The remains of Mr Demetre all but fell flat on his back, such was his astonishment. Perhaps, more than anything, it was the use in his class of a word not, in those days, to be found in any standard English dictionary that did it, but in any case, when he tried to roar his usual roar, instead it came out as a rather hysterical shriek.
“Who said that! Who! Who!”
When he might have hoped we would all cringe with guilt, instead Wacka Braun, the leader of the pack, stood up in the aisle.
“I got a better head on my dick than you got on your shoulders,” Wacka told him.
“Listen!” Denham whispered.
The planes came into sight, tipped with green and red lights, six of them, high in the air. They were far higher than the top of the skyscraper. They were so high that their red and green lights almost merged, One after another, they hurled down beneath the stars.
Kong roared overhead and the drum note of his fists rose to a wild tattoo.
“We can see from here,” Driscoll said and led the way through a window to the fartherest corner of the small roof which belonged to this topmost setback. Above them, on the ledge of the observation platform, Kong roared his challenge as the zooming ships swept down.
Ann, in her shimmering white dress, lay between his solidly planted feet.
The second plane had cut in too close, obviously meaning to brush Kong with its wingtip. As the plane curved, its wing missed. It was Kong who struck the blow. His great paw swung out and struck. He staggered, but the plane, torn out of its path in the air, crashed down, bounded from the wall, and then spun out and down to the distant street. Halfway in its flight it burst into flames, and this illuminated infinitesimal figures which swarmed around as the wreck struck….
King Kong, that mighty film from 1933 that looks better every time I see it, was written by Edgar Wallace (and Merian Cooper) but he did not write the book. It was novelised by Delos W. Lovelace (surely a pseudonym) in 1932, the year before the film was made! and I reckon it is the best novelisation ever written. Which might not be a particularly extravagant claim.
At the time it was first released, King Kong was a sensation. It was considered so terrifying that medical teams needed to be on hand to treat members of the audience who collapsed with shock. It was banned in many places as too horrifying for public consumption. These days it wouldn’t frighten a four-year-old which only goes to show that people really did see the world quite differently in past times. To us the monster is comical, the special effects laughable and the whole thing positively kitsch. Yet you cannot deny the charm of its remarkable retelling of the tale of beauty and the beast.
Whatever the case, the movie was a phenomenal effort for its time and had a gigantic impact. There’s a lot more to be said about it, but that will happen later when I get to considering its two colossal re-makes. For the moment, it was just a hell of a lot of fun.
