwriter and best-selling British mystery writer/adventure Edgar Wallace's job of writing scenarios and novels based on his gorilla fantasy. Cooper understands the commercial appeal of Wallace's name and plans to publish the film as "based on Edgar Wallace's novel". Wallace conferred with Cooper and O'Brien (who contributed, among other things, the scene of "Ann dresses") and began work on January 1, 1932. He completed a rough draft called The Beast on January 5th. , 1932. Cooper thought that the draft required decent work but Wallace died on February 10, 1932, just after the initial revision. Despite not using any of the drafts in final production beyond the previously agreed-upon plan line, Cooper gave Wallace a screen credit as he promised to be a producer.
Cooper called James Ashmore Creelman (who was working on the script of The Most Dangerous Game at the time) and the two men worked together on several drafts under the title of "Eighth Miracle". Some details of Wallace's rough draft were dropped, especially the charge charge of escaped convicts. Wallace's Danby Denham character, a great game hunter, became film director Carl Denham. Her Shirley became Ann Darrow and her lover who became John's prisoner to Jack Driscoll. The 'beauty and animal' angle was first developed today. Runaway Kong turned from Madison Square Garden to Yankee Stadium and (eventually) to the Broadway theater. The funny moments involving gorillas in the Wallace draft were cut off because Cooper wanted Kong hard and hard with the belief that his fall would be tremendous and tragic.
Time constraints forced Creelman to temporarily drop the Eighth Wonders and devote his time to the Game script. RKO staff writer Horace McCoy was summoned to work with Cooper, and it was he who introduced island natives, giant walls, and victim girls into the plot. Leon Gordon also contributed to the scenario in a minimal capacity; both he and McCoy did not get recognition in the finished film. When Creelman returned to the full-time script, he hated McCoy's 'elements of myth', believing that the script was too much of an exaggerated concept, but Cooper insisted on saving it. RKO chief Selznick and his executives want Kong introduced early. in the film (believing the audience will be bored waiting for his performance), but Cooper persuades them that a thrilling buildup will make the entrance of Kong more interesting.
After the RKO board approves the production of the test reels, Marcel Delgado builds the Kong (or "Giant Terror Gorilla" as he is known) per design and direction from Cooper and O'Brien on an inch-by-one-foot scale to simulate an 18-foot gorilla. Four models were built: two jointed 18-inch aluminum, foam rubber, latex, and rabbit fur models (played during filming), a 24-inch model jointed from the same material for the New York scene, and a small model of tin and feather for shot climax-down-the-Empire-State-Building. At least two armatures have survived - one believed to be original made for test footage - and owned by Peter Jackson and Bob Burns. In 2009, one sold for Ã, Â £ 121,000 ($ 200,000) at Christie's in London.
Kong's body is softened to eliminate the funny appearance of the belly and the rump of a real-world gorilla. His lips, eyebrows and nose were made of rubber, his glass eyes, and his facial expressions were controlled by a thin wire that could be bent through holes drilled in his aluminum skull. During filming, Kong's rubber skin dries quickly under studio light, so it is necessary to replace it frequently and completely rebuild its facial features.
A large sculpture of head, neck, and upper chest of Kong is made of wood, fabric, rubber, and bearskin by Delgado, E. B. Gibson, and Fred Reefe. Inside the structure, the iron lever, hinges, and air compressors are operated by three people to control the mouth and facial expressions. The fangs are 10 inches long and the eye diameter is 12 inches. Bust is moved from set to set on flat carriages. The scale does not fit the model and, if fully realized, Kong will stand thirty to forty feet.
Two versions of the right hand and Kong's hand are made of steel, sponge rubber, rubber, and bear skin. The first hand is not articulated, mounted on a crane, and operated by grasp for the scene where Kong grabs at Driscoll inside the cave. The other hand and arm have an articulated finger, mounted on a lever to lift it, and are used in some scenes where Kong captures Ann. The un articulated legs are made of materials similar to the hands, mounted on a crane, and used to step on the victims of Kong.
Dinosaurs were made by Delgado in the same way as Kong and based on the murals of Charles R. Knight at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. All armatures are manufactured at RKO machine shop. The materials used are cotton, foam rubber, latex tarpaulin, and liquid latex. Bladder football is placed in several models to simulate breathing. The one-inch-same-one-foot scale is employed and the models range from 18 inches to 3 feet in length. Some models were originally built for Creation and sometimes two or three models were built from individual species. Prolonged exposure to studio lights caused damage to latex skin so John Cerasoli carved out duplicate wood from each model to be used as a stand-ins for shoot and formation tests. He carved Ann's wooden model, Driscoll, and other human characters. Venture models, trains and warplanes were built.
Special effects
King Kong is famous for its innovative special effects, such as stop-motion animation, matte painting, rear projection and miniature, all of which were composed several decades before the digital era.
Many prehistoric creatures inhabiting the island of Tengkorak were turned on through the use of stop-motion animation by Willis O'Brien and his animator assistant, Buzz Gibson. The stop-motion animation scene is very difficult and difficult to achieve and resolved after a special effects crew realizes that they can not stop, because it will make the movement of the creature seem inconsistent and the lighting will not have the same intensity for several days. needed to fully animate the finished sequence. A device called a surface gauge is used to track the performance of stop-motion animation. The iconic battle between Kong and Tyrannosaurus takes seven weeks to complete. O'Brien's incident, Ray Harryhausen, who will work with him on several films and become one of the most prominent stop-motion animators in Hollywood, states that O'Brien's second wife noticed that there are so many of her husbands in Kong.
Skull Island's background was seen when the first Venture crew arrived painted on the glass by the matte painter Henry Hillinck, Mario Larrinaga and Byron C. CrabbÃÆ'Â ©. The scene is then composted with separate and rear bird elements projected behind the ship and the actors. Background scenes in the forest (miniature sets) are also painted on several layers of glass to convey the illusion of lush and dense forest foliage.
The most difficult task for special effects artists to accomplish is to make live-action recordings interacting with staged animated stop-motion animations - to make the interaction between humans and creatures on the island seem trustworthy. The simplest of these effects is achieved by exposing parts of the frame, then running the same piece of film through the camera again by exposing other parts of the frame with different images. The most complex photographs, where action actors directly interact with stop-motion animation, are achieved through two different techniques, Dunning process and Williams process, to produce matte travel effects. The Dunning process, created by cinematographer Carroll H. Dunning, uses blue and yellow lighting, filtered and photographed into a black-and-white film. The bi camera packaging is used for this type of effect. With it, a special effects crew can combine two different movie strips at the same time, creating a final composite shot in the camera. It was used in a climactic scene where one of Curtiss Helldiver's aircraft attacked Kong collided from the top of the Empire State Building, and in a scene where the native people walked in the foreground, while Kong fought off the other natives on the wall.
On the other hand, the Williams process, created by cinematographer Frank D. Williams, does not require a colored light system and can be used for wider shooting. It was used in scenes where Kong rocked the sailors from the logs, as well as the scene where Kong pushed the gate open. The Williams process does not use bipacking, but an optical printer, the first device that synchronizes the projector with the camera, so that multiple film strips can be combined into a single compost image. Through the use of optical printers, special effects crews can film foreground, stop-motion animation, live-action recording, and background, and combine all these elements into a single shot. Optical printers will continue to be used for movies until the late 1980s, when they were replaced by digital composting.
Another technique used in combining direct actors and stop-motion animation is rear screen projection. The actor will have a translucent screen behind him where the projector will project the recording to the back of the translucent screen. The translucent screen was developed by Sidney Saunders and Fred Jackman, who received a Special Achievement Oscar. It's used in famous scenes where Kong and Tyrannosaurus fight while Ann sees from the nearest tree branch. Stop-motion animation filmed first. Fay Wray then spent twenty-two hours sitting on a fake tree acting out his observations of the battle, projected onto a translucent screen while the camera filmed him watching the projected stop-motion battle. She was sick for days after filming. The same process is also used for scenes where sailors from the Venture kill a Stegosaurus.
O'Brien and the special effects crew also devised a way to use rear projection in miniature sets. A small screen is built into a miniature into which live-action recordings will be projected. The fan pumps cool air to prevent projected recording from melting or burning. This miniature rear projection is used in scenes where Kong tries to seize Driscoll, who is hiding in a cave. The scene where Kong put Ann on a tree in exchange for a doll in Kong's hands to Ann's projected recording of a sitting.
The scene where Kong fights snake-like reptiles in his nest is probably the most significant special effects achievement of the movie, because of the way all elements in the sequence work together at the same time. The scene is achieved through the use of miniature sets, stop-motion animation for Kong, matte background painting, native water, foreground rocks with bubbling mud, smoke and two miniature screen back projection of Driscoll and Ann.
Over the years, several media reports have alleged that in certain scenes Kong is played by an actor in a gorilla suit. However, film historians generally agree that all scenes involving Kong are achieved by animated models.
Live action scenes
King Kong was filmed in several stages over a period of eight months. Some actors have so much time between their Kong periods so they can complete full work on other movies. Cabot completed the Road House and Wray appeared in the horror movie Dr. X and Mystery of the Wax Museum . He estimates that he worked for ten weeks in Kong for eight months of production.
In May and June 1932, Cooper directed the first live-action scene Kong in the set of jungles built for The Most Dangerous Game . Some of these scenes are inserted into test scrolls then on display for RKO boards. The manuscript is still in revision as scenes in the forest are shot and many dialogs improvised. The set of forests is scheduled to be hit after Game is over, so Cooper films all the other forest scenes right now. The last scene taken was Driscoll and Ann running through the woods to safety after they escaped from Kong's nest.
In July 1932, the indigenous village was prepared while Schoedsack and his crew filed a shot at the port of New York City. The Curtiss F8C-5/O2C-1 Helldiver aircraft that took off and in-flight was filmed at the US Navy airfield at Long Island. The New York City landscape was filmed from the Empire State Building for a backdrop in the final scene and an architectural plan for the mooring post secured from the building's owner to be made a clone to be built on the stage of Hollywood sound.
In August 1932, the island landing scene and gas bomb scenes were filmed south of Los Angeles on a beach in San Pedro, California. All the original village scenes were then filmed on many RKO-PathÃÆ'Â © in Culver City with original recycled huts of Bird of Paradise (1932). The large wall in the island's landscape is hand-me-down from DeMille's The King of Kings (1927) and is dressed with large gates, a gong, and primitive carvings. Ann's scenes led through the gateway to the altar of the victim were filmed at night with hundreds of extras and 350 lamps for illumination. A camera is mounted on a crane to follow Ann to the altar. The Culver City Fire Department was on hand due to concerns that the site might have been burned by many of the original torches used at the scene. The walls and gates were destroyed in 1939 because of Gone With the Wind burning up the Atlanta compound, and hundreds of additions were once again used to rampage Kong through the original villages, and the filming finished with individual sketches of the original chaos and panic.
Meanwhile, a scene depicting a New York woman dropped to her apparent death from a hotel window was filmed on the sound stage using an articulated hand. At the same time, a scene depicting poker players shocked by Kong's face peeking through the window was filmed using a 'big head', though the scene was eventually canceled. When the filming is over, the break is scheduled to complete the construction of the interior set and to allow time-screen writer Ruth Rose to complete the script.
In September-October 1932, Schoedsack returned to the sound stage after finishing the original village shoots at Culver City. The decks and cabins of Venture were built and all scenes of live action ships were then filmed. The New York scene was filmed, including Ann's scenes picked from the streets by Denham, and the restaurant scene. After finishing the interior scene, Schoedsack returns to San Pedro and spends a day on a bum ship to film the scene of Driscoll punching Ann, and various atmospheric scene ports. The Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles was hired for a day to film scenes where Kong was featured in chain and backstage theater scene after escaping. The main photography was wrapped up in late October 1932 with a climax filming where Driscoll rescued Ann at the top of the Empire State Building. Schoedsack's work was completed and he headed to Syria to shoot an outdoor scene for Saudi , a project that never finished.
In December 1932 - January 1933, the actors were recalled to film a number of optical effects shots that were mostly rear screen projection. The technical issues inherent in the process of making film making difficult and time consuming. Wray spends most of the twenty-two hours sitting on a fake tree to witness the battle between Kong and Tyrannosaurus . She was sick a few days later. Many scenes featuring Wray in articulated hands are filmed at this time. In December, Cooper again recorded the scene of New Yorker women who fell to his death. Stunt doubles were filmed for a water scene depicting Driscoll and Ann escaping from Kong. A portion of the forest set reconstructed for the Denham film caught his sleeve in the branch during the chase scene. Initially, Denham ducked behind the bushes to avoid danger, but this was then considered a coward and the scene was again shot. The final scene was originally staged over the Empire State Building, but Cooper was dissatisfied and re-filming with Kong lying dead on the street with a crowd gathering about him.
Postproduction
Murray Spivack provides sound effects for the film. The roar of Kong was created by mixing the roaring lions and tiger of the zoo, then playing backwards slowly. Spivak himself gave Kong's "grunts" of love by grumbling into the megaphone and playing it at a slow pace. For a great ape step, Spivak stepped on a box full of pebbles with a plunger wrapped in foam stuck to his own leg, while the sound of his chest was recorded by Spivak hitting his assistant (who held the microphone on his back) crate with a drumstick. Spivak creates a hiss and raspy dinosaur with an air compressor for the former and his own vocals for the latter. The vocalizations of Tyrannosaurus are also mixed with puma screams. Bird squawks are used for Pteranodon. Spivak also gives a lot of shouts from various sailors. Fay Wray himself gives all his character screams in one recording session.
For budget reasons, the RKO decided not to make the original movie score, but instead instructed the Max Steiner composer to simply reuse music from other movies. Cooper thought the movie deserved the original score and paid Steiner $ 50,000 to put it together. Steiner completed the score in six weeks and recorded it with a 46-piece orchestra. The studio then changed Cooper's fee. Scores are not as they came before and marked a significant change in the history of film music. King Kong is the first long musical score written for the American "talkie" movie, the first big Hollywood movie to have thematic scores and not background music, the first to mark the use of a 46-piece orchestra, and which first to be recorded on three separate tracks (sound effects, dialogue, and music). Steiner uses a number of new film scoring techniques, such as drawing on operatic conventions for the use of motifotomy.
Release
King Kong opened at 6,200 Radio City Music Hall seats in New York City and Rippo Roxy 3,700 seats across the street on Thursday, March 2, 1933. The film was preceded by a stage show called Forest Rhythm . The crowds lined up around the block on the opening day, tickets priced at $ 0.35 to $ 0.75, and, within the first four days, every one of ten per day shows were sold out - setting up all time attendance records for indoor events. Over a four-day period, the film grossed $ 89,931.
The film has an official world premiere on March 23, 1933 at Grauman's Chinese Theater in Hollywood. The 'big head bust' is placed on the front page of the theater and the seventeenth round of performances precedes the movie with The Dance of the Sacred Ape performed by a group of African American dancers at the top. Kong players and crew were present and Wray thought he was on screen screaming distract and excessive. The film was opened nationwide on April 10, 1933, and around the world on Easter Day in London, England.
It was re-released in 1938, 1942, 1946, 1952 and 1956.
Reception
Variety thought the movie was a strong adventure. The New York Times gives the reader a very enthusiastic report about his plot and considers the film as a fascinating adventure. John Mosher of The New Yorker called it "ridiculous", but wrote that there are "many scenes in this image that definitely divert". The New York World-Telegram says it is "one of the best of all screen thrillers, done with all the slickest camera cinema tricks". The Chicago Tribune calls it "one of the most original, thrilling and mammoth novelties to emerge from a movie studio."
On February 3, 2002, Roger Ebert incorporated King Kong into his "Great Movie" list, writing that "In modern times, the film is aged, as James Berardinelli's critics think, and" progress in technology and acting. has aspects of production date. 'Yes, but very artificially of some special effects, there is creepiness that is not present today, impeccably, computer-assisted images.... Even allowing for slow start, wood acting and wall-to-wall shouting, there is something that youthful and ancient about "King Kong" who somehow succeeded. " King Kong holds a 98% certified fresh score with an average grade of 9/10, based on 56 reviews on Rotten Tomatoes.
box office
The film was a success at the box office earning about $ 2 million in rentals worldwide on an early release, with an estimated opening weekend of $ 90,000. Receipts fell by 50% in the second week of the film release due to a national "bank holiday" called on the first day of President Franklin D. Roosevelt at the office. During the first film, he earned $ 650,000.
Prior to the 1952 birthday release, the film reportedly has worldwide rentals of $ 2,847,000 including $ 1,070,000 from the United States and Canada and a profit of $ 1,310,000. After the 1952 release, Variety estimated the film had generated an additional $ 1.6 million in the United States and Canada totaling to $ 3.9 million in cumulative domestic rentals (United States and Canada). The profit from the 1952 anniversary release was estimated by the studio for $ 2.5 million.
Racist obstacles
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, Africans were generally visually represented as ape-like, metaphorically compatible with racist stereotypes, supported by the rise of scientific racism. Early blockbuster films often reflect racial tensions. While King Kong is often compared to the story of Beauty and the Beast, many film scholars argue that this film is a racist warning story about racial romance, in which the film "the bearer of darkness is not a human , but the ape ". Cooper and Schoedsack rejected allegorical interpretations, insisting in interviews that the film's story had no hidden meaning.
Awards and honors
Kong did not receive an Academy Awards nomination. Selznick wants to nominate O'Brien and his crew for a special award in visual effects but the Academy refuses. Such categories did not exist at the time and would not exist until 1938. Sidney Saunders and Fred Jackman received special achievement awards for the development of transparent acetate/cellulose backplays - the only Kong -related.
The film has since received several significant awards. In 1975, Kong was named one of the 50 best American films by the American Film Institute, and, in 1991, the film was considered "culturally, historically and aesthetically" by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry of the United States. In 1998, AFI ranked # 43 in the list of 100 greatest films of all time.
List of the American Film Institute
- AFI 100 Years... 100 Movies - # 43
- AFI 100 Years... 100 Thrills - # 12
- AFI 100 Years... 100 Passions - # 24
- AFI 100 Years... 100 Quotes Movies:
- "Oh, no, it's not an airplane.That is Beauty that kills the Beast." - # 84
- 100 Years AFI Film Score - # 13
- AFI 100 Years... 100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) - # 41
- Top 10 AFI Fantasy 10 Movies - # 4
Release, censor and restoration
King Kong was re-released in 1938, 1942, 1946, 1952 and 1956; every time to a tremendous box office success. Stricter courtesy rules have been imposed in Hollywood since the premiere of 1933 and each time censored further, with some scenes being trimmed or cut altogether.
This scene is as follows:
- A Brontosaurus leads the crew in the water, chases one tree and kills him;
- Kong undid Ann Darrow's clothes and sniffed his fingers;
- Kong bites and trod on the natives when he attacks the village;
- Kong bites a reporter in New York;
- Kong mistook the woman who was sleeping for Ann and dropped her to death, after realizing her mistake.
After the 1956 anniversary release, the film was sold to television (first broadcasted March 5, 1956).
RKO failed to maintain negative print copies or movie releases with cut footage, and the cut scenes were lost for many years. In 1969, 16mm prints, including censored tapes, were found in Philadelphia. The cut scene is added to the movie, returning it to the original theatrical run time of 100 minutes. This version was re-released to the art house by Janus Films in 1970.
Over the next two decades, Universal Studio undertook a further photochemical restoration at King Kong . It was based on a 1942 release print, with the missing sensor piece taken from a 1937 mold, which "contains heavy vertical scratches from projections." An original print release located in England in 1980 was found to contain better-quality scene cuts.
After 6 years of worldwide search for the best remaining materials, further recovery, fully digital, using a 4K resolution scan was completed by Warner Bros. in 2005. The recovery also has an additional 4 minutes added, resulting in overall running time to 104 minutes. King Kong too, somewhat controversial, was colored in the late 1980s for television.
Home media
In 1984, King Kong was one of the first films released in LaserDisc by Criteria Collection, and was the first film to have an included audio commentary track. An audio commentary by movie historian Ron Haver; in 1985 Image Entertainment released another LaserDisc, this time with a commentary by movie historian and producer of soundtrack Paul Mandell. None of these comments reappear in any other format.
King Kong has many VHS and LaserDisc releases in various qualities before receiving official studio release on DVD. This includes the Turner's 60th anniversary edition in 1993 featuring a front cover that has Kong's sound effects roaring as his chest is pressed. It also includes a colored version of the film and a 25 minute documentary, This is the beauty that killed the Beast (1992). The documentary is also available on two different DVD King Kong DVDs, while the colored version is available on DVDs in the UK and Italy. Warner Home Video re-released the black and white version of VHS with a 25-minute documentary included under the Warner Bros. label. Classics in 1999.
In 2005 Warner Bros. released the digital recovery of King Kong in a 2-disc US Special Edition DVD, to coincide with theatrical release of Peter Jackson's remake. It has many additional features, including a third new audio commentary by visual effects artist Ray Harryhausen and Ken Ralston, with an archive quote from actress Fay Wray and producer/director Merian C. Cooper. Warner issued the same DVD in 2006 in Australia and New Zealand, followed by digibook-packaged US Blu-ray in 2010. By 2014, Blu-ray is repackaged with three unrelated films in 4 Favorite Movies: Colossal Monster Collection .
Currently, Universal holds the world's right to release home videos of Kong ' outside the US, Australia and New Zealand. All Universal releases contain only an initial pre-2005 restoration of 100 minutes. However, in the UK, Warner Home Video releases movies digitally and Blu-Ray & amp; DVD in early 2017. Blu-Ray contains the same content as the US release, but unfortunately for DVD, which is based on the first Disc of the 2-Disc DVD release.
Adaptations
The 1933 King Kong movie and character inspired imitation and installment. Son of Kong , a direct sequel to the 1933 movie was released nine months after the release of the first film. In the early 1960s, RKO had licensed King Kong's character to Toho's Japanese studio and produced two King Kong movies, King Kong vs Godzilla and King Kong Escapes, both directed by Ishir ? Honda.
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