KING KONG

   1) Film (1933). RKO. Dir Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack, starring Fay Wray, Robert Armstrong, Bruce Cabot. Screenplay James A. Creelman, Ruth Rose, from a story by Cooper, with credit also given to Edgar WALLACE. Special effects designed and supervised by Willis H. O'BRIEN. 100 mins. B/w.

   The classic MONSTER MOVIE. On a remote island inhabited by unfriendly natives and prehistoric MONSTERS, of which the most powerful is a giant APE called Kong, a young actress (Wray) from a visiting film unit is kidnapped by tribesmen and offered to Kong, a gift which he eagerly accepts. She is rescued and Kong is captured and taken to New York, where he is exhibited, escapes, rampages, recaptures the girl (for whom he appears to cherish strong feelings), and makes a last defiant stand on top of the Empire State Building before being machine-gunned down by a squadron of biplanes.Although KK is an early film, its special effects are still very convincing today, many being the product of the technique of stop-motion photography that had been pioneered by O'Brien in The LOST WORLD (1925). The classic status of KK, which has become one of the greatmythopoeic works of the 20th century, has probably to do with the ambiguous feelings - much as with its fairy-tale model, "Beauty and the Beast" - created by the film towards Kong himself: terror at his savagery;admiration for his strength, naturalness and effortless regality in his primeval surroundings; and pity for his squalid end - the most memorable of all cinematic images of Nature destroyed in the city. This ending is also an image of the great destroyed by the small: the humans are dwarfed by the ape and indeed by the city they have created, a feeling emphasized by the ambience of the Great Depression, with a bored, impoverished populace ready to grasp at any ersatz marvel but panicking when it finds itself faced with the real thing. Yet another polarity is that of innocence destroyed by sophistication, a feeling enhanced by the crucial story-element of Kong's capture being to do with the shooting of a movie. The narrative moves with elan, and the film has been almost as popularwith critics as with the general public. There is a GRAPHIC NOVEL version of the tale: King Kong: The Greatest Adventure Story of All Time * (graph 1970) illus Alberto Giolitti.The disappointing sequel was SON OF KONG(1933). Another Willis O'Brien giant ape, not quite so big, starred in MIGHTY JOE YOUNG (1949; vt Mr Joseph Young of Africa).

   2) Film (1976). Dino De Laurentiis/Paramount. Dir John Guillermin, starring Jessica Lange, Jeff Bridges, Charles Grodin, Ed Lauter. Screenplay Lorenzo Semple Jr, based on the 1933 screenplay. 134 mins. Colour.

   In this lavish and heavily publicized remake, it is an oil-company executive who leads the expedition to Kong's island. Kong is taken back to the USA in an oil supertanker. His last stand is on top of the World Trade Center, and he is shot dead by a group of helicopter gunships.This version did not use model animation and was therefore more restricted - and indeed more primitive - in its effects: most shots of Kong show a man in an ape suit. The original set-piece battles between Kong and prehistoric monsters are gone. The vigorous narrative of the original is here slowed down by didactic, moralizing scenes in a manner which suggests that the new Hollywood has a much lower opinion of the intelligence of the public than the old one did. The delicate balance of the original between pity and terror is hereshifted towards pity, and Kong is softened. Tragedy becomes at best pathos, yet many scenes remain moving, and the startlingly vulgar heroine (now feminist and tough, no longer a limp screamer) has a more interestingrole than her original. In a flurry of self-contradiction, KK seems designed to be spoof, tragedy, nostalgia-epic, spectacle and allegory about "the rape of the environment by big business" - all rolled into one.

   JB/PN

   See also: CINEMA; GREAT AND SMALL; LOST WORLDS.