A Brief History of King Kong Movies

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[00:01:49] We loaded it. We edited it. Sometimes we get so deep into conversation that we have separate segments worthy of their own place in the sun. A Shuffled Mini-Episodes

[00:02:11] I just kind of wonder if there was a potential that he might have showed up in, like that remake that, what's his name, is it Peter Jackson? 1962. There you go. So he died a long time ago. Yeah, yeah. Well, 33, I guess, with King Kong, I should have known that.

[00:02:42] Yep. Yeah, he was, um... God, I can't remember. Yeah. I mean, part of this episode, I was inspired because some podcasts I even, back when they were kind of becoming a thing in the 2010s, I mean, I saw people covering this, but they didn't get near as... I mean, there's so much opportunity now to go into even more obscure film history now instead of just kind of...

[00:03:09] Because, like, we listen to stuff that's from the 2010s. They were just kind of getting started and kind of introducing stuff but not getting too detailed. And so I do hope that, if anything, with podcasts is like now they can keep opening up more conversations instead of just being radio that you record and listen to on the go. Yeah. Jesus, he did Godzilla vs. King Kong, the original. Who did? Also Brian. Also Brian.

[00:03:39] Wasn't that Monsters in Suits still? Yeah, but I'm trying to see what the... It says he worked on it. Maybe he was a consultant? Oh, it's the story. It's the story. He worked on the story for that. Because he didn't like the original sequel, so he's like, okay, here's where Kong is. Yeah. Yeah. Their first... Kong and Godzilla's first meeting, and it's two guys in suits. God, that was horrible. Yeah, well...

[00:04:11] I think there was even... I mean, like you had Mechagodzilla, was there? I think there might have been a Mechacom. Yes. There was. Yeah, there was. I don't think it was Toho, though, was it? It was. Okay. Well, I'm glad we brought some of those up, because... God, I can't remember what I watched. There's an all Godzilla channel on Pluto.

[00:04:35] And I've been watching a lot of the Godzilla movies from the mid to late... The mid-60s to the 70s. Don't you love in the first two initials, 70s Mechagodzilla is how they got a very funky 70s score? Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba! Yeah. Yeah. I was like, I am ready to go. This sounds like a blaxploitation score, but it's not. But it's just funky. I have a very...

[00:05:04] It's time to get it on. I have a very specific memory about Godzilla when I was like three or four. And I don't remember even watching a movie, but I must have, because I had a nightmare about being in a building that Godzilla was knocking down. Oh, Jesus. I was like three or four. Nightmare fuel. Were you... Was it badly dubbed? That I don't remember. Oh, no. They are trying. I think I was a little more worried about the collapsing building I was inside of.

[00:05:34] Oh, man. Do you... How many... Okay, so this is weird. So I was thinking about this the other day. Like, if you watch the Godzilla's back to... You know, all the Godzilla movies. Like, take out Mothra and Rodan and all that. Yeah, just the main... He goes from being somebody who destroys humanity to someone who protects humanity. Yeah. Yeah. And even in bio... Well, they've done the... They kind of went back and forth with that for a little bit, didn't they? Especially in... Yeah. The smog monster.

[00:06:04] They don't really know what he is other than that. He's just walking around. Yeah. But like, hell... I mean, even the new Godzilla and Kong movie. He's a good guy. But, you know, you're seeing him still tearing down buildings left and right. You know, millions of people are probably dying. Yeah. Yeah. I... I'm mixed on that. I'm just like, okay, so... And then they just let him sleep in a coliseum. Yeah.

[00:06:32] I'd like to see there be more interaction instead of just... Is he a good guy or a bad guy? It's like, you know. Hey, what's he doing in a coliseum? I don't know, Giuseppe. He falls asleep. We don't bother him. Hey, he's just falling asleep. Saturday morning, he... You hear the Pope, he scream. The Pope go, hey, buff and go. All right? Enough of you. Yeah. You try to find an Airbnb for somebody the size of Godzilla. Yeah.

[00:07:04] He sleep wherever... Why is he... Hey, he sleep wherever he want. He's that big. He could sleep... He could sleep down in Naples for a life here. Hey, he got the coliseum. And that's the most action I've played in almost 2,000 years. Now I'm thinking a robot chicken where he's playing a cop and he's given... I love that one. And he's given Godzuki, you know... Well, you know, it's much like the Wayne Brady parody on Chappelle's show. They're making fun of Training Day.

[00:07:31] But I found it even funnier because not only does he do the whole, you know, King Kong ain't got shit on me, but it's also Ethan Hawke being the voice of the good cop. And then you have King Kong in the background. At the very end, he's like, okay, game on. I'll throw some shit at you. I love it. I will say this about Godzilla and King Kong, which I loved, was the scene where they're going to fight the Scar King and the other one.

[00:08:00] And you see Godzilla and Kong running... Godzilla and Kong are running down, you know, ready to fight. And there's audience reactions where... And this guy goes, holy shit. It's like Batman and Superman. Wow. For the new one? Yeah. Well, it's like, you know, whenever you saw, like, Super Friends when you were a kid. Gotcha. Warner Brothers is using some similar kind of...

[00:08:30] You know. Marketing. But the thing I'm going to say this, though, is, like, when you look at Harryhausen's movies, he didn't deal with, like, specific... Like, he didn't deal with the archetype trope monsters. Like, Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, great movie to watch. Yeah. You know, One Million Years to Earth, great thing to watch. We were just telling Tom and Gil about this. Have you heard of this filmmaker Christopher R. meme? No. So he's very, very recent.

[00:09:00] He's created not only his own shared universe, but this was back in, like, the 2010s, but, like, all his movies, like, if you look at the titles, they're total universal hammer horror. Harryhausen inspired. Like, saucers from Mars, bad cats from Neptune. You know. Taking titles and kind of blending them. Spiders from Arizona. You know, yeah. I still think the thing that got me the most was...

[00:09:29] Did he do the Black Scorpion? Harryhausen? I saw it was Willis. Okay. Willis O'Brien did a... There's a test reel that you guys have got to find where he did this thing where, like, the Black Scorpion opens... Well, there's a scene in the Black Scorpion where it's kind of an homage to what the spider pit scene was going to look like. Where it's all the other scorpions are in there and, like, he starts to kill them. And then, like, the little kids in there

[00:09:59] and you see, like, the spider thing come out, the centipede thing come out. And it was kind of like a little homage to what was going to happen with the spider pit sequence. Look at... It's in the... Is it in the Mystery Science Theater one of that? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I think they do throw in a few fathoms, like... They title a name similarly when they're making fun of the opening titles on certain movies, I think.

[00:10:29] Yeah. And there's one part where... Yuka Flads, totally. Oh, yeah. Flag on the moon. I didn't get there. No. Joseph Jaworski. Russian scientist. Lands in an airplane. Meeting with... Father McKenzie. Donning his socks in the night when nobody's there. What does he care?

[00:11:01] I think the thing that gets me the most is if you watch Harry Howes and stuff and Willis O'Brien as he became... They were both... They never were rivals with each other. They were always kind of feeding off each other with what needed to be done. And I think the thing was sad is O'Brien kind of gets left in the dust. Right. It's kind of like, geez, thanks. At some point, if I remember from the documentary, it sounds like Willis O'Brien

[00:11:30] kind of just sort of like... He started just getting... Doing the setups and stuff like that. And then... Yeah. And then Bradbury... Or I mean, not Bradbury, but... That's why I'm glad you schooled me on this, James, where he's like... There was a first one. Harry Howes... Harry Howes... Is the protege who goes on to be the better known one. But Willis O'Brien was kind of giving him the end for that because he was like, he'd set it up

[00:11:59] and then Harry Howes would come in and he'd do the animation and the filming. Yep. You know. Go ahead. No, I was going to say, and Willis O'Brien sounds like he died, you know, early on, I think. You said it was 60-something? Yeah. 62-seed. He was like 76 when he died. I'm just glad that there wasn't any animosity or other crap. It's like... Yeah. You see so many of them that in Badly, like a band, you know,

[00:12:28] it's like they get tired of each other, they drive each other crazy, and you're like, ah, what a shame. You guys are both breathing the same air, speaking the same language. But yeah, that's pretty much a good way to... You know, if anything, Willis handed past the torch, Harry Howes and retired early because he didn't like how the industry was, and everybody who admires him has struggled but attempted to just try to recreate what they love about him.

[00:12:58] Some of them have done it rather successfully, I think. Yeah, totally. I mean, Stan Winston was my absolute favorite growing up because, like, in interviews, people were always asking him, what did he try to do? He's like, I try to make my creatures stand out and have their own identity. I don't want it to be just a regurgitation of everything else I've done like Batman and Predator. Well, I remember watching the King Kong from 76 with my dad, like, one night, and my dad, my dad just turns...

[00:13:28] All I can remember is, like, you know, when they were doing the thing on Saturday Night Live and John Belushi's playing Dino Delorexia he goes, when Mike Kong died, everybody cried. Nobody cried when Jaws died. Mike Kong, he got human feelings. He good. They all cry when he died. So, like, there's one part where he's climbing the Twin Towers instead of the Empire State Building. My father goes, this is the biggest piece of shit I've ever watched in my life.

[00:13:58] I think it was... Wasn't it Rick Baker who played Kong? Rick? What they did was they created a 40-foot mechanical Kong. You only see it in the movie from maybe 60 to 90 seconds. The rest of the movie is Rick Baker in a gorilla suit. Yeah. And I think he also had some blunt words about it. It's like, oh, that's hysterical. Dino Dallarente said in the beginning,

[00:14:27] we need a muscle man, a black muscle man to be in that suit. Because he could carry off a gorilla better than anyone else. And everybody kind of just went, uh, yeah, you shouldn't say that out loud. Mm-hmm. In this tiny age. You know. That's exactly how Schwarzenegger described him anytime he was in a meeting with them. The dude just was very paranoid. He reminds us of the... He's very similar to the Canon Films guy.

[00:14:57] Golan Globus. Yeah, it was just... Benham Golan. Yeah, I heard he was so... Like, he does King Kong, he does Orca. Was King Kong Lives also by them? Yeah. But it's so funny. It's got the exact same formula where they got some horror elements, they got their leading ladies in the buff, Jessica Lange and Linda Hamilton respectively, and then... Yeah, but that one was done more cheaply too, so the quality was considerably. Of course, they had the King Kong

[00:15:27] Lives Ride. Oh! Which is great and universal. We were talking inspirations. Did any of you guys ever see Larry Cohen's cue of the winged serpent? Yes. That's as close as I can think back in the prime 80s of when someone was trying to go for a similar... 70s. 70s. It was 70s, and it wasn't that David Carradine. Carradine was the main cop. David Carradine, Richard Roundtree... Oh, wait, no. It was 82. Okay, all right. Yeah. It's Carradine... It's okay,

[00:15:56] so it's Carradine, Roundtree, Richard Roundtree... Titans. Okay. And Carradine, Roundtree, and who else was in that? Oh, Michael Moriarty was in that. Yes. Yes. From It's Alive. Yep. Yeah. He was a Cohen favorite. I don't think he was in It's Alive. No, he was in... Well... Okay, hold on. I don't know. Was he in, like, a sequel to it then, or...? Oh, he was in Return to Salem's Lot. Hold on, hold on, hold on. Back to the second. Which is the biggest...

[00:16:26] Which is the biggest piece of shit vampire movie I've ever seen in my life. Has nothing to do with the original. Mm-hmm. Well, the... Yeah, the... I remember seeing Return to Salem's Lot in the theater, and the original Salem's Lot was a TV movie, I thought. Yep. Okay, so... He was in both It's Alive Free, Return to Salem's Lot, and The Stuff. So he wasn't in It's Alive movie. I was right. Okay, yeah. But I do remember The Stuff gotta be in the main one. Oh, God. But, man...

[00:16:57] And Cohen, I would've loved to interview, because I see stuff from, like, the 2010s, and even Charles Band's interviewing him. He just... The dude had a sense of humor, and he didn't care what anyone thought of him, and he was a pretty nice guy. He was like, I just wanna make a fun movie. I don't care if you don't take it seriously or not, just... Well, the thing I love is when he did... He did Hell Up in Harlem, right? I love... I promise. Yep, we're gonna talk about those. And there's a scene

[00:17:27] where he's been shot, and they were walking around, and the cops actually were thinking he was really shot or something like that. Yeah. And they were, like, filming it, and the cops... The cop comes, he's like, listen, you can't do this. Have somebody walk around pretending that they're, like, you know, bleeding to death or something like that, because people were gonna start thinking the guy was really shot. But it's just... He was a big fan of Cinema Verti. That was the thing. I told him a little about Q, the winged serpent, where, like, people are just, like, when they see walking around,

[00:17:56] you see body parts flying down on the ground. You know? Mm-hmm. You just see, like, you know, a head, an arm, a leg, a torso. Just so fine over the top. You know? That's definitely where the... That's definitely a mixture of both Harryhausen epic mixed with creature feature. Yeah. And that was... That looked like a film that might have had some guerrilla filmmaking involved in it. Yeah, it did. It did. Yeah, it definitely did. Like, they didn't know anyone was filming at the airport, practically.

[00:18:33] What are you doing? Yeah, I got Chew the Wading Serpent. I bought it, like, maybe four or five years ago. Is there a commentary track? Uh, not for what I have. Damn. I would love to see Joe Dante talking about it. Here's what my pal Cohen told you. I would love to, I would love to have heard Cohen talk about that movie, just to, you know, to have that movie come out. Okay, well, there's a,

[00:19:05] there's a Shout Factory disc with that, with him talking about it. Okay. Oh, nice. I know what I'm hunting down. Okay. But no, I remember seeing that years ago and then, I mean, decades ago, actually. And then I was telling my wife once in a while. Well, I was telling my wife about it, and I'm like, you know what? I'm going to look to see if it's on, if it's on, like, Vudu or something like that, and I found it. I can't remember where, if it's on Amazon Prime or Vudu or Apple,

[00:19:35] but I bought it off of one of those. Nate? And, yeah, I mean, so, I don't think Christopher Mime, you know, I was talking about this earlier, like, James, like, any of us could probably even try doing this in our backyard, just do a fun monster movie. We would just need someone who wants to mess around with Play-Doh and Mega Bloks. Well, I think the closest you ever get to something like where people are just messing around with anything is,

[00:20:05] the movie Equinox. I hear what's that title? Yeah, from 1970. Yeah, there is some stop-motion animation in that, I think. Would you say that's a movie worth watching? Equinox? Mm-hmm. I'm kind of up in the air about it because, you know, Phil Tarbick, you know, whatchamacallit was in it, the guy who played

[00:20:34] Phil Tarbick was in it from WKRP. Frank Bonner. Well, just keep in mind, yeah. I'm good with that. Oh my God, Forge J. Ackerman is a voice in this. Yeah. Just keep in mind, I'm good with bad movies too, so keep, you know, if you think I'll enjoy it. It's fun, it's fun to watch, you know. I mean, that's kind of how we got reorganized here is like, hey, who wants to talk about a mixture between cult

[00:21:03] movies and trash? You know, sometimes subjectively, like, you could go either way on it. That's the only thing I know is that Frank Bonner was in that movie and, you know, it's an amazing movie. It's, you know, the special effects are like, you know, we're done like on a shoestring budget, but it's a, it's a good movie to watch. It's, I think I've definitely seen the trailers for it. I just somehow, I don't know how I've not, not seen it yet, but it's currently

[00:21:32] streaming on HBO Max, so. All right, I gotta look it up. Oh, wait, there's a YouTube link. I'm sending it now. Okay. Lock and load. We'll return after these messages. Hey, it's Brent Pope, the host of Brentfist with Brent Pope. You've seen me on some of your favorite TV shows saying things like, give it up, Jimmy. You gotta sink this put to win. On Brentfist with Brent Pope, I sit down with guests from the entertainment world

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