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FURTHER EXPLORATIONS

Click HERE for an examination of various KONG NOVEL- IZATIONS

Click HERE for a look at the famous John Berkey poster images created for the 1976 remake of Kong

Click HERE for a guide to the best (or at least most interesting) printed Kong resources.

And the Prophet said - - And, lo, the beast looked upon the face of beauty.
And it stayed its hand from killing. And from that day, it was as one dead.

A full decade before I ever actually viewed the classic 1933 King Kong, I knew that he had two heads.

Oh, yes - - there was the distinctive "long head" on Skull Island, and then the "round head" sported for his New York trip.

True Kong buffs will claim that the giant ape actually had three heads, counting the life-size mock-up used primarily for munching unfortunate natives and New Yorkers. I also knew, among other things, that the giant wall prop was burned for Gone With The Wind, and that the reported cost of the entire production was $513,242.02.

This leads to my confession: I didn't actually see the film until I was in college.

Not actually viewing King Kong didn't deter me from my quest for information, a mania further fueled by the discovery of The Making of King Kong by Orville Goldner and George E. Turner at my local bookstore. It was filled with photos and sketches, and I read it cover-to-cover three times. At the age of 12 I could explain a Dunning process shot and tell you how many miniatures were used in the Skull Island cavern sequence. But I still hadn't seen the movie.

The fact is, I'd stick with any boring TV special if it promised to show even a 5-second clip of Kong. One night when I was 8 years old I stayed overnight at my friend Eric's house because a show promising clips from Kong was going to be on and he had cable. We made popcorn and sat on the floor waiting until I saw a full 17 seconds of the ape battling planes on the Empire State Building; a great memory. (Incidentally, later that same night I accidentally saw Eric's [quite attractive] mother topless in the bathroom. This is ironic because it was another sight I wouldn't see again for quite some time due to the lack of cable and VCR's in my young life.)

In 1976 Dino De Laurentiis made his ill-fated version of Kong to great bally-hoo. I saw that version six times before seeing the original.

I finally got the monkey off my back one evening at a friend's apartment. There were six people in the room, and I had to buy their complicity by supplying all of the beer - everyone else wanted to rent The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. My fellow viewers stayed relatively quiet and tolerated my nearly one-comment-per-scene narration for the entire 100 minutes of the film (they would not, however, sit still for my constant rewinding of all scenes showing the supercool giant Kong heads-and-shoulders prop).

Experiencing Kong didn't end my lonely quest. I still needed answers. On the esoteric front, there's always the desire to get to bottom of why this film is so enduring and dear to the world. But I had detective-type problems on my mind as well:

• Why did the head-and-shoulders mock-up that I saw on TV in 1983 - called "the actual prop used in the film" by the anchorman - look slightly different than the one in the movie?
• If there were only two 14" Kong models made, why did I see and read separate reports of an aged, orange-tinted variety at a Smithsonian display, and a metal skeleton advertised at a place called Movie World in Buena Park, California, and hear of a fully put-together Kong at Circus World Museum in Baraboo, Wisconsin?
• Could Universal, bidding for rights in the early '70s, have made a better Kong update than De Laurentiis?
• And why the heck was Forry Ackerman selling bits of "Kong" foam and rubber for $150 a pop?

A safari, to be sure. With jaw set as squarely as Carl Denham's as he began his journey to Skull Island, I went out looking for that beauty of a beast. First stop, some background.

Part I: The importance of DIGGING King Kong

Talking to Mike McGrath arouses within me what can only be called "enthusiast envy."

Here is a Kong buff who was not only able to see the dang film early in life - when it could still make a purely cinematic impression on him - but also found, while in college, the company of like-minded sorts who spoke "the language."

"Me and some guys at school would stand in line at an event and suddenly say, 'Well, you would come...and these tickets cost me 20 bucks," just like a man entering Denham's show says in the movie," he recalls.

A journalist by trade, McGrath later parlayed his enormous store of Kong knowledge into a gig writing card-backs for the outstanding King Kong card set by Eclipse. His task was to supply behind-the-scenes information, and he accomplished that task to wonderful effect (Yes, this is an unabashed recommendation for you to seek out a set of those cards).

"I think I was so intrigued by Kong at an early age because it was the first movie denied to me as a child," McGrath reasons. "We had an 'Early Show' on TV at 4:30, and during 'Sci-Fi Week' the kids got to take their dinner and eat it in the living room so we could watch the featured movie. However, my mom and older brother would get into discussions over whether I should be allowed to watch King Kong." It was decided that he could watch short bits, but would be removed from the room during traumatic, bad dream-inducing scenes. "They didn't understand, of course, that as a self-respecting kid I craved nightmares, and went out looking for the ingredients for better ones."

"I was in college when the uncensored Kong was finally released [1972], and since it was released by Janus Films, I was able to see it instantly - Janus was the company that provided all the movies for the film society and student unions. My group of people actually hosted it on campus, and I made a big deal about it - that's when I wrote the newspaper column containing Ten Unanswered Questions About King Kong."