Thursday, April 14, 2011

Episode Four: King Kong (1976) "A Great Big Love Story"




Don't tell me this one sucked...at least it doesn't have Jack Black.






I Really enjoyed King Kong when it hit Theatres in 1976. Even at 10 years old, I understood why Kong was into "Jessica Lange".


They were still using a "Guy in a Monkey Suit" back in those days, but they did have a "Giant" mechanical arm that slowly moved our starlet around the set and those were our "special effects".



The "Green Screen" work is bad since it was the early days...But No Matter!!


This is a Fantastic and Fascinating Film. I believe that the quality Cinematography and Casting outweigh the "outdated" effects.










All three King Kong Movies change the "Jack" character around a bit.


The 1933 version has Jack as the second in command, where the new "Paul Jackson" version has Jack as the script writer tricked aboard by Jack Black.

My favorite Jack was Jeff Bridges as the "Hippie" environmentalist/photographer/stowaway.
Please Note: Jeff is on the Right


There are some Beautiful shots of the "Twin Towers" in New York, shot just three years after they were finished being constructed.















There were worse movies in the 70's with men in Gorilla Suits.




Such as:



The Thing with Two Heads (1972).














That guy had his sideways walk "Down"!













We had to write one page a day in school back then. When I decided to write about Kong, I remembered that I had "King Kong" stickers on one of my writing journals from 1976.





I decided to take a look and found that I could not spell worth a darn but I wrote well for a kid in an open forum "Hippie School" where we prioritized learning about people and how we are "All the Same" instead of concentrating on such things as math and spelling and such. Quite a bit of my writing were stories...and they were mostly Monster tales. Kong Kong was a Pretty Big Deal around school when I was a kid and I remember writing my own Kong stories as well as Star Wars & Godzilla (my Godzilla was named "GORGO").


Sometimes I wrote things like "we have to write one page per day, so I've decided to write about how we have to write one page per day and soon I will be at the bottom of this page"...However one day I apparently wrote this:


I forgot all about that experiment.
Kids are So Funny.
I noticed how the teacher did not correct any spelling that day...I am sure she had No Idea what to do or say about that journal entry...Ha!






I am sure we never did smoke that Joint, as we were Great kids and never did anything too crazy. Odd though to me is that as I write this "Journal Entry" I recall that my friend mentioned now owns a Business called "Gorilla"...Big Monkey/Small World.

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