"Posted at AvP Outbreak on 18.12.2005 at 15:54:15
Here it is, information on the films come from Amazon (UK and USA), Wikipedia, IMDB, and loads of other places, I only wish to take credit for bringing it all together! This is the lot, including some T.V series, as well as obvious rip-offs:
King Kong (1933) - The original, classic film. Remembered for its pioneering special effects using stop-motion models and evocative story, yet criticized for its depiction of the Skull Island tribespeople--not to mention gorillas--as savages.
Son of Kong (1933) - A sequel released the same year that was an instant box office flop. It concerns a return expedition to Skull Island that discovers Kong?s albino son.
Japanese King Kong (1933) (Wasei Kingu Kongu) - A little-known Japanese clone of the original King Kong produced by company Shochiku Kinema.
King Kong Appears in Edo (193
(Edo ni arawareta Kingu Kongu) - An enigmatic Japanese-made monster/period piece by company Zensho Kinema in which King Kong attacks medieval Edo (modern Tokyo), and also Japan?s first kaiju (giant monster) film. Unfortunately, the film has been lost since its theatrical run in 1938, but rare photos available in books in Japan prove this film?s existence. Fuminori Ohashi, who would go on to create the suit for the titular monster in Godzilla (1954), created the special effects for this film.
Mighty Joe Young (1949) - The third in a trio of films by Merian Cooper, Ernest Schoedsack and Willis O?Brien?s featuring giant apes , "Mighty Joe Young" has a heart of gold. He?s a big ape with a soft spot for Jill Young (Terry Moore) that raised him. Promoter and nightclub owner Max O?Hara (Robert Armstrong from "King Kong") and Gregg a cowboy from Texas (Ben Johnson)attack the 18 foot tall Gorilla when they first encounter him in the wilds of Africa. When they discover he can be friendly and that he?s only protecting his turf, O?Hara sees Young as the lynchpin for his new nightclub. O?Hara convinces Jill to take Joe to New York for his nightclub based around an African theme.
Featuring dazzling effects that echo "Kong", "Young" may not have the amazing look of the previous film but the dazzling mix of animation and live action done by Ray Harryhausen under O?Brien?s direction looks pretty impressive even today. While the story might be a little slow initially for modern audiences, it has a wonderful pay off and an ending that beats the remake by a mile.
Konga (1961) - Horror producer Herman Cohen, the genius behind Trog, Berserk, and the immortal I Was a Teenage Werewolf, here brings the world giant-ape action with a British twist.
Konga is, of course, a King Kong rip-off, but the filmmakers are so refreshingly brazen about it that it?s hard to mind. Botanist Dr. Charles Decker returns from Africa with some brand-new plants and an adorable chimpanzee buddy named Konga. Decker has some revolutionary ideas about "finding the first link in modern evolution between plant and animal life," but don?t think about them too much, they?ll just give you a headache. The upshot is that Decker develops a serum that makes Konga grow really big. (Primatology fans will be interested to note that Decker?s serum also mysteriously turns Konga from a chimpanzee into a gorilla. The wonders of science are myriad.) Alas, like so many of his horror-movie-scientist brethren, Decker is a cold-hearted, ruthless creep who soon has the superstrong Konga doing his evil bidding. In addition to its guy-in-a-gorilla-suit pleasures, Konga offers poorly scaled dolls of the lead characters, fetching giant Venus flytrap puppets, and a genuinely good performance by Michael Gough as the ever more evil Dr. Decker
King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962) - A film produced by Toho Studios in Japan. It brought the titular characters to life (the first time for both characters to be in a film in color) via the process of suitmation. However the use of suitmation for King Kong aroused bitter hatred from fans of King Kong towards the horrid look of the Kong suit and the fact that Kong had been brought to life in this fashion at all.
The King Kong Show (1966) - In this cartoon series, the famous giant ape befriends the Bond family, with whom he goes on various adventures, fighting monsters, robots, mad scientists and other threats. Produced by Rankin/Bass, the animation was provided in Japan by Toei Animation, making this the very first anime series to be commissioned right out of Japan by an American company. This was also the cartoon that resulted in the production of Toho?s Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster (originally planned as a Kong film) and King Kong Escapes.
King Kong Escapes (1967) - Another Toho film in which Kong faces both a mechanical double, dubbed Mechani-Kong, and a giant theropod dinosaur known as Gorosaurus (who would appear in Toho?s Destroy All Monsters the following year).
King of Kong Island (196 - The Italian title for this film was EVE, THE WILD WOMAN which makes a lot better sense than the one attached to it for foreign distribution, KING OF KONG ISLAND. There is no king, no kong, and no island! This is the sort of plot that Republic might have made a 12 chapter serial about. A mad scientist is performing brain operations on gorillas deep in the jungle (NOT on an island) to create an army of simian slaves. Why is he doing this? Because he is a MAD scientist and that is what mad scientists do! Enter the hero (Brad Harris from several muscleman movies) and the heroine (Esmeralda Barros as the Eve, the title character) to defeat the madman and restore the natural balance to the jungle. Eve the jungle girl is topless for the whole picture but her long flowing hair is strategically arranged except at certain dramatic moments. Those gorillas with the stitches in their heads don?t look like gorillas at all to me, they look like stuntmen in costumes! It takes forever for the plot to get going; in fact it starts like an action adventure with Harris? character as a mercenary looking for revenge against the guy who double crossed him. The science fiction element and the jungle girl subplot are introduced to wake the audience up later on.
A*P*E (1976, Kor.) - A newly discovered 36-foot gorilla escapes from a freighter off the coast of Korea. At the same time an American actress is filming a movie in the country. Chaos ensues as the ape kidnaps her and rampages through Seoul.
Queen Kong (1976, UK) - Most sources list Queen Kong as Anglo-Italian, but this is very debatable. The original announcement at the Cannes Film Festival trumpeted the film as a Franco-Italian co-production between Andr? Genoves’ company La Boetie (Paris) and Virgilio De Blasi’s company Canaria (Rome). It was to be shot in the UK but that did not affect the film’s nationality. (Star Wars was shot entirely in the UK the same year, but that’s hardly a British movie!).
In order to make the film, Frank Agrama set up an independent British company -Dexter Films (London) - and this, together with the use of a British cast and crew, qualified Queen Kong for Eady money, a government funding scheme which was discontinued shortly afterwards (the Eady Levy was a tax on cinema tickets which was ploughed back into the British film industry). There was no commercial British funding of the film, nor did Agrama put any of his own money into it.
While the film was in post-production, in August 1976, Genoves announced that he could not in fact afford his half of the production costs. Dexter Films had "cash-flow problems" so co-producer Keith Cavele, according to a contemporary report in Screen International, told the Frenchman that if he didn’t stump up the money by 20th August, he would "take advantage of an alternative source".
Ah, but here’s where it gets really complicated. The original set-up had Agrama as producer, De Blasi as executive producer, Keith Cavele as co-producer and Genoves with a ’presents...’ credit. The finished film retains Agrama’s credit and Genoves’ credit but omits De Blasi entirely and promotes Cavele to executive producer. This does not square with the above information since it suggests that it was De Blasi, rather than Genoves, who reneged on his financial commitments.
Extensive publicity material which was prepared for a German release (although the film appears to have had only one trade screening in that country) calls Queen Kong "Eine produktion der Cine Art Pictures, M?nchen und Dexter Films, London." It is therefore reasonable to assume that the "alternative source" mentioned by Cavele was Cine Art (which some people have assumed to be an Italian company but which was, as can be seen, actually based in Munich). However, there is no mention of Cine Art anywhere in the credits of the film as released. Italian publicity material meanwhile just calls the film "A Dexter Films Production, London" - but Italian films of this period are notorious for disguising any domestic involvement.
What this all amounts to is this:
1) If the on-screen credits are correct, Queen Kong is a Franco-British co-production between La Boetie and Dexter Films.
2) If the credits on the German posters are correct, it is an Anglo-German co-production between Dexter Films and Cine Art.
3) If the credits on the Italian posters are correct (which they probably aren’t), the film is a purely British production from Dexter Films.
4) And if the trade paper reports were correct, then the film is an Anglo-Italo-German co-production between Dexter Films, Canaria and Cine Art.
But one thing that the film cannot be, by any permutation of the established and claimed production credits, is Anglo-Italian...
King Kong (1976) - A remake by film producer Dino De Laurentiis and director John Guillermin. Jessica Lange and Jeff Bridges starred. The film was generally panned by critics at the time, but its reputation has improved with time, and it was eventually a commercial success.
King Kong Lives (1986) - Starring Linda Hamilton, a sequel by the same production company as the 1976 film which involves Kong surviving his fall from the sky and requiring a coronary operation.
The Mighty Kong (1998, animated) - This animated musical remake of the 1933 classic King Kong is definitely for the younger crowd, who will appreciate the tuneful but generic score by Richard and Robert Sherman (better known for Mary Poppins and other Disney scores) and won?t get upset by the happy ending. Dudley Moore hams it up as the show-biz impresario seeking the great ape and The Little Mermaid?s spirited Jodi Benson lends her pipes as the out-of-work actress who becomes the object of Kong?s affections. The animation is clunky, Saturday-morning quality and the dialogue strictly juvenile, but the colorful visuals and scary (but not too scary) monsters make it engrossing viewing for kids.
Mighty Joe Young (199 - Charlize Theron is the latest stunning blonde to be hanging around some big ape in a Hollywood movie, this one a remake of the 1949 semi-classic with echoes of the superior King Kong. Theron plays the daugher of an American researcher killed by poachers in Africa. The baby gorilla left in her care grows up to become a hugely tall and broad specimen named Joe, living in the mountains as a mostly unseen legend among people who live there. Along comes an eco-minded emissary (Bill Paxton) from a California sanctuary, who talks the jungle girl into providing safe haven for Joe at the L.A. facility. The transition is not without discomfort, but everything is aggravated via a conspiracy of poachers to get Joe into their own greedy hands. Director Ron Underwood (City Slickers) uses a combination of special-effects techniques to give Joe life and personality, and he succeeds quite effectively. The requisite giant-ape-goes-amok scenes are all in place--a couple of them pretty intense--as is a conclusion that finds the simian hero performing a stunning feat of escalation. Underwood attempts to give a little modern spin to some classic Hollywood conventions regarding wild hearts lost in civilization, and the results are pretty agreeable family fare.
Kong: The Animated Series (2005) - A animated series that continues what happened after the movie King Kong. Kong had aired on Fox in 2001, and was created to compete with Godzilla: The Series. Only 13 episodes were created. Jetix began airing the series again on Sept. 9, 2005 as a prelude to the release of Peter Jackson?s remake of King Kong. Also in 2005 a direct to DVD movie called Kong: King of Atlantis was released based on the series.
Set after King Kong fell to his death from a skyscraper, a scientist named Dr. Lorna Jenkins created a clone of Kong and took him back to Kong Island to protect him from the world yet again. Eighteen years later Dr. Jenkins? grandson Jason came to the island bringing along his friends Tann and their teacher, unaware that he is Raman De La Porta who come to steal the ancient Primal Stones that control the balance of the island and imprison the anicents god Chiros. Now Jason and Kong along with Tann and Lua, a shaman girl to get back the Primal Stones before Chiros is free from his prison. Dr. Jenkins had also created a device called the Cyber-Link that Jason uses to merge with Kong. De La Porta had also stolen some of the Cyber-Links for him and his henchmen to merge with any animal to fight Kong during their plots.
King Kong (2005) - A Universal Pictures remake of the original. Directed by Peter Jackson, best known for directing The Lord of the Rings trilogy. The most recent incarnation of Kong is also the longest, running three hours and ten minutes.
Please feel free to add if there are more. Thinking of doing the same for the Godzilla films, what do you think? "
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