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<\/a><\/div>\nNot the laughably flawed and preachy 1976 remake. \u00a0Nor Peter Jackson\u2019s bloated and over-directed 2005 remake. \u00a0I mean the original. \u00a0It ranks on my top twenty list with no problem, and on my better days, it ranks in the top ten. \u00a0It has problems, and I\u2019ll admit it\u2019s been a while since I watched it because of those problems. \u00a0Not problems really, but what Kong did to me as a youngster watching it on TV. \u00a0And not the problems that our hipster, enlightened and morally superior post modern neo-puritans have with it today. \u00a0Nonetheless, I love it. It is awesome in every way that awesome can be, warts and all. \u00a0And here\u2019s why I think this.<\/p>\n
<\/a><\/div>\n\u201cDid you ever hear of \u2026 Kong\u201d? \u00a0So the commercials heading toward Thanksgiving on WUAB, Channel 43, Lorraine\/Cleveland would open, anticipating the annual tradition of King Kong<\/i> and Miracle \u00a0on 34th Street <\/i>on Thanksgiving night. \u00a0Don\u2019t know how it happened, but it did. \u00a0From as far back as I remember, this was a staple, and a sure sign that Christmas and my birthday were just around the corner. \u00a0Fan of monster movies that I was, and in the days before VCRs and DVDs, I set aside each Thanksgiving night to watch Kong, Fay, Robert, and the rest of the hapless cast take us through a roller-coaster ride of thrills, chills, and terror.<\/p>\n
I won\u2019t waste time with the plot. \u00a0If you don\u2019t know the story, then go watch the movie. \u00a0Instead, the reason I love it is because it captures a moment in time like few other movies before or since. \u00a0Much has been written about it\u2019s meanings, messages, and Merian Cooper\u2019s own ideas about what it stood for. \u00a0But in the end, it captures the twilight of the pre-techno age, when parts of the world were still mysterious, America was emerging as a super power, and technology and industry were changing the world forever. <\/p>\n The lost island, the fallen civilization, the ancient wall. \u00a0The jungles and prehistoric creatures, not the least of<\/p>\n which is the title character himself. \u00a0And on the flip side, New York City, fast on track to surpassing Paris and London as the center of civilization, airplanes, motion pictures, radios, and the icon of America\u2019s industrial might and ingenuity: the Empire State Building. \u00a0Everything came together to make this a movie that could present its story without doing what movies do today, and that\u2019s bludgeon the audience with the points being made.<\/p>\n When I would sit in front of our old manual dial television set and watch this, I was almost shaking by the time the first break in the action happened, shortly after Kong\u2019s fight with the T-Rex\/Allosaurus. \u00a0It was at times disturbing. \u00a0Though not because of a \u201cmessage\u201d. There was no overt moral sermonizing, other than the obvious story: Carl Denham just doesn\u2019t know when to quit. \u00a0Even then, Denham is not \u2018the bad guy\u2019. \u00a0Not like he would be today. \u00a0Nor were<\/p>\n the natives altogether bad. \u00a0Sure they did bad things. \u00a0Sure Denham did wrong. \u00a0But it wasn\u2019t as if the movie was trying to say \u2018there, serves them right.\u2019 <\/p>\n When the sailors rush into the jungle, it\u2019s to save Ann from the clutches of Kong. \u00a0They meet terrible, horrifying deaths. \u00a0Not because they deserve it. \u00a0But because that\u2019s what happens. \u00a0The dinosaurs aren\u2019t \u2018evil.\u2019 \u00a0They\u2019re there, in their world. \u00a0And the sailors have run into these primal forces of nature they\u2019re ill-prepared to deal with. \u00a0But they don\u2019t have to die because<\/i>. \u00a0They aren\u2019t killed because<\/i>. \u00a0They\u2019re killed because they run afoul of creatures too horrible for them to handle. \u00a0There is no scene where they spout off some diatribe about how inferior the natives were, or <\/p>\n how they love killing puppies, or how they would love to rape the land for resources. \u00a0Nope. \u00a0They die because the dinosaurs and Kong are too big for them. They\u2019re actually just trying to do the right thing and rescue a girl.<\/p>\n Kong is also sympathetic. \u00a0Sure, the goal is rescue the girl and eventually kill Kong. \u00a0But it isn\u2019t as if there is a moral force in his actions. \u00a0He\u2019s just doing his thing. \u00a0When he shakes the sailors off the log, it\u2019s because he\u2019s defending what\u2019s his. \u00a0He beats dinosaurs and airplanes for what\u2019s his. \u00a0He\u2019s doing all he knows to do, and the film never says otherwise. \u00a0People in New York who die aren\u2019t evil, or spouting bigotry or anti-progressive ideals. \u00a0They are just deserve the warning), you feel a little pity for him, and yet you don\u2019t feel that you should pull a Zimmerman on Carl Denham. <\/p>\n Ah, that was movie making. \u00a0Today, of course, in the age of Political Control, all things have to advance the Cause. \u00a0The sailors must shoot first. \u00a0The natives must be some bizarre androgynous race deserving no more sympathies than marching zombies. \u00a0Kong and Ann must psychologically connect, and we must be shown that it\u2019s evil men and their wicked machines who are the bad ones. \u00a0And whoever is Denham or the Denham character must be stripped of sympathy and shown to be the force of evil that he is for toying with nature and the march of progress.<\/p>\n And the characters? \u00a0Derided by some hipsters today as shallow in 33, in our version they would be caricatures, types. \u00a0They would represent things. \u00a0The evil corporate mogul. \u00a0The sadistic hunter. \u00a0The racist white guy. \u00a0The religious fanatic. \u00a0And when they were trounced, eaten, trampled, shaken, crushed or whatever, you would know not-too-deep-down that they deserved it because of who, ore more important what, they were.<\/p>\n In 1933\u2019s Kong, the characters may not be deep \u2013 but it was 1933. \u00a0Watch those movies then and see how quick they were. \u00a0Movies were new, and they didn\u2019t feel the need to bring out Freud\u2019s couch and analyze every action and idea for hours on end. \u00a0Ann was a girl duped into following Denham\u2019s crazy ideas. \u00a0The skipper an old, crusty sea veteran. \u00a0The sailors, described at the beginning as rough and threatening, were sailors. \u00a0Yes, some old racial stereotypes like the Asian cook or the dastardly island natives. or at least natives doing what an American ideal of what natives did in 1933. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0But have you ever watched non-Western movies that depict things in America and Europe? Watch 1963\u2019s\u00a0Salladin the Victorious<\/i>, and you\u2019ll stop forever beating up on American and European cinema for being uniquely racist. \u00a0The natives in Kong <\/i>come off as angelic compared to how the Europeans are portrayed in much of that film (if not all of it, in parts \u2013 but then, the Natives in Kong <\/i>aren\u2019t always bad either). <\/p>\n If Kong <\/i>was racist, then it shows that bigotry is a part of the ages then and now. \u00a0In 2001, a made for TV movie version of The Lost World<\/i> was released. \u00a0Injected into the story, and not part of Arthur Conan Doyle\u2019s book upon which the movie was based, was the character of Reverend Theo Karr. \u00a0Played by the late, great Peter Falk, he is the religious fundamentalist determined to keep proof against his laughably outdated biblical views a secret. \u00a0How? \u00a0He strands the heroes on the plateau, sentencing them to almost certain death. \u00a0Why? \u00a0Well because, he\u2019s a Christian fundamentalist! \u00a0It\u2019s what they do! \u00a0They\u2019re all killers, all of them, killing and murdering to defend their bigotry and idiocy! \u00a0So if you think unfair portrayals of people are limited to 1933, you\u2019re not paying attention to 2013.<\/p>\n Anyway, the story. \u00a0Why did it bother me? \u00a0Well, for that reason. \u00a0People died because they died. \u00a0There was no reason for it. \u00a0Shallow as they might have been, they weren\u2019t cardboard cutouts representing \u2018a point of view.\u2019 When Kong breaks into an apartment and grabs a sleeping woman, thinking she is Ann, he pulls her out \u00a0the window. \u00a0Bewildered and terrified, the woman screams for her life, helpless in Kong\u2019s grasp as he examines her dozens of stories above the streets. \u00a0Then, satisfied that it isn\u2019t Ann, he turns his hand and drops her to her death. \u00a0Horrifying. \u00a0I used to lose sleep over that. \u00a0Over the sailors, too. \u00a0They didn\u2019t die because they were bad guys. \u00a0Today, of course, critics are quick to point out their sadistic killing of a charging stegosaurus. \u00a0I guess that\u2019s supposed to mean they got what they had coming. \u00a0But I get the impression that in the mind of the 1933 movie goer, killing a charging stegosaurus was not grounds for capital punishment. \u00a0Nonetheless, they died. \u00a0And they died for the same reason the Natives died. \u00a0They died because they were killed. \u00a0By Kong, dinosaurs, whatever. <\/p>\n And that left an impression on me. \u00a0Something I think is missing today, and one that makes me wonder. \u00a0Being a fan of old movies, I notice something. \u00a0Often times, no matter how bad the people, there is a sense of \u2018that\u2019s horrible they died.\u2019 \u00a0When Scarlet kills a ransacking Yankee in Gone With the Wind<\/i>, there is a moment of near horror as she and Melanie Wilkes realize what she has done. \u00a0Of course then their minds turn to more practical matters, but at least there is a moment. \u00a0When Fritz dies in Frankenstein<\/i>, he may have provoked the monster, but there is still remorse. \u00a0And in Kong, Carl Denham emphasizes that \u201ctwelve of our party met horrible death.\u201d Yes, there are times when the odd extras die, or in the more overtly racist moments, a native dies and nobody cares except that he was carrying the supplies. \u00a0Again, bigotry then and now. \u00a0But there w<\/a>And that\u2019s what it was. \u00a0In all of motion picture history, there are few films that move at such a pace as Kong. \u00a0Once the action starts, it never stops. \u00a0From the moment we meet Kong, about forty minutes into the film, to the finale on the streets of New York, it is almost non-stop excitement and adventure. <\/p>\n<\/a><\/div>\n<\/a><\/div>\n<\/a><\/div>\n
\nin the wrong place at the wrong time. \u00a0And when Kong is dead at the end (sorry for no spoiler alert, but if you didn\u2019t know that by now, you didn\u2019t <\/p>\n<\/a><\/div>\n<\/a><\/div>\n\u00a0<\/a><\/div>\n<\/a><\/div>\n<\/a><\/div>\n
\nas usually a sense that dying was bad. \u00a0No matter the genre. \u00a0No matter how bad the villain. \u00a0When Guy of Gisbourne dies after the legendary sword fight with Robin Hood, there\u2019s not a \u2018cool! look at how gruesome that was!\u2019 \u00a0There is a sense of \u2018wow, he\u2019s gone, he\u2019s paid the price\u2019. \u00a0It\u2019s a moment of gravitas, to use the popular term.<\/p>\n