KING KONG Thread

[andy b]

Andy

The poster is a fan art design. But very good as is often the case.

I worked on this for EMI for UK, Germany & France, but saw all the designs available for promotion.

The Key Art was Kong on top of World Trade. There were two art work options for the plane, one very beaten up in Kong's hand, the other still with the rear fin / tail & the pointed nose cone.

Along with this, there was a 1 -sheet of Kong climbing the building (FSM second edition cover) & a set of either 3 or 4 art cards that came from concept pre-production art, that were turned into US printed posters, these were, train, harbour & gates & I may be VERY wrong, but I think there was one on a bridge, it was a long time ago!

Cinemas also had the choice to order a 60 x 60 (inches) poster that was a blow up of the USA advance poster which did look very good in foyers at the time. It had an EMI sticker over the word "theatre" as in Europe the word "cinema" is used.

Also due to the huge amount of promotion there were 8 front of house cards in colour 10 x 8 in size & a set of 24 UK printed 11 x 14 cards & a set of 6 photo - busters (forget the size but smaller than a UK 30 x 40 quad film poster - bigger than lobby cards).

Lastly there were 3 press kits all black & white with very silly notes about the film, depending on use they were 8, 20 or 50 still sets or a combination of that amount.

Funny this would come up now I literally gave away an entire promotion kit to a guy asking about this on a King Kong site a few years ago, he made a very nice donation to the SPCA as a thank you, so I was very happy.

I have never seen the extended cut it never played Europe, do you think it is like The Deep "out there but not going to see the light of day'?
regards
Andy b

[AndyDursin]

I doubt it, the TV cut on KONG is really padded and comes off like something that was always just "assembled for TV". The repetition in footage, especially in the "2nd part," makes you think NBC was just scrambling to find any fragment (or repeat any fragment) to get it to the 3 hour mark. The 16 minute reel of scenes on the international DVD/BD releases is, like Eric mentioned above, probably sufficient, though the alternate "island landing" scene with the other Barry cue is of interest and I'm sure there's something else that could be augmented therein.

THE DEEP is a different scenario because it was actually announced for release back in the 90s for laserdisc so I think the longer cut there is "real". Even the Blu-Ray's deleted scenes were scanned in HD, which makes you think there IS a true longer version of that one sitting on the shelf.

Thanks for your post as always Andy and great historical anecdotes about a special time in movie exhibition! I love reading all of that.

[mkaroly]

Regarding Peter Jackson's Kong film, in addition to how moving the ending was, I thought the music James Newton Howard composed for the Kong/Naomi Watts relationship was really strong. While I do like Howard Shore a lot (and I do feel like much of his music for LOTR is very moving), I would guess that his musical choices for the Kong/Watts relationship would not have been as emotionally strong as what JNH wrote. Can't prove that though...wish Shore's unreleased score for the movie was available.

I agree that Kong was superbly articulated in Jackson's film; his character was the only one in the movie I cared for.

[Eric Paddon]

At any rate there are no shortages of Blu-Rays available literally everywhere around the world since DeLaurentiis owned it outside the U.S. (and Studio Canal now does). Many of them are region-free. I just picked this limited-edition Brazilian import up a few days ago -- might get it in 2022, but here's hoping!

https://www.ebay.com/itm/40-OFF-King-Ko ... SwyiZfoarp

Because I got $60 back from Kino Lorber when they lost an order of mine I decided to use my bonus there to get one of the remaining copies of this. Maybe it will take forever, but here's hoping it'll be soon.

[AndyDursin]

The Brazil disc got here -- not that bad, but poorly shipped in a flimsy bubble mailer. Case was mashed up so I'm going to see if I can milk a partial refund out of it, seeing as he reduced the price by $20 the next day.

Disc looks good -- transfer is fine, the soundtrack options are 5.1 and 2.0, and it has the full 16 minute deleted scenes reel from the German Blu. There's also a 20 minute interview with some historian from one of the older European Studio Canal releases. Only let down is the 33 min documentary is just a bunch of stills and Portuguese narration.

[Eric Paddon]

I just got it too. It plays fine but my one complaint is that it sounds like this was formatted PAL originally because the title music sounds like the wrong pitch to me. My sensitive ear can not abide anything that sounds PAL so at the moment I'm ripping this for a potential reconversion though I will of course be keeping the disc on-hand.

[AndyDursin]

Curious. Apparently the other Studio Canal Blu releases were slightly and intentionally pitch corrected for European audiences even though the source itself isn't PAL and has no speed-up. Definitely a rare occurence..really this is one of the few I've ever heard, and I own hundreds of import Blu-Rays...but this is an older master so it does have it. I wonder if the Australian disc I once owned had it, but that transfer also had compression issues so I sold it.

Admittedly it is not something that bothers me a lot, only when it's so bad that it sounds like Mickey Mouse and friends. This doesn't fall into that category at least.

[Eric Paddon]

I finished reprocessing it and am saving it for a new Blu-Ray rip (so glad I upgraded my DVD Fab software!) and the speed correction increases the running time more than 5 and a half minutes!

I've tolerated speed-up on only a few TV releases of titles I'm less familiar with but if I know the show and the film and am used to hearing the music sound a certain way it can drive me batty even more than the voices.

Amazingly I have heard "wrong pitch" speed-up on a few CD releases in the past, most notably the original GNP/Crescendo release of "Where No Man Has Gone Before" for Star Trek.

I can even remember the first CBS/FOX VHS releases of some of the Bond films had "speed-up" (Man With The Golden Gun, Moonraker) soley so they could fit things just under two hours overall I think.

[AndyDursin]

I finished reprocessing it and am saving it for a new Blu-Ray rip (so glad I upgraded my DVD Fab software!) and the speed correction increases the running time more than 5 and a half minutes!

But the movie is running at the right 23.976fps speed on the disc -- it's just the audio they pitch-tweaked. It's a very unusual (and rare) thing they did, because the film is properly 134 minutes as it should be. They did some kind of electronic adjustment -- presumably because they thought European viewers used to watching PAL transfers would be more comfortable with it -- where the audio is like a "semi tone" higher but people aren't actually talking faster. It's probably why it doesn't bother me quite as much as audio with typical PAL speed-up.

What you reprocessed now might sound right, but it's actually being "time extended" as opposed to compressed. DVD Fab may have some option to retweak audio without making any changes to the video, I haven't used it quite enough on that score to know however!

[Eric Paddon]

I thought I'd heard everything but that really is astonishing that there'd be a deliberate tampering of the music just because that part of the world never learned how to do things right to let the music sound the way it *ACTUALLY* sounds. This is what infuriates me most on general principle about PAL and the fact they couldn't invent a standard to let things be heard properly.

My enthusiasm for this I confess is no longer there because if I can't hear the score correctly even with normal voices, my enjoyment of the film suffers. I'd rather have weaker picture than bad sound.

[Eric Paddon]

Well, figured a way out. This will become the default viewing copy for me until a legit US release.

1-Ripped the video to computer

2-Ripped the audio.

3-Took the audio track and took it down in pitch, not speed by 4% using Audacity.

4-Overlaid the new audio track on the video.

5-Save video.

6-Create new Blu-Ray!

[AndyDursin]

At least there's no sync issues you'd have to worry about, it's literally taking the same audio track and making a tonal adjustment.

[Eric Paddon]

Yeah, the helpful part is the sound impulse "pattern" is visible for both the old track and the new one when I do the overlay so you can literally see how it lines up.

I appreciate the heads-up on this. If I were unfamiliar with the movie and score it wouldn't have mattered but I've seen it too many times to get used to it sounding different!

[AndyDursin]

I understand, I'm surprised I did not notice it either but I only loaded up the disc quick. I don't know if the Australian release doesn't have this implemented, or if all the Studio Canal HD masters have it. It is, again, very, very unusual -- not something that I've seen on another Blu-Ray I've imported at all.

Either way, it's a decent disc otherwise that should tide us over until a proper US remaster comes about. Seriously, hopefully it gets released one day in this country! But man, if it doesn't happen sometime this year with the KONG V GODZILLA movie, it's hard to envision that it will. Paramount has had countless opportunities to release it.

[Eric Paddon]

I also had to do pitch adjustment on the deleted footage supplement too. I won't be creating a "long" cut using that material since I already have a "long cut" DVD boot that combined the deleted footage from the French DVD release into the main cut and I also have the 1978 NBC version so that gives me three versions to choose from!

Ideally of course seeing this film done properly in the US and WITH appropriate supplementary material would be great. The film has had too much of a negative stigma for too long and it's high time it get reassessed as something that (1) actually did make money and was not a flop at the time and (2) unlike Jackson tries to be something different without being disrespectful to the original.