Tag Archives: Kong count

Well, after counting down all year, Kong: Skull Island is finally out! The Maser Patrol crew will be assembling a full review in coming days, but if you want a short version: “Go see it!” Hope you’ve enjoyed the series! As … Continue reading →

The original King Kong is a tremendous film. That it’s a classic, that it’s one of the greatest cinematic achievements of all time, that it directly inspired an entire generation of movie makers, that it still holds up incredibly 84 … Continue reading →

Given the rushed nature of the production (to beat Universal to the punch), I can forgive a lot of problematic aspects of the 1976 King Kong remake. Sure, there are no dinosaurs, and that cuts down the spectacle staggeringly, which … Continue reading →

I grew up with conservative, micromanaging helicopter parents, and as a result was prohibited from taking full advantage of my local video stores’ horror movie aisles until college. As such, the name Peter Jackson meant little to me in the … Continue reading →

This is daunting… what can I say about King Kong vs. Godzilla that hasn’t been said ad nauseum? I’ll strive not to be just the 453rd doofus this week you’ve heard say “actually, the US version doesn’t have a different … Continue reading →

Another guest spot! In addition to his earlier article on King Kong novelizations, Justin Mullis also submitted this radical thesis on the oft-maligned King Kong Lives. Many thanks to Justin for the piece! Without further ado, let’s get controversial! In the annals … Continue reading →

If I had to describe Eisei Amamoto’s character Dr. Who (no relation to Peter Cushing) in the 1967 film King Kong Escapes, I’d probably say something along the lines of “an enthusiastic go-getter with a can-do attitude and a real … Continue reading →

A sequel produced at breakneck pace to release the very same year as the original, Son of Kong runs just under 70 minutes, which was more common in the days of early talkies (see the earlier runtime of The Most … Continue reading →

Some fun facts for film aficionados – the original King Kong was the first movie to ever get an audio commentary, as part of its 1985 laserdisc release from Criterion. It was the company’s second home video release, following only Citizen … Continue reading →

Most King Kong stories tell of a group of unwitting colonialists who take Kong away from Skull Island. Boom Studios’ current comic Kong of Skull Island is different: it tells the story of a group of unwitting colonialists who brought … Continue reading →

Since the new Mystery Science Theater 3000 series is in production, might I suggest they take 1969’s The Mighty Gorga into consideration? It’s exactly the level of bad movie that frequented the original show – it’s often astonishingly inept, but … Continue reading →

With DC’s Suicide Squad at the top of its popularity last summer, the company put out a nice omnibus collecting the original run of stories from the 1950s and 60s. The silver age incarnation of Task Force X doesn’t much resemble … Continue reading →

The King Kong story, like The Lost World, The Land that Time Forgot, The Last Dinosaur, Marvel’s Savage Land, et al., owes a creative debt to Jules Verne’s 1864 novel Journey to the Center of the Earth, which really popularized the … Continue reading →

As mentioned before, Merian C. Cooper had the idea for a “gaiden” story for King Kong back in 1935, detailing exactly what happens in the time of that smash-cut between when Denham (on Skull Island) proclaims everyone will be rich and … Continue reading →

For Shinichi Sekizawa’s fantasy film debut, he wrote something unlike anything that had ever come before. Wikipedia describes the plot as: An expedition to an irradiated island brings civilization in contact with a primitive native culture. When one sensationalist entrepreneur tries … Continue reading →

Despite creating one of the most iconic characters of all time, Willis O’Brien’s career is nearly defined by projects not getting made: from Creation to War Eagles to Gwangi to Carl Denham and the Abominable Snowman, the few movies he actually … Continue reading →

Growing up a mere two hours from Orlando, Universal Studios was a regular attraction. There was a lot of cool stuff there, all rides for movies older than I was: ET, Back to the Future, Earthquake, Jaws, and of course … Continue reading →

Another British Kong imitator is Mytek the Mighty, who first graced the pages of Valiant in 1964 (as the Konga comic was dying down… coincidence?). Mytek is a human-piloted-robot (pre-Mazinger!) that happens to look like a gorilla, built by a … Continue reading →

“Gentlemen, I don’t know how much experience you’ve had with scientists, but they rarely quarrel. They have a way of expunging the personal and the emotional in the interest of truth.” The mad doctor in Konga says a lot of … Continue reading →

One of the most iconic anime in history, Doraemon has run for over 2,600 episodes so far.  For the sake of comparison, America’s cultural mainstay The Simpsons is just past episode 600, so, even if you make a claim that “The Simpsons … Continue reading →

While The King Kong Show is mostly remembered nowadays as the source material for King Kong Escapes, it’s a significant historical milestone for being the first case on an American TV show getting animated in Japan. The program, while nominally … Continue reading →

I have another busy evening tonight, so I’m recycling another old review from 2011…I don’t call out King Kong connections, but you can figure ’em out: There are two types of “lost” movies. In the first case, the studio doesn’t have the … Continue reading →

As one of the world’s largest cinema industries, it’s little surprise that Bollywood has jumped on the King Kong bandwagon a time or two. The first I’m aware of is Gorilla (1953), featuring a regular-sized gorilla, followed by King Kong (1962, … Continue reading →

This is a pretty great concept for a short story collection: have one artist do a cover, then tell seven other people to write an explanation for what’s going on in the image. That’s exactly what happened with the 81st … Continue reading →

While not as transparently cashing in on King Kong ’76 as say, A*P*E or Mighty Peking Man, I imagine the fact that the 1979 Taiwanese fantasy film The Merciful Buddha has a big gorilla/chimp on the rampage was probably not a … Continue reading →

While the nonstop cavalcade of remakes coming from Hollywood can easily draw our ire, it’s important to remember that a remake is not always necessarily a bad thing. Case in point: that time when Tremors-director Ron Underwood remade Mighty Joe … Continue reading →

Universal would have you think they created King Kong. They heavily merchandise the character, and he’s been a mainstay at their amusement parks for decades; they even sued the likes of Nintendo over the likeness. And yet, they never actually … Continue reading →

While the Kong moniker is usually applied to monsters of a simian variety, it’s not always the case, most famously when discussing Japan’s first proper monster TV hero, Kaiju Marine Kong. The 26-episode Nisan Productions show from 1960 wins this title … Continue reading →

Mighty Joe Young is as much a follow-up to King Kong as you can get: it was produced by Merian C Cooper, directed by Ernest Schoedsack, written by Ruth Rose, and has effects by Willis O’Brien (though most of the … Continue reading →

One would think that Marvel’s most King Kong-ish creation would be Yetrigar, the enormous yeti monster (duh) who battled Godzilla (and later, the West Coast Avengers). However, we’re not going to talk about him, because the comics group has an even … Continue reading →

We’re covering a lot of oversized simians in this series, but if you were to go looking for merchandise in back-alley shops of Akihabara, there’s one specifically that I’d put my money on you finding first, before Donkey Kong, or … Continue reading →

Merian C. Cooper was so far ahead of his time  that it blows my mind. Every time I hear about how cuts were made to King Kong or The Most Dangerous Game in order to fit the sensibilities of 1930s … Continue reading →

While Nintendo was kicking Universal’s legal butt regarding the use of a King Kong-like character in arcade games in 1986, Midway must have been paying some attention, as they released their competitive destruction-simulator Rampage the same year. The game features three … Continue reading →

Time for some comics I’ve never read myself, partly because they’re old, and partly because I don’t speak Spanish. There was a weekly King Kong comic book produced in Mexico by Editorial Orizaba from 1965 until its completion at a … Continue reading →

Recycling another old review: I mentioned 1977’s Yeti: Giant of the 20th Century before in reference to A*P*E, as both are part of the crop of 70s-era King Kong knock-offs, but I didn’t get a chance to see it before now… … Continue reading →

I was pretty hard on Kong: The Animated Series when I first saw it back in 2001, and a lot of that has to do with the context in which it emerged. The timing of its release makes it seem … Continue reading →

While Rankin-Bass is most famous for their bazillion or so Christmas specials, they also did stop-motion animated features for Easter, Independence Day, Thanksgiving, New Year’s, and pretty much every other holiday short of Talk Like a Pirate Day, most of … Continue reading →

The first episode of Superman: The Animated Series I ever saw was “Monkey Fun” (season 2, episode 13). To this day, that show remains the best television adaptation of that property, and it’s somewhat amusing that one aspect that only … Continue reading →

Wonderful things can happen when Shaw Brothers steps outside of its usual comfort zone and tries out another studio’s genre: examples include Super Inframan, Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires, and the subject of today’s post, their 1977 Mighty Peking … Continue reading →

The original King Kong was a major influence on Eiji Tsuburaya, so it makes sense that the creature would be incorporated early on into Tsuburaya’s flagship property. In this case, that is literally true, since the second Ultra Q episode … Continue reading →

Concrete Revolutio is a show that appears to directly target the old-school otaku that would be reading this blog, so if you haven’t checked it out, I highly recommend doing so. It’s a puzzle of a show, with a nonlinear storyline, … Continue reading →

Much like King Kong, the British imitator Konga is also public-domain, thanks to a novelization that hit before the actual movie did not getting its rights renewed. In Konga‘s case, it was in comics form through Charlton Comics, the first … Continue reading →

The Ivory Ape wasn’t the only time that Tsuburaya went abroad to co-produce a movie featuring an oversized albino primate. …er, no, we’re not going to talk about *that* one. What I meant to allude to was the 1971 Taiwanese … Continue reading →

*Tonight’s been busy, so I’m just going to repost an old review I did back in 2011 for 1976’s A*P*E. I’ve now been watching and writing like this for half a year, and as you might remember, I like to … Continue reading →

Let’s say you’re a toy manufacturer, making major bank on a line of Godzilla figures. You’re going to want to give your consumers all of big G’s most iconic nemeses, and then, for some mysterious reason, you’re going to make … Continue reading →

To quote Philip J Fry: “I know that monkey! His name is Donkey!” One of the most influential video games of all time, Shigeru Miyamoto’s 1981 Donkey Kong is crucial to the history of Nintendo’s foray into the medium. While … Continue reading →

Another manga tie-in to The King Kong Show came from mangaka Akio Itou, best known for adaptations of Wolf Boy Ken and Ultraseven. His version of Kong has a magnificent beard. These manga aren’t super-readily available (i.e., no Amazon listing), … Continue reading →

One would think that the most faithful remake of 1933’s King Kong produced in 1976 would be, well, King Kong, but to illustrate how off the rails that production was, many of its missing elements such as a film crew … Continue reading →

Another King Kong manga that’s super rare nowadays ran for 30 weeks in Shonen Magazine back during 1967, written by sports manga superstar Ikki Kajiwara (Kyojin no Hoshi, Karate Baka Ichidai, Tiger Mask, Ashita no Joe) under the pseudonym Asao Takamori, … Continue reading →