Comprehensive information and links about King Kong

King Kong is the name of the fictional giant gorilla, from Skull Island, who has appeared in several works, most of which bear his name including the groundbreaking 1933 film, the film remakes of 1976 and 2005, and numerous sequels and paraphernalia.

In the original film, the character's name is Kong--a name given to him by the inhabitants of "Skull Island" in the Indian Ocean, where Kong lived along with other over-sized animals such as snakes, pterosaurs and dinosaurs. 'King' is an appellation added by an American film crew led by Carl Denham who captures Kong and takes him to New York City to be exhibited. Kong escapes and climbs the Empire State Building (the World Trade Center in the 1976 remake) where he is shot and killed by aircraft.

. The original, classic film. Remembered for its pioneering special effects using stop-motion models, animatronics and evocative story. Considered by some to be the greatest motion picture of all time.. A sequel released the same year, it concerns a return expedition to Skull Island that discovers Kong's son.. A film produced by Toho Studios in Japan. It brought the titular characters to life (the first time for both characters to be in a film in color) via the process of suitmation.. Another Toho film in which Kong faces both a mechanical double, dubbed Mechani-Kong, and a giant theropod dinosaur known as Gorosaurus (who would appear in Toho's A remake by film producer Dino De Laurentiis, released by Paramount Pictures, and director John Guillermin. Jessica Lange and Jeff Bridges starred. The film was generally panned by critics at the time, but its reputation has improved with time, and it was eventually a commercial success. Even at the time of release, however, several prominent and well-respected critics such as Pauline Kael and Roger Ebert applauded the de Laurentiis version. It also won an Oscar for special effects.. Released by De Laurentiis Entertainment Group (DEG). Starring Linda Hamilton, a sequel by the same producer and director as the 1976 film which involves Kong surviving his fall from the sky and requiring a coronary operation. It includes a female Kong, who was now pregnant.. A Universal Pictures remake of the original by New Zealand director Peter Jackson, best known for directing the trilogy. The most recent incarnation of Kong is also the longest, running three hours and seven minutes.

Late in 2005, the BBC and Hollywood trade papers reported that a 3D stereoscopic version of the 2005 film was being created from the animation files, and live actors digitally enhanced for 3D display. This may be just an elaborate 3D short for Universal Studios Theme Park, or a digital 3D version for general release in 2006.

Books

A novelization of the original film was published in December 1932, as part of the film's advance marketing. The novel was credited to Edgar Wallace and Merian C. Cooper, although it was in fact written by Delos W. Lovelace. Apparently Cooper was the key creative influence. In an interview, comic book author Joe DeVito explains:

dl"From what I know, Edgar Wallace, a famous writer of the time, died very early in the process. Little if anything of his ever appeared in the final story, but his name was retained for its salability ... King Kong was Cooper’s creation, a fantasy manifestation of his real life adventures. As many have mentioned before, Cooper was Carl Denham. His actual exploits rival anything Indiana Jones ever did in the movies." [1], by Orville Goldner and George E. Turner (1975). In a diary entry from 1932, Wallace wrote: "I am doing a super-horror story with Merian Cooper, but the truth is it is much more his story than mine ... I shall get much more credit out of the picture than I deserve if it is a success, but as I shall be blamed by the public if it's a failure, that seems fair" (p. 58). Wallace died of pneumonia complicated by diabetes on February 10, 1932, and Cooper later said, "Actually, Edgar Wallace didn't write any of , not one bloody word... I'd promised him credit and so I gave it to him" (p. 59).

The few differences exist in the novel, as it reflects an earlier draft of the .

The novelization includes scenes from the screenplay that were cut from the completed movie, or were never shot altogether. These include the spider pit sequence, as well as a Styracosaurus attack, and Kong battling three Triceratops.

The original publisher was Grosset Dunlap. Paperback editions by Bantam (U.S.) and Corgi (U.K.) came out in the 1960s, and it has since been republished by Penguin and Random House.

In 1933, . In this cartoon series, the famous giant ape befriends the Bond family, with whom he goes on various adventures, fighting monsters, robots, mad scientists and other threats. Produced by RankinBass, the animation was provided in Japan by Toei Animation, making this the very first anime series to be commissioned right out of Japan by an American company. This was also the cartoon that resulted in the production of Toho's The premise of a giant gorilla brought to the United States for entertainment purposes, and subsequently wreaking havoc, was recycled in (1925), in which dinosaurs are found living on an isolated plateau. Scenes from a failed O'Brien project, was also about a group of people stumbling into an enviroment where prehistoric creatures have survived extinction.. An unofficial animated production set after the events of the original film. "Kong" is cloned by a female scientist.Giant gorillas similar to Kong are part of a story in the anime TV-series "Speed Racer", which takes place on an African island that is the 007-villain- secret base of an exiled army (who suspiciously resemble Nazis) and a "traditional" mad-scientist, who plan to unleash war on the entire world (again) with an "army of giants" (direct quote). Around a half-dozen Kong-size gorillas -- along with an unrevealed number of giant spiders -- are shown to have been successfully created, and the next stage in the experiments was to be experimenting on humans.A direct-to-DVD movie based on the 2001 cartoon has been released to try and cash in on the 2005 movie, called [和製キングコング]), featuring an all-Japanese cast and produced by the Shochiku Kinema company was also released in 1933.[3]period piece by company Zensho Kinema in which King Kong attacks medieval Edo (modern Tokyo), and also Japan's first (giant monster) film. Although inaccurate to its historical setting, some Caligari-esque expressionistic buildings were added for Kong to climb. The film has been lost since its theatrical run in 1938, but rare photos available in books in Japan prove this film's existence. Fuminori Ohashi, who would go on to create the suit for the titular monster in An episode of the post-apocalyptic cartoon Thundarr the Barbarian involved a race of monkey-people reconstructing a full-sized animatronic Kong that had been (fictitiously) built for the 1976 remake, and had been buried during the cataclysm. featured an episode in which a chimpanzee astronaut gets mutated into a gigantic pseudo-gorilla. This was also a remake of an episode from a 1960's animated Superman with much of the same plot. has been parodied many times in film, television and literature.

One well-known satire is by British author Terry Pratchett, whose book climaxes with a giant woman carrying a screaming ape up a tall tower.

The television series Duck Tales parodies King Kong in two episodes:

In the episode Attack of the Fifty Foot Webby (itself a parody of Attack of the Fifty Foot Woman), when Scrooge McDuck, Huey, Dewey, and Louie, Bubba and Webby travel to Africa in search of the elusive long tailed gorilla. They reach a jungle where everything grows larger, due to the influence of a magic spring. They're chased by giant insects. Later, Webby accidently drinks the water and grows to fifty feet. The end of the episode features Webby carrying the ape (whom she rescued from a ring master and the Beagle Boys to the top of a Duckburg skyscraper, and falling off (just before she shrinks, bounces off some canvas, and reaches the ground).

In Ducky Horror Picture Show, in which a convention of monsters show up, Ping Pong is a giant ape that climbs to the top of the tallest building in Duckburg, Scrooge's Money Bin.

Darkwing Duck once contends with assorted movie characters that are conjured off from movie-theater screens, and a giant gorilla is one of them, of course.

The animated cartoon series Grape Ape, about the adventures of a 40-foot tall purple gorilla, is arguably inspired by King Kong.

Penelope Pitstop played damsel-in-distress on a movie set, with a giant wind-up robot gorilla. The same character also once deals with a -size gorilla called "King Klonk".

A popular television spoof was the segment 'King Homer' from characters, with Homer as Kong, Marge as Ann Darrow and Mr. Burns as the Carl Denham analogues. The spoof follows the plot of the 1933 film closely, however it ends with Marge marrying King Homer after he collapses in exhaustion, failing to climb beyond the first story of a tall building. The film was referenced again on in the episode "Monty Can't Buy Me Love," where Mr. Burns captures the Loch Ness Monster and brings him back to America to entertain an audience; however, instead of the Monster going berserk during its debut, Burns himself is startled by the flash photography and causes the carnage.

Dav Pilkey also parodied the movie in the book .

'Kitten Kong' was a 1971 episode of the BBC comedy series The Goodies, in which a fluffy white kitten was enlarged to super-size. Some surprisingly good special effects enabled the kitten to destroy several famous landmarks, including St Paul's Cathedral and the Post-Office Tower, before reverting to normal.

A two-part Energizer Battery commerical had the 1933 Kong himself contracted by a rival battery corporation (SuperVolt) to get rid of the Energizer Bunny for them. The commericals were done in black-and-white, and used cleverly edited 1933 Kong sequences (possibly combined with new computer-generated Kong shots). The concluding second-part had Kong cornering the Bunny on the roof of a New York City building (complete with biplanes flying in the sky). His foot in an open window interrupts a couple (resembling Ann Darrow and Jack Driscoll) having a romantic moment. The woman, extremely annoyed, slams the window on Kong's toes, making him lose his balance and grip, sending him falling.

In the 1968 film, Yellow Submarine, the characters look in a room where a monster ape smashes through a window to get at a screaming woman on a bed. One character (George) casually comments, "Do you thing we're interrupting something?"

In the 2005 film , the giant were-rabbit grabs Lady Tottington and leaps onto a tall building.

In The Fairly Odd Parents there is an episode where Cupid sends Remmy Buxaplenty and Timm Turner on a scavenger hunt. One of the objects they had to find was "The world's biggest bannana", which is being held by none other than a giant ape swatting at airplanes. Another hint that it's a Kong spoof is that Timmy remarks "We're in 1933! With this steel and wood technology, NOTHING CAN GO WRONG!"

and subsequent spin-offs, in which the eponymous ape climbs a huge structure after kidnapping a woman, as in the film. Shigeru Miyamoto intended the name 'Donkey Kong' to mean "stubborn gorilla." MCAUniversal attempted to sue Nintendo for copyright infringement when the game became a hit, but ended up paying Nintendo $1.8 million in damages instead when it was discovered that King Kong was in fact a public domain character, and that MCA knew it when they filed the lawsuit.A King Kong game was produced by Tiger Games for the Atari 2600, sporting a blue casing. The game is somewhat rare.Midway also feature a King Kong wanna-be, named George, as well as a Godzilla wanna-be and other monsters.adventure games very loosely based on the 1986 movie King Kong Lives. This game was developed by Konami and it disregarded the human characters and other plot elements of the movie. King Kong was presented in a quest to save his female counterpart from the clutches of gigantic robots.King Kong makes a special appearance as a playable character in Konami Wai Wai World (also known as Konami World). Interestingly, King Kong does not appear in his usual giant size but rather as a 10 foot tall gorilla. The story of the game mentions King Kong being shrunk down in size after being captured by an army of robots, which directly relates to the game King Kong 2: Ikari no Megaton Punch.War of the Monsters is a 3D fighting game developed by Incognito Entertainment for Sony PlayStation 2 where the characters are various giant monsters inspired by films. One of the monsters is a giant ape named Congar, an obvious King Kong rip-off. It also features a Godzilla rip-off called Togera. A bonus mode will all also unlock a secret character named Metal Congar, an obvious reference to Mechani-Kong.In Capcom's 1989 arcade classic Strider, a 'giant robot ape' confronts the game's hero, Strider Hiryu as a mini-boss; an obvious reference to both Kong and Mechani-Kong. He appears during the Siberian Wilderness Stage (Level 2). was the title character (a boxer) of a ground breaking 1950s South African musical which helped launch Miriam Makeba on the international stage."King Kong" is the name of a Hong Kong movie series made in 1995 which is a James Bond spoof with the main character with the alias of "King Kong".