his two-disc set, packaged in a die-cut metal box, arrives just in time to contrast Peter Jackson's three-hour Christmas movie with the unforgettable 100-minute original.
Both films (and the much-loathed but somewhat better-than-its-reputation 1976 version) are about an island that is home to a giant gorilla with a yen for shrieking blondes. In 1933, the lady in distress was homeless actress Ann Darrow (Wray). The showman who brought her there was Carl Denham (Armstrong), and the hero who rescued her was Jack Driscoll (Cabot). It all comes together during an ill-advised trip to New York, where the big ape comes to grief on the Empire State Building.
The original remains compelling after all these years, thrilling and emotionally resonant despite effects that, while advanced for their time, look downright primitive in the era of CGI. They're still remarkable in that they render Kong himself a terrifying and, by the end, heart-rending antagonist.
The DVD version of the film looks and sounds as good as it has in decades, with none of the muddiness that has afflicted the soundtrack on some of its television airings. But the real treasures here are the extras. One of the best is the fascinating "I'm King Kong!", a documentary profiling the remarkable life of Kong's co-creator (and, thanks to his appearance in a certain biplane cockpit, executioner), Merian C. Cooper, an explorer, thrillseeker, warrior and adventurer whose exploits were the stuff of movies before he ever got near a movie camera. He was so much like his character Carl Denham that moments of King Kong play like autobiography. His life resonates in the character of Driscoll, too, as that hero's surly comments about women just getting in the way on expeditions reflect a previous Cooper exploit where (by his judgment, at least) a woman did just that.
Another seven-part documentary covers aspects of the classic film itself, from its conception to its legacy, with appearances by Kong fans John Landis, Joe Dante and Ray Bradbury, among others.
The movie itself comes with commentary by special effects guys Ray Harryhausen and Ken Ralston and interview segments featuring Cooper and Fay Wray.
The spider sequence recreated
Harryhausen also shows up in the commentary over test footage for O'Brien's uncompleted dinosaur film Creation, waxing indignant over the shooting of a baby dinosaur by an evil human with a rifle.
Wonderful as all of this is, the set's absolute highlight, worth the price all by itself, is a recreation of the infamous "spider-pit sequence," featuring the actual deaths of several of the sailors Kong shakes off a fallen tree and into a ravine. As the film stands now, we are left to the assumption that the poor schlubs died when they hit the ground, but they weren't that lucky. In the original cut, they woke up and found themselves in doomed combat with monsters that include a giant spider, a giant lizard and something that appears to be half scorpion, half octopus. Most historical accounts report the sequence removed by censors, but it was actually excised by Cooper and Schoedsack, who felt that it stopped the story dead.
It's still tragic for such a memorable sequence to disappear forever, which is why it's nice that Peter Jackson assembled several fellow Kong geeks, including Frank Darabont (The Green Mile) and onetime Kong Rick Baker, to recreate the sequence using the original script, storyboard and production art, and stop-motion animation no more advanced that that of the original film. They even brought one of the original film's monster miniatures, now a badly decomposing relic incapable of surviving closer examination, to a local hospital for X-rays to reveal its armature. The result? A new spider sequence, as close to the original scene as we're ever likely to know, seamlessly placed into the surrounding action. It has not been inserted into the original film, as it's not the real spider sequence and therefore doesn't belong there, but it is available on Disc Two, a clear labor of love by everyone involved. Under the circumstances, one can only empathize with Bill Hunt, the SFX guy who says, "What's better than getting a chance to work on a remake of King Kong? Getting to work on the original."
