1933 - KING KONG, accept no substitute

 One of the most important adventure films ever made.  King Kong came out of the imagination of two remarkable filmmakers, Merian C. Cooper and Ernest Schoedsack.  These two men had made their reputations filming what can only  be called sort of documentary films.  Grass: A Nation's Battle for Life, was about an amazing caravan of nomads in search of pastures in what was then known as Persia for their cattle.  The film had some extraordinary scenes of the hardships that these nomads endured during their migration, Chang: A Drama of the Wilderness, was filmed in Thailand and featured a family trying to make a living in the jungle.  This film ended with an impressive elephant stamped.

Cooper and Schoedsack eventually ended up working for RKO, where Cooper pushed the studio to make a film about a giant gorilla.  Cooper was lucky enough to find Willis O'Brian, a stop motion animation effects technician to implement his idea and with a green light from RKO studio chief David O Selznick, King Kong was born.  The rest is they say is history. A few pieces of trivia about this film

The giant gate and wall that the natives of Skull Island use to keep Kong out of their village was eventually repurposed for the escape from Atlanta sequence in Gone With The Wind the wall was burned down as Clark Gable and Vivian Leigh made their escape.

It's well know that the character of Carl Denham the movie producer looking to shoot a film about Kong was modeled after Merian Cooper.  Jack Driscoll the sailor who rescues Ann Darrow from Kong was modeled after Ernest B. Schoedsack.   Although they never really acknowledged it Ann Darrow might have been based on Marguerite Harrison who had partially financed the making of Grass, and accompanied Cooper and Schoedsack on their expedition in Persia much to their annoyance.  Marguerite Harrison was a rather remarkable woman, she had been a spy for the allies during World War I and later went on to found the Children's Hospital School in Baltimore.

RKO's special effects team pushed the limit with what they could be done with camera trickery.  For a early 1930's film, a lot of the special effects hold up very well.  King Kong has frequently been criticized  for the amount of racism in the film particularly in the scenes with the natives of Skull Island.  The film has also been cited as a metaphor for racial tensions as the film is about the destruction of the black gorilla by white men.

It’s also well known that during the climatic fight between Kong and the Air Force, the pilot and co-pilot of one of the planes are Cooper and Schoedsack blasting away at Kong.  The director Peter Jackson in his 2005 remake and special effects and makeup expert Rick Baker are the pilot and co-pilot in that version.

King Kong was written by Edgar Wallace, James Creelman and Ruth Rose.  The running time is 100 minutes. 

1995 - LOVE IN THE TIME OF TWILIGHT, a love story among other things

A big favorite of this blog, Tsui Hark films a love story/fantasy/comedy/ghost story/time travel film.  Hark mashes together about every film genre he can think of.  The main plot seems to be a love story about a young couple who can't stand each other but will eventually fall in love in the future.

 How do we know this?  Nicky Wu plays a bank teller named Kong who meets a woman who is a member of the Peking Opera.  The woman is Charlie Yan playing a character named Yan-Yan.  Early in the film Kong is killed during a bank robbery but comes back as a ghost who needs Yan-Yan to help him relive the last two weeks of his life so he can prevent getting killed. Since this is a Tsui Hark film, this is just the jumping off point for him and this story.

The film has a crazy time travel plot which probablaly puts any of that Back to the Future time travel stuff to shame.  Hark also indulges in some weird low brow humor involving toilets and vomiting.  The sets are colorful and the actors appear to enter into the spirit of this nutty story.

 

Needless to say Hark brings that dynamic and sometimes overly dynamic style of his to this film.  This is yet another entertaining film from the master director who appears to be having fun orchestrating all this chaos

The running time is 103 minutes the writers were Sharon Hui and Tsui Hark

1993 - GREEN SNAKE, a visually stunning film from Tsui Hark

The producer/director and writer Tsui Hark takes an ancient Chinese legend and applies his dynamic style to it for another incredible film.  This fantasy involves two giant snakes, a white one and a green one who can assume the form of  beautiful women.  The white snake falls in love with a human while the green snake attempts to understand the human emotion of love.  But this is just the jumping off point for some amazing visuals as only a director like Tsui Hark can stage them.

The snake women are played by Maggie Cheung and Joey Wong and Hark really cranks up the eroticism that these two women give off.  No wonder the human played by Wu Hsing-kuo is unable to resist them.

 

Hark and his production team also integrate some excellent special effects which for a change serve the story instead of being allowed to overwhelm the film.  Something that has been a major problem with American special effects films for some time.

  

 Green Snake also combines sensual photography and impressive set design which adds to it's  unique mood.

A fascinating Chinese fantasy film from one of Hong Kong's most creative directors.

The running time is 99 minutes.

1973 - THREE WISHES FOR CINDERELLA, the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic version of Cinderella.

 Not really the kind of film I watch, but I was a little curious about how they would tell the story of Cinderella in Eastern Europe without the presence of an overblown Disney animated feature. They definitively made some changes although the basic story is still the same

Cinderella is still the downtrodden maid to her evil stepmother and stepsister,  The director Vaclav Vorlicek apparently thought one stepsister was enough.  There is no magic pumpkin or cute mice in this version.  In fact they even got rid of the fairy godmother.  Instead Cinderella ends up with hazelnuts that have three magic wishes. Cinderella also seems to be able to talk to the animals like Doctor Doolittle. Well you can kind of guess the rest from here.  Cinderella uses her wishes to go to the ball, meets the prince loses her shoe etc.

Vaclav Vorlicek is the same director who filmed the very funny science fiction film Who Wants To Kill Jessie.  However the time Vorlicek is aiming for something a little more mellow and sweet. This is after all a children's story.  Vorlicek filmed Three Wishes For Cinderella during the winter which gives it an intriguing kind of mystical look. 

The performances are as expected emphasized to play up the romantic and fantasy elements of the story.  An interesting film to take a look at.

The film was written by  František Pavlíček, the running time is 83 minutes.

2023 - THE BOY AND THE HERON aka How Do You Live?

Supposedly Miyazaki's last film however there are rumors that he is actually working on another project.  Hayao Miyazaki is 82 years old so who can say what is exactly going on with him.  The Boy and the Heron is in many ways a typical Miyazaki film if you can use the word typical when it comes to one of his films.  The film looks beautiful, the storytelling is interesting and the hand drawn animation is impressive.

 Prior to seeing this film I sat through the usual bunch of film previews which included two computer animation cartoon films.  One of them was about a bunch of ducks flying around New York for some reason and the other was the latest sequel from the once mighty Pixar studios, a company which seems to have lost it's way when it comes to making good films.  The point of all this is, the artistry of The Boy and the Heron really puts that computer animation junk to shame.

 

The plot of this film is difficult to summarize, it's loaded with symbolism and references to Japanese mysticism and culture.  There is the personal journey of a young boy who from what I can tell learns to be less selfish in life and starts to accept the role of fate for better or worse. But this is a very trite explanation of a very layered and complex film narrative.

 

This film is an impressive achievement particularly in animation.  Written by Hayao Miyazaki, the running time is 124 minutes.

1966 - WHO WANTS TO KILL JESSIE?, crazy sci-fi/fantasy from Czechoslovakia

This screwball film from Czechoslovakia has to be seen to be believed.  The wife of a scientist has invented a device that can make a person's dreams come true.  She uses it on her husband while he is asleep and out comes a blonde bombshell named Jessie who is the featured character in a comic book series he has been reading called "Who Wants to Kill Jessie?".  Along with the blonde, a couple of her antagonists also materialize, a strongman and his henchman who is dressed as a cowboy.  The comedic situations arise when people in the real world have to deal with imaginary comic book characters who continue to act like they are in a comic book story.

The film is full of sight gags and slapstick.  The two comic book bad guys chase after Jessie all through the city.  They create havoc where ever they go, and their are many scenes of stuff getting destroyed.  The comic book characters don't actually speak in the real world.  They communicate with dialog balloons and everyone eventually reacts to this as it is completely normal thing.

 

The film is short and sweet, it sets up it's comic situation and then milks it for some laughs without overdoing it.  A funny and very weird film.

 

Co-written by the director Václav Vorlíček along with Miloš Macourek.  The running time is 81 minutes.

2023 - ANT-MAN AND WASP QUANTUMANIA, been down this road before

Basically a very unsatisfying film but taking shots at this film is just way to easy.  This Ant-Man film is the third in the series and I believe it is supposed to be the start of another phase of the Marvel movie universe series whatever that is.

This time Ant-Man and the gang get hurtled back to somewhere called the Quantum Realm where they meet some bad guy called Kang. Kang is the the dictator of this place and is obviously not a nice guy.  Kang is also another version of the Thanos character from the earlier Marvel movies that focused on the Avengers.  

Ant-Man and his girlfriend the Wasp along with Ant-Man's daughter and the Wasp's father and mother help ferment an uprising against Kang.  The ending of the film is supposed to prepare the viewer for more Kang duplicates in what is going to be another big showdown of the good guys vs the bad guys. 

 

The whole film frankly has a been there done that feel to it.  You know from the start the direction the film will take and you kind of sit in a stupor waiting for this overlong turkey to come to an end.  I also hate to say it but the cast is beginning to look a little long in the tooth.   It seems that Ant-Man and the gang should be settling down into more stable occupations and getting their 401-K's in order.

  

There has been criticism of the special effects in this film but they seem fine to me.  What the film really lacks is humor which was a selling point in the first two films in this series.  The film's biggest issue is plain old fatigue, the whole film is just tired and boring.

Written by  Jeff Loveness, 124 minutes.

1943 - FLESH AND FANTASY - excellent 1940's anthology film

The actor Charles Boyer and the director Julien Duvivier teamed up to produce this fantasy film for Universal Studios kind of the home for these kind of films.  Duvivier was a French filmmaker who left France during World War II and settled in Hollywood for a while working for the Hollywood studio system.  Duvivier was also a superb director.

The film consists of three stories about a half and hour each and frankly time has worn a bit on the stories themselves.  Shows like The Twilight Zone and Night Gallery have kind of reused this material over and over.

However what hasn't aged in this film are the performances of an excellent cast with actors like Charles Boyer, Edward G. Robinson, Thomas Mitchell, Robert Benchley (playing Robert Benchley as usual). Barbara Stanwyck and Betty Field.  Also to be commended is Duvivier's technique behind the camera who along with his production team put together a film that shows a real command of the film medium, this film is a pleasure to watch.

The writers were Ellis St. Joseph, Oscar Wilde, László Vadnay, Ernest Pascal and Samuel Hoffenstein.  The running time is 94 minutes.

1966 -THE GOLDEN BAT, comic book Japanese stuff

It's easy to sneer at this film.  The bad special effects, the goofy subtitles, the laughable villain and finally our weird superhero The Golden Bat.

The Golden Bat looks like it was primarily made for kids because as an adult I was a little embarrassed to be watching it.  The plot has something to do with an evil guy known as "The Ruler of the Universe," out to destroy the world.  To the rescue comes superhero The Golden Bat, who has one evil laugh when he's taking on the bad guys.

 

Sonny Chiba, who I knew as "The Street Fighter" in that very violent series is a heroic scientist who is working with The Golden Bat to save the planet earth.

 

That's enough on this film.  One can laugh at this goofy stuff, but is it that much different than the crap D.C. and Marvel are subjecting the audiences to these days?  Silly superhero junk is still junk regardless of when it was made.

The running time is a brisk 73 minutes, the film was written by Susumu Takaku.

1967 - KING KONG ESCAPES, more Toho monster stuff

Toho Studios partnered with Rankin/Bass studios for this monster mess.  Rankin/Bass primarily made stop motion holiday specials for American television studios.  They are probably best remembered for their Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer special featuring Burl Ives as Sam the Snowman. To have these two studios team up on a film about King Kong you can probably guess what you are going to get for an end result, a film squarely aimed at children.

It seems an evil villain named Dr. Who, has built a robot version of King Kong for the purpose of digging up something called "element X."  The actor Mie Hama probably best known to western audiences as James Bond's assistant "Kissy Suzki" in You Only Live Twice is an agent for an unnamed foreign government interested in purchasing element X which will help them take over the world. 

 

Into this story comes American actor Rhodes Reason the leader of a United Nations submarine  exploring Mondo Island in search of the real King Kong.  Rhodes Reason was the brother of Rex Reason who I last saw flying around in a spaceship towards the planet Metaluna in This Island Earth. But that's another story.

Along with Reason is his trusty assistant Akira Takarada who appeared in many Honda monster movies which stared Godzilla who was usually versus something.  Also in the mix is a young woman who was an American model in Japan named Linda Miller as a member of Reason's crew.  Miller is an interesting performer in that she can't really act but has that all American blonde look that appealed to a lot of people.  For years Miller was a mysterious presence, she didn't appear in a lot of films and had kind of vanished.  It took the internet to finally track her down.

Well anyway the movie's climax involves King Kong and robot Kong battling it out on top of Tokyo Tower in true Toho monster movie fashion.  The models and miniatures are once again by the master Eiji Tsuburaya.  Although it seems Toho could have spent a little more money on a better monkey suit for the actor playing King Kong, the giant gorilla looks awfully stupid.  

The film was written by Takeshi Kimura an old pro at this kind of film.  The running time is 104 minutes.

2005 -KING KONG, the Peter Jackson remake

Peter Jackson's follow up to his Lord of the Rings trilogy and just about as ambitious an undertaking as those three films.  The chief complaint on this film is it's extreme length, the film comes in at almost three hours.  In spite of the length, Jackson makes sure you get your money's worth when you watch his version of King Kong.

Even for a long film like this, King Kong is never dull.  Jackson has enough of a film making instinct to know how how to keep an audience interested.  He really pulls out all of the stops when the SS Venture finally arrives at Skull Island home of the legendary King Kong and lots of other monsters with really big scary teeth.  The film thrives on monsters chewing on people and Kong ripping the heads off of anyone or anything who gets in his way in his pursuit of Ann Darrow.

 

If the film falters, it's when showman Carl Denham returns to New York City with plans to put the captured King Kong on display.  Here the special effects by Jackson's  company Weta start to look a little shaky.  Things perk up at the end when Kong climbs the Empire State Building for the big climax.

 

Frankly, it I have any issue with this Kong film or the previous version with Jessica Lange, it's the love story between the ape and Ann Darrow.  It just doesn't ever work for me.  I gigantic gorilla capable of ripping people to shreds is not my idea of a healthy relationship.

 

The film with the exception of Jack Black is very well cast.  Naomi Watts is a classic blonde Hollywood beauty, although she is actually from Australia.  She does pretty well with the role considering.  Adrien Brody is good as a playwright who is accidentally shanghaied and ends up on the SS Venture writing a script for showman Carl Denham.

The film has it flaws and Peter Jackson was apparently under enormous pressure to meet a Christmas release date, so I sense he didn't get to spend as much time on the post production of the film as he would have liked.  Still, this is a very entertaining remake of the original film.

The film was written by Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens.  The running time is 188 minutes.

1965 - SHE , a remake of a remake of a remake of a remake of a remake of a remake

This is amazingly the seventh version of the H Rider Haggard novel.  In this version "She who must be obeyed, " is an immortal (2000 year old) queen ruling over a lost civilization in "darkest Africa."  She, named Ayesha has been patiently waiting for her reincarnated lover to return so she can take up where she left off with him.  Basically, he cheated on her a couple of thousand years ago with another woman so Ayesha stabbed him and is now waiting for his reincarnated self to return to her.

   Into this mess comes Peter Cushing playing a professor with a background in Middle Eastern legends and his friend Leo Vincey, played by pretty boy John Richardson, who surprise, surprise just happens to be the spitting image of Ayesha's dead lover.

Since this is a Hammer film, besides Cushing you can count on Christopher Lee and Andre Morell showing up.  Stunning blonde Swiss actor Ursula Andress wearing a ridiculous head piece,  plays Ayesha and a Mexican actress Rosenda Monteros is one of the handmaidens of Ayesha who falls in love with Leo Vincey, insuring  all hell will break loose again.

 

MGM financed this production so the film looks a little grander than usual for a Hammer film.  I would call this film kind of comfort food, No great shakes of a film but entertaining in it's own silly way.

 

The film was written by David T. Chantler and runs 106 minutes.  The box office was good which of course prompted a sequel called The Vengeance of She, which featured Richardson and another good looking blonde, Olinka Bérová played the now reincarnated Ayesha.

1974 - PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE , a Brian De Palma musical

 It doesn't appear that most critics knew what to make of De Palma's take on The Phantom Of The Opera and Faust. It also seems like the studio releasing it was equally clueless when it came to selling the film to the public, audiences stayed away.

However, this is one of the best of the early De Palma films that for a change wasn't heavily influenced by Alfred Hitchcock. Brian De Palma wrote the screenplay and cleverly mixed a lot of film genres.  His lead actor Paul Williams, a man probably more known for his songwriting than acting put together a very amusing score which parodied a lot of different pop music styles.  Williams is also entertaining portraying the crazed music producer who has made a deal with the devil.  

The film follows plot lines from Faust and The Phantom Of The Opera but De Palma keeps things interesting with his clever camera work and his staging of the musical acts that range from a Beach Boys type of group to a goth/heavy metal band.

 

The rest of the  cast is well chosen with William Finney as the helpless composer turned phantom, Jessica Harper as his love interest and De Palma regular Gerrit Graham as one of William's crazed musical performers.

A very entertaining film, it runs 91 minutes.

1979 - TIME AFTER TIME, deliberately old fashioned fantasy, romance

The writer and director Nicholas Meyer is about three years away from making the best of the Star Trek films, Star Trek: The Wrath of Kahn.  He's six years away from contributing to the the time travel Star Trek film,  Star Trek:  The Voyage Home.  Time After Time is almost a warm up for those two films.

The plot has Malcolm McDowell (for once not playing some kind of cinematic psycho character) as H.G. Welles.  In this story, back in 1893 Welles invents a time machine which is stolen by Jack The Ripper who uses it to escape through time into the future.  The time machine automatically returns to Welles who also travels through time to find and stop Jack the Ripper from killing again.

Into this story is woven a love story as Welles meets a woman from the 20th century and has to confront the various challenges of understanding the future age he has traveled into.  It's a clever screenplay.

  

The acting by McDowell and David Warner as Jack The Ripper is tops,  however Mary Steenburgen plays McDowell's love interest and her performance is so low key it almost seems like she is barely awake in her scenes. Actually if there is a criticism to be made about this film it's Nicholas Meyer's direction which could have used a little more energy to it, the film is awfully low key at times.

 

The special effects and the music provided by Miklos Rosza (in his final score) deliberately evoke an old fashioned feel to the film.  All in all Time After Time is an entertaining film, the running time is 112 minutes.

2022 - THOR LOVE AND THUNDER, not good

Chris Hemsworth is amusing as usual playing this goofy muscleman/god character.  The rest of the film is pretty bad.

If you haven't been following the Marvel films the plot will probably be incomprehensible to anyone trying to pick up the Thor film saga at this point. Even if you know what's going on the story is still pretty poor.

 

It may be time for Marvel to up their game a bit on these movies, it seems like the series has been drifting rudderless since Avengers Endgame.  This film was truly a waste of time.

 Written by Taika Waititi and Jennifer Kaytin Robinson.  The running time is a longish 119 minutes.