King Kong 2-Disc Collector’s Edition
November 21, 2005
- Dan Ramer,
DVDFile.com
During film’s first century, we’ve seen the
creation of cinematic icons that transcend intervening decades and
international boundaries. In 1932, explorer, adventurer,
producer, and director Merion C. Cooper was inspired to create a movie
about an unlikely creature inexplicably drawn to a blond beauty that
he could hold in the palm of his hand. This vast ape, worshipped
as a god on his primeval island, was known simply as Kong. But
when he was captured and brought to New York to become a Broadway
attraction advertised as The Eighth Wonder of the World, he became
King Kong.
The well-known and well-worn story
revolves around a small band of naïve people finding themselves
suddenly cast into a prehistoric jungle, a far more dangerous venture
than the film they had planned to shoot on an uncharted island.
The leader of this band is the intrepid Carl Denham (Robert
Armstrong), showman extraordinaire. He’s talked a down-on-
her-luck budding actress, Ann Darrow (Fay Wray), into joining the
expedition because the public demands a pretty face. Captain
Englehorn (Frank Reicher) commands the expedition’s tramp
steamer; his first mate, Jack Driscoll (Bruce Cabot), doesn’t
have much use for the ladies, until he spends some time with Ann.
I’d be terribly surprised if any reader doesn’t
know the storyline by heart. Natives regularly offer their god
Kong a young woman to appease him. (We never do find out what
Kong does with those poor women. He doesn’t seem to find
them very appetizing; he spits out everyone else he chomps.) The
Chief (Noble Johnson) is so impressed with Ann - he’s never seen
a blond before - that he decides that she’s just the offering
Kong might go for. (In that, he was unfailingly correct.)
Before you can say, "Look at the golden woman," Ann has been
kidnapped from the ship, offered to Kong, who gratefully accepts, and
the games afoot.
Denham, Driscoll, and a hardy band of
sailors chase Kong as he saunters off to his lair. Along the
way, prehistoric beasts - enormous by Jurassic Park standards
- attack Kong, threaten Ann, and decimate the rescue party. But
the determination and grit of the smitten Driscoll overcome all odds;
he rescues Ann and they flee to the huge wall that protects the
village from the beast. (Perhaps a kind reader could tell me why
the door was made Kong-sized. And why Kong couldn’t have
simply waded around the wall through the surf anytime it pleased
him.) A potent gas bomb and the unimaginably difficult, unseen
task of transporting him to he ship later, Kong is ready for his
Broadway premier.
So strong is Kong’s
attachment to Ann that not even steel anchor chains can keep the beast
confined. Loose in New York City, death and destruction await
anyone that gets in Kong’s way as he seeks Ann and the refuge of
high ground. Will Ann and Kong live happily ever after?
Will society accept their unholy union? Will Ann appear on Jerry
Springer for a tell-all?
I’ve seen this film
several times before, the last after many of the censored scenes
deemed seventy years ago to be too violent or too prurient were edited
back into the film. I don’t recall so much stomping and
chomping in that cut; I’m left to ponder if this DVD
doesn’t offer a more complete cut than that one. This is
the first time I’ve seen King Kong on my big screen and
certainly the first time I’ve experienced the film in such
detail. It was a revelation, both good and bad. I noticed
small details that had previously escaped me, such as the bubbling tar
pit in Kong’s lair. But the downside is that the flaws in
the infant technologies used to create the film’s special
effects become all the more obvious. Errors in the traveling
matte process may be seen in the roots of the log holding the last
remaining sailor as Kong is about to drop it into the gorge, and on
the huge doors in the wall that dominate the village as he pushes them
open. The nature of the puppets or small dummies dropped into
the gorge become painfully obvious. And the rods used to support
Kong and the T-Rex as Kong flips the predator with a Judo-like move
during their battle to the death are visible. Try using your DVD
player’s pause and frame step features for a closer look.
The stop motion animation technique looks rougher here than Ray
Harryhausen’s more convincing technique that seems to integrate
motion blur. But perhaps those technical glitches make watching
this film interesting on a whole new level.
If you as a
viewer can divorce yourself from such anal-retentive observations,
you’re rewarded with an unexpected emotional arc. Kong
becomes a sympathetic character, a victim of human greed and
interference. Had Denham not intruded upon the fragile
relationship between the island’s local natives and their
hirsute god, Kong would have been left to live out his challenging but
familiar existence in relative peace. Perhaps this lesson did
not go unnoticed by the filmmakers. It’s interesting that
with each succeeding oversized gorilla film (Son of Kong and
Mighty Joe Young), the animals becomes more and more benign,
as do the films’ endings.
The acting style and dialog
may seem somewhat dated, but King Kong is very economical
with its narrative. The dialog is written efficiently,
propelling the story forward. The onset of action is brisk and,
after the brief respite of Kong’s stateside captivity,
unrelenting. This is a surprisingly well-crafted, groundbreaking
film that stands up well. It’s unexpectedly successful on
several emotional levels. Dino De Laurentiis’ 1976 attempt
to recapture the magic failed. I expect Peter Jackson’s
reimagining to be far more successful.
The Video:
How Does The Disc Look?
The film’s
theatrical aspect ratio of 1.37:1 is presented in full screen
video. This transfer represents years of effort to locate as
many of the missing elements possible and locate the finest possible
existing prints. I’m sure much work was done to remove
dirt and film damage, leaving minimal vertical scratches.
Despite efforts to time the images, you will notice variations in
contrast and detail from sequence to sequence. Brightness will
sometimes flicker as well. Grain runs through the transfer, but
I’ve never found film grain to be objectionable, particularly if
it represents the nature of the original theatrical experience.
Gray scale dynamic range is a tad limited, but that’s
overwhelmingly on the top end. Blacks are deep and rich.
Shadow detail is rather respectable. Small object detail is
limited more by the granularity of the film than by the resolution of
DVD; the same may be said of finely grained detail. Little of
this matters; none of the limitations of the print will diminish the
viewing experience.
The Audio: How Does The Disc
Sound?
The Dolby Digital 1.0 track is as good as
one might expect from a seventy-plus year old film. Much as been
done to clean things up. Noise reduction and equalization improve
things considerably, but nothing can be done to compensate for the
limitations of the technology of the time. Max Steiner’s
very fine, precedent-setting orchestral score sounds nasal and
constrained. Fortunately, for fans of the music there are
several CDs available, modern recordings that reconstruct the score
and offer pleasing fidelity. Sound effects lack both dynamic
range and bandwidth, but the spoken word is surprisingly intelligible.
Only Fay Wray’s frequent screams tend to sound obviously
distorted.
Optional subtitles are in French, Spanish, and
English, for which Closed Captions are also included.
Supplements: What Goodies Are There?
On
disc one we have a feature-length commentary track by
representatives of two generations of special effects wizards: Ray
Harryhausen and Ken Ralston. Interspersed are inserted interview
excerpts of producer/director Merion C. Cooper and the film’s
female lead, Fay Wray. This is less of a technical track than I
expected. It sounds like a couple of old buddies getting
together to swap anecdotes and historical footnotes as they sit before
a screen to enjoy a film they both admire. They do, from time to
time, identify a technique and comment on how it proved to be an
inspiration. And they exchange stories of their reactions to the
film the first time each saw it. The intercut excerpts from
older interviews cleverly add comments and anecdotes that are germane
to the onscreen action. I found the track enjoyable and
entertaining more than informative, but it’s time well spent.
Also on disc one is a collection of Cooper trailers: Son
of Kong (1:32); Flying Down to Rio (1:29); Fort
Apache (1:44); 3 Godfathers (3:21); Mighty Joe
Young (1:39); She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (2:30); and,
The Searchers (2:45). The rest of the supplements are
on disc two.
I’m King Kong! The Exploits
of Merian C. Copper (56:59) is a generous
documentary that introduced me to the man most
responsible for Kong. Perhaps my fellow DVDfile
reviewers, some of whom have film school backgrounds, may have know of
this filmmaker’s exploits. I did not, so I was completely
fascinated. Cooper was an adventurer, and explorer, and aviator,
and a military flyer. I would not go so far as others to make a
favorable comparison to Indiana Jones, but the similarities in spirit
are clear. And what becomes obvious in this fine biopic is that
Denham is a Cooper surrogate. This terrific documentary is
organized into twelve chapters that may be played sequentially.
An even more generous documentary is
RKO Production 601: The Making of Kong, Eighth Wonder of
the World (a whopping 2:38:46). The feature is
organized into several chapters that may be played sequentially with
the “Play All” option: The Origins of King Kong; Willis
O’Brien and Creation; Cameras Roll on Kong, Eighth Wonder; A
Milestone in Visual Effects; Passion, Sound and Fury; The Mystery of
the Lost Spider Pit Sequence; and, King Kong Legacy. Where do I
begin? To say that this is a comprehensive look at the making of
the film would be an understatement. To that level of material
is added historical background and context. For example, in
Passion, Sound and Fury, we not only learn about the development of
the sound effects, but we enjoy an analysis of the impact Max Steiner
had on the film score as an art form. This documentary is
unusual for its breadth and depth, a truly exhausting look at a
milestone in film history.
But the documentary
doesn’t simply stop at examining the past; it deduces and
demonstrates gaps in the historical record. Peter Jackson is a
devoted fan of the film. Kong was instrumental in his
pursuit of a film career. And he’s so dedicated to the
Kong legacy that he decided to reconstruct the Lost Spider Pit
Sequence. If you can believe that some of the hapless sailors
tossed from the log that spanned that deep gorge survived their falls,
you might be curious to learn their fates. Bizarre and hungry
creatures await, and among them - as you might expect from the title
of the chapter - is one ravenous, oversized spider. From the
evidence within Jackson’s impressive collection of Kong
memorabilia, he and his special effects crew reconstruct and reproduce
the scene, mostly using techniques circa 1932 and 1933. The
result is a fascinating academic exercise that also fills a noticeable
gap in the plotline. Why didn’t the sailors flee to the
other side of the log when Kong threatened them? (What it
doesn’t answer is why Kong didn’t simply walk out on the
log and pluck each sailor off.) The reconstructed sequence was
never intended to be inserted back into the film; it would have been
an unnecessary distraction that would have stalled the main
plotline. That is most likely why it was dropped in the first
place.
The The Lost Spider Sequence (5:58)
is available as a separate supplement, accessible directly. And,
finally, we have Creation Test Footage with
Commentary by Ray Harryhausen (4:56). Creation
was an unproduced film that inspired many of the techniques used on
Kong.
The tri-fold cardboard disc case is housed
within an embossed tin container that also holds collectables that
include: a reduced size reproduction of the Grauman’s
Chinese Theater souvenir program from March 24, 1933; a
coupon for a free reproduction of the original
27” by 40” one-sheet that requires a modest $3.25 shipping
and handling charge; and, a fanfold of five miniature
reproductions of international King Kong one-sheets.
The film’s 104-minute runtime includes an overture;
the movie is organized into thirty-five chapters.
Exclusive DVD-ROM Features: What happens when you pop the
disc into your PC?
There are no DVD-ROM features
on this DVD.
Final Thoughts
This film milestone is a must-buy for any serious DVD collector or
fan of the genre. An exemplary improvement over any previous
home video release and complemented by a wonderful set of
comprehensive supplements, this set is highly recommended. And
for those that want to skip the tin and collectables, a 2-Disc Edition
is available without them; the SRP for that version is $26.99 (that's
the cover that's shown).
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