For some reason, I've been wanting to see the cartoon of my youth called "King Kong." Does anyone know if it's available on DVD anywhere? I haven't seen it. But that cheesy song and the cheesy opening credits have been running through my head.
You'd think with yesterday's release of Peter Jackson's King Kong (see my review here), there'd be some little studio somewhere trying to capitalize on some ancient library of stuff. I mean, they took the new movie release as an excuse to *finally* release the 1933 film on DVD.
I also have a hankerin' to see the 1977 King Kong again. Which brings up a whole other can of worms. I wonder if DEG or Paramount will release it. You know, it has the World Trade Center in it. That World Trade Center. In 1977 the WTC was new and it magically looked just like some natural (!) rock formation on Skull Island so that King Kong would be drawn to it. I guess when they built the WTC they had no idea that it was exactly the same height and shape as a rock formation on a secret island shrouded in fog somewhere.
I wonder if anyone was ever tempted to say that the Empire State Building reminded King Kong of anything. I wondered that in the first Power Ranger (1995) movie when the goal on that other planet after they found the woman with barely any clothes on was to climb to the top of a single rock formation, that looked like it was half of the rock formation in KK77. Yes, the Power Ranger Movie, and I wasn't the only adult there who giggled at the rock formation.
From the 1977 movie, I remember that it seemed like Jessica Lange was instantly teleported from the top of the WTC to the ground so the Giant Ape could look at her with his dying breath. It's nice to see that Jessica went on to be a real movie star. I had the thought last night in KK05 that if it took Adrien Brody so long to go up in the Empire State Building elevators, that Naomi Watts wasn't going to make it back to Earth until well after the bloody carcass has been removed. But maybe that's just me projecting the 1977 reality on the 2005 impression of 1933.
Anyway, the King Kong of the cartoon variety had a song with these words (if memory serves) "King Kong / You know the name of / King Kong / Ten Times as Big as a Man." During the credits lava poured out of a volcano and raced down the side and left the words "King Kong" spelled out in raised, lavaproof, dirt. Even the inside of the o in Kong was hollowed out… And the family in the cartoon was a dad (who was some sort of scientist), a teen age girl, and a boy who was just about my age at the time. And King Kong was a gentle beast who would always put people on his shoulder and fight dinosaurs and evil supervillains. You gotta love that.
In KK05 last night, I chuckled when Computer Generated King Kong put Ann Darrow on his shoulder. I thought, I've seen that somewhere before. Now I just wanna watch all the cartoons back to back. You know how I am.
update: Google found these:
- Toon Tracker – "Home of the lost cartoons" – has a couple of screenshots!
- The Big Cartoon Database – shows cheesy lettering from the lava flow credits
- Mike's Classic Cartoon Themes – has a link to listen to the song in mp3 format!
