1933 King Kong in November

Since when did this morph into a "recreation" by PJ or whomever? The only rumor that I have read was that the original Spider sequence had been found and an additional add-on rumor was that Peter Jackson was helping to fill in some of the missing sections of said scene....when did this switch over to a "recreation"?
Or is that what you mean, the word "recreation" has a different connotation to my thinking, I.E. recreating the entire scene as a facsimile rather than the original scene itself. If that is the case then sorry if I misunderstood.

There are those who trust Harry about as far as they can throw a piano...

Years ago, why didn't anyone ask Cooper what he actually did with the spider footage after he excised it? Why not ask any of his family members? Why didn't O'Brien ask for it if he was heartbroken over it being removed? Would it actually of been thrown out? I find it hard to believe that after all the work done, it could be tossed so easily.Someone must know what exactly happened to it.

I think you need to remember that seventy years ago no one probably realized that people today would even be interested in a movie from '33, much less what happened to excised footage. The article in "Monsters from the Vault" I referred to in an earlier post has a recollection of a meeting with Marcel Delgado who helped build the armatures of Kong. For a while, one of the original Kongs was missing, having been stored in a large hangar-type building. It was spotted, by accident, by someone looking for something entirely different. He wondered if it would even have been found and preserved if he had not stumbled upon it. There are lots of stories out there about films, manuscripts, artwork, videotapes, etc. that were lost or destroyed because no one really thought there was any value to it or that it should be preserved.

Shortly after posting that last post, I ran accross this in a thread about "I Love Lucy", which I think drives my point home...

We must not lose sight of the fact the spider sequence was cut NOT because of censorship and NOT because of an artistic decision by some "higher up". It was cut by Merian C. Cooper himself, who felt it was not only a show stopper, but it took too much focus off of Kong and his actions (dumping men off a log to their deaths).

Images of natives being eaten and stepped on, as well as the stripping of Fay Wray, HAD been cut due to censorship (at later re-releases). Hopefully all of THESE scenes have been restored.

www.dvdtimes.co.uk shows these as rumoured release dates for R2 :

24th October 2005

Kong: King of Atlantis (not sure what this is)

21st November 2005

King Kong SE

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ...

ROFL

Wonder if Jackson's film'll lead in to it

Ah.Right.

That doesn't look too good.

Per a post on the classic horrors board, USA Today contacted Warners and asked about the spider rumors. Warners said it hasn't been found.

That's about as close to the source as you can get.

Still gonna be a great DVD though.

Steve

According to Goldner & Turner's The Making Of King Kong, the spider sequence was excised in postproduction. The miniature set had obviously not been struck because a shot of Bruce Cabot being stalked by a spider was reshot with a giant lizard. The scene had been postsynched by Murray Spivack. In spite of the work the team had put in, Cooper dropped the scene because "the viewer tended to forget what he was supposed to be thinking about - the plight of Faye Wray."

According to the same book, the 1938 reissue suffered a total of three minutes of cuts at the insistence of the Hays Office - twenty-nine scenes in total - specifically the Brontosaurus was only allowed to kill three out of his original five victims; Faye Wray kept her dignity when examined by Kong; eight shots were of various stompings in the native village; three more scenes deleted were deaths in New York, and twelve comprised Kong's casual discarding of the woman from her bedroom.

There was a 1942 reissue that G&T suggest was not struck from the OCN but a dupe negative, which leads one to wonder what might have been going on in RKO's vault at the time. Subsequent reissues in 1952 and 1956 also came from this source.

In 1956, RKO went looking for the excised material and drew a blank. The material did not surface again until 1971 when all but the first three missing shots were located in Philadelphia. G&T say that the new holders of the feature Janus Films restored the missing footage but at the time of writing (1975), the original main and end titles were still missing.

Now unless Goldner and Turner got their research wrong, I find it interesting that certainly in 1971, the rights to the movie weren't in the hands of RKO or Warners. From the inference of the piece, I wonder if the material found in Philadelphia was a print rather than negative. And most interesting of all - what had happened to the OCN between 1938 and 1942?

I'd be interested to know what materials the restoration team at Warners have been working with. Have they located the OCN, or at least a negative that doesn't have the printed-in misframing of the 1942-on prints.

Even more interesting - who are/were Janus Films and how did they come to have the rights to the movie?

According to the notes on the back of the old Criterion laserdisc, the censored footage was found in 16mm only. It certainly looks that way in that (and subsequent) "restored" home video releases.

Based on what WB has said (particularly in the last chat), I don't think there's any reason to doubt that the 35mm print that is the basis for the new restoration has everything seen on the original 1933 release.

Another anecdote about old RKO holdings: somewhere in my geek library there's a quote from someone involved in the production of the original Star Trek (shot at Desilu, which was the former RKO lot) saying that one day a soundstage floor had to be dug up or something and they found a vault containing Kong models or somesuch. I would imagine a layman might confuse materials for later monster movies for Kong items, but it's an interesting story.

Janus had sub-licensed the theatrical rights to KONG from RKO (then owned by General Tire Co.) in the late '60s. Janus restored the censored scenes from 16mm materials.
General Tire sublicensed the RKO library to anyone around the world who offered them a minimal amount of money.

In the 80's Janus/Criterion separately sublicensed KONG from RKO to issue it on laserdisc, using the same sub-par materials.

It wasn't until Turner had purchased RKO, that those folks, in 1993, and in conjunction with the film's 60th birthday, found 35mm sources for the censored scenes. They were included in the 60th anniversary VHS issued by Turner Home Entertainment, and their laserdisc licensee Image.

The last issue was a VHS reissue by Warner in the late '90s of the Turner VHS....all from he same material.

8 years of DVD have passed without a great KING KONG. WB made us wait for a great CITIZEN KANE, and the wait was worth it (despite Lowery's faux pas with the grain). Now, we are finally getting KONG, one would assume before year's end, and all industry buzz is that what we will be getting will be nothing short of outstanding, and light years better than anything ever seen in decades.

I haven't seen nothin' yet...but I trust WB. No other corporate entity has taken as much of my paychecks as they have during the past two years. I trust them to do an amazing job.

I still think this is one of the bigger faux pas in the history of digital restoration. Without the grain, Citizen Kane almost looks like it was shot on video.

The grain is only the start of the problems with the Kane transfer; the entire film is way too bright.

It's a nice DVD, but it isn't really Kane.

DJ

Which three shots were still missing? When did they turn up? And, the original main and end titles which we're familiar with hadn't been seen since the '30s? What did the replacement titles look like? And when and where did they find the original titles?

Was the original 1933 uncut version of King Kong shown in the UK/Europe? Perhaps uncut elements exist in foreign countries. Warner may be working with those, too.

The first three cut scenes - the brontosaurus chomping on the sailors, I'd taken that to mean. And I was under the impression there must have been a different set of titles on the original 1933 release to the ones on subsequent releases.

I hope when they do the set they include a facsimile of Keye Luke's brochure for the movie (like the one they did for the GWTW set).

WHOA!!!! The New KONG Trailer looks fantastic! Can't wait to see it. On the other hand can't wait to see the DVD of the 1933 one!

Yes the new King Kong will be great. And Peter Jackson's going to do a whole trilogy, which I just found out, so I don't know if it's common knowledge. Son of Kong is out June 2006 and King Kong 3 is out December 2006. Can't wait. I bet we're looking at a LOTR-style DVD release pattern.

Good one!

Uh-Huh

I was not aware that the talented Mr. Luke drew the artwork for the Kong pressbook. Thanks for the heads up. That would indeed be a great addition.

PaulP: that's a good one.

Steve

Yeah, I saw that video diary segment myself and found it to be very illuminating, what date did they release that diary episode on?

I don't know, somebody just sent it to me.

Wow Paul! What else was in this video? Elaborate!

I seem to remember hearing about it too.. you're sure you don't remember the date?

Paul:
Warning Spoiler! Click to show

awww.. I was going to give it away then I thoughtthe thread would hate me for it

Well that isn't very nice of them. There's nothing to indicate that in the video. You have to have known when it was released?

What about:
- "We go to Germany with Son of Kong and he helps us defeat Hitler"
- Albino Kong
- "Mount a couple of browning machine guns on Son of Kong's shoulders"