King Kong- '33, '76, '05?

76, music, mood..perfect IMHO

 

Everything on the 2 disc DVD is on the Blu-Ray too. The movie looks amazing in HD!

 

The 1976 was dismissed as camp bexause, well, most of it was written and played for camp although the actors were engaging the man in the ape suit rarely did the trick for me and the giant robot was, well, robotic in the worst possible way.

It certainly brings its own unique take to the material,and is very 70's bit. The giant snake is lame.

 

YES! I'm not alone!

 

I will take stop motion animation, a guy in a gorilla suit and a giant robot gorilla over a cartoon gorilla any day!

 

Yes, for me it just worked.. To me it's the perfect KK movie. Lange perfect as well

 

The cartoon ape looks pretty darn convincing.

I see your kongs and raise you Jessica Lange, Naomi Watts and Fay Wray and all real.

 

Grape ape

 

Strange there is no poll with this thread .

 

Only on the SH forum can you find the TWO people that prefered the '76!

 

Actually, there's a few of us. Jumping back to the first page of this thread, I discovered that the thread starter prefers '76. So there!

 

Man. Fay Wray really was a beautiful woman, wasn't she?

 

Whatever happened to Fay Wray?
That delicate satin draped frame...

 

Years after the 1976 version was made, producer Dino De Laurentiis admitted that the giant robot King Kong never worked and only moved in one shot in the film. It looked horribly fake in the movie. The whole production was a lot of smoke & mirrors and BS, promising ten times more than they ever delivered. It's a terrible, terrible film in every conceivable way, made by people who didn't give a crap about the legend or creating a good story, and the effects were abysmal.

 

What always confused me about Kong '76 is why did they take out the dinosaurs?

Has anyone ever said a movie would be better without dinosaurs?

 

King Kong (1976): Home of perhaps the most emblematic movie line of the 1970s:
Jessica Lange (struggling in King Kong's grasp) "Put me down you male chauvinist ape!"

 

Part of the reason it was stretched out over two nights was because it was an extended version with about 45 minutes of additional footage. Although I think a 3-hour version of the '76 Kong would probably be overkill, I'd still be interested in seeing it... sadly, this extended TV version has never been released on DVD.

 

What special effects laden film isn't a lot of smoke and mirrors? That's the entire point of VFX. Regarding the look of the VFX. They looked fake in '33. They looked fake in '05. VFX often look very fake, but people suspend their disbelief and go with it.

The acting is miles above that of '33 and '05. It took the flat, one-dimensional legend of '33 and injected some much-needed emotion into the film. '33 is not much more than a monster movie. '76 took that limited concept and raised the bar. '76 added drama to the mix. It's great, great film in every conceivable way, made by people who wanted to expand on the legend. As a result, they managed to make a better film than '33.

 

I loved how Peter Jackson's King Kong included the depressed economy and used that to funnel all the characters into the same boat (literally).

Another way in which Jackson's film surpassed the original was in how well thought-out Skull Island was, particularly how the humans on the island wound up on the "wrong side" of the walls. (We see the ruins of their former civilization inside the walls - where the giant animals now roam - informing us that the humans had fled to the outside of the walls at some point and descended into barbarians).

Jackson built a world that honors the original, and outdoes it.

 

The Jackson version had some good moments, but I hated the scene where they're trying to outrun dinosaurs on Skull Island. Looked horribly fake.

 

There was no there there. I can suspend my disbelief only the point that the picture looks like absolute crap, and then... suspension is over. I wasn't the only one who noticed that the VFX in King Kong were horrible, trust me.

 

By today's standards, yes, as are the VFX in '33 and The Terminator and any number of older films that rely heavily on VFX.

 

No, the movies of the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s were state of the art for that era. There are bad effects in King Kong (1976) that were bad even in the 1970s, bad in the 1960s, bad in any era. Just very obvious, grainy, mottled, inconsistent, terrible effects. I saw it in the theater in first release and was horrified by how bad it looked. As many critics noted, even the size of Kong changed shot to shot, because different VFX houses worked on the movie at different times and didn't collaborate to the point where the shots would match. I worked on the movie for almost a month (for the 1980s home video release) and saw every frame a dozen times. It's bad by any definition.

The 2005 remake is much, much better technically, but doesn't have the heart of the 1933 movie. There are also some weird technical gaffes in the 2005 film, particularly the fake water in some of the small boat shots. I'm stymied as to why they believed they had to shoot those shots dry and add the water in later, because it looks very "hidden valley"-esque to me. A lot of the rest of the 2005 movie looks exemplary in terms of color and camera movement and all that stuff.

 

The 33 is THE version...Jackson's is a near classic save for that a..hole Jack Black who single- handedly almost destroyed Peter's loving tribute...the 75....man, I went to the premiere in NYC. Ton's of Kong fans, you know, tee shirts, dolls, posters, the works, and by the time that film ended the theater was almost empty!! I heard more groans that morning than in a hospital!!!!

 

I'd put it IN the pail!!