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I suspect the film would have either been banned outright or been little more than a grisly footnote in motion picture history. I doubt anyone in 1933 could have tolerated the spectacle of a live gorilla in real combat with a Komodo dragon. Originally he had wanted a real gorilla to portray Kong, and even wanted to have it fight a Komodo dragon! (Call the Humane Society!) We can all be grateful he encountered Willis O'Brien (who was working on his own dinosaur film- Creation) and decided to produce Kong and the monsters of Skull Island using stop-motion. Cooper imagined King Kong as the logical extension of his true life exploits exaggerated but a recognizable caricature of his experiences. Cooper had been a fighter pilot in World War I, a POW after he was shot down behind enemy lines, and- with his partner Ernest Schoedsack- had traveled to the wilds of Asia and Africa to film documentaries. Willis O'Brien is the man primarily credited with bringing King Kong to the screen, but in truth, Kong was the brainchild of Merian Cooper, a truly larger-than-life film producer, on whom the character of Carl Denham was modeled. If it was done in stop motion, it's the smoothest work in the film even the pool's water actually appears to ripple around the head. When Kong is in his cave, just before he sets Ann Darrow (Fay Wray) in a small opening in the rocks, the head of the elasmosaurus can be seen surfacing and submerging in the pool behind him. Volumes have been written about this movie's production, but one effect still has me puzzled. The detail they put into this film is phenomenal, considering it was released long before television or VCRs could give viewers a chance to watch it enough to notice the more subtle details. Nearly 30 years later- post the 1976 remake, Star Wars, Jurassic Park, Lord of the Rings, etc, I still sit down every few months to watch Kong. Thanks to television and repeated showings every Thanksgiving for years (thanks WOR) I became smitten with this film.
Fay wray king kong windows#
The film haunted my nightmares as a child there was something absolutely frightening about Kong's glaring eyes looming in the windows of the wrecked elevated train. It has inspired generations of filmmakers, writers, and other artists, all of whom have been awed and thrilled by the level of craftsmanship involved in its creation. King Kong is still one of the greatest fantasy films. There's little new I can probably add here, judging by the amount of comments, but here goes. In conversations I had with people who attended and remembered this opening, there was no music from the film used in any of these shows." Source: John Morgan, "Reconstruction Notes by John Morgan," Steiner: King Kong.
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Hearing the recorded "proof" of this Overture confirmed our suspicions: it was merely those same few acetates that have been floating around for years, professionally edited into a short Suite and called an Overture. Morgan writes, "Another rumour has recently surfaced that Steiner composed an Overture for the film's world premiere opening in 1933 - there was even a recent recording claiming to be this long-lost Overture. According to John Morgan's notes on the score's re-construction, the overture was not written by Max Steiner. Note, however, that the overture was not part of the film's original exhibition. two-disc DVD collector's edition version. This increased the run time to slightly over 104 minutes.
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On November 22, 2005, Turner Classic Movies premiered a version with a four minute overture added.