Object #67 - Log - King Kong (1933)

Dir. Merian C. Cooper + Ernest B. Schoedsack

Film and technology are inextricable. The camera, itself a complex bit of tech, captures images onto some form of storage, be it film, videotape, hard-drive, or some future form we haven't even invented yet. Multiple still images are captured in rapid succession, to the point where, upon later playback, a sense of motion is created - and so we have the film medium. In King Kong, more than any other film before it, the very technology that allows us to film the real-world is invaded by stop-motion trickery. 

Stop-motion entails the slightest movement of an object for each and every frame that the camera captures, so that when the images are played at fast speed, the object appears to move in real-time. Talk about movie magic! It's a magic trick that imbues objects with soul, and King Kong gave us, thanks to the magician, Willis O'Brien, the first real character of this technique, Kong. True, O'Brien gave us life-like dinosaurs in The Lost World, but a dinosaur is a simple beast - Kong, well, Kong is something else entirely. 

The inanimate maquette, a rudimentary skeleton upon which the 'costume' of Kong was made-up, becomes animate as it moves, millimetre by millimetre between frames. This is the art of the animator. It's why Ray Harryhausen, or Aardman's Nick Park are household names to any film hobbyist, because like O'Brien, they have a skill to create facsimiles of life itself, and oftentimes, as with Kong, they give life to creatures fantastical. Admittedly with Kong, that process is easier than most, as he's an ape, a real animal suped up, human-like in concept. In Peter Jackson's 2006 remake of King Kong the CGI animators ran into the opposite problem, translating Andy Serkis' human performance into the performance of a fictional giant ape.    

With all that said, the scene in King Kong I find remarkable is not due to the movie magic of stop-motion, although it is a component of the scene, but rather the crudeness of filming special effects at the time, and the effect it has on an audience. The 'Log-Scene' as it's become known, is a memorable scene from the film for displaying the brutality and ingenuity Kong has in dispatching the human pests who have invaded his island. You can view it in, frankly, abysmal quality here but I'd like to think you're familiar with it anyway. If not, it's the same principle as in Jackson's 2006 version, which you're more likely to have seen - some of the Venture crew flee from Kong in the jungle, attempting to cross a fallen tree, which bridges a ravine. (It's not technically a log, but it's simpler to call it that.) 

As they attempt to cross the log-bridge, Kong appears, roaring at them as they attempt to flee in fear. Kong grabs hold of the log, the crew hold on tight. The massive log is shaken by Kong, like you would a stick covered in bugs, and one by one the crew-members fall to their deaths into the ravine, their screams cut short by the impact of the fall. 

What's impressive about this scene is the interaction between the fantastical Kong and the humans. In the film, Kong picks up and puts down Ann (Fay Wray), and the blending of Wray, and the model of Ann used by the animators isn't always the smoothest. This has only been made worse by our ability to see the film in crystal clear HD. But, the log scene avoids this, by having an object as an intermediary between fantasy and reality, where the interaction of Kong shaking a human-infested tree, and the humans shaking and reacting to Kong's action, is entirely believable. 

Oddly, technology fails the film, not in Kong, but in the bodies and corpses of the falling men. As they fall and scream, we see a side-shot of the ravine, vines hanging down, conveying the size of the gap. The music goes all-out during the entire scene, conveying the fear and panic Kong causes, and this is joined by the screams of the falling men. However, the bodies are quite obviously dummies, inanimate, incapable of reacting in any way like a real human. The fall speed isn't too unrealistic, perhaps a little too fast, but as they hit the ground, they almost bounce, and the limbs of the dummy flail unrealistically, bending at angles that we can charitably call, 'floppy'. Worst is when Kong throws the entire log, with one crewman still hanging on, into the ravine, and as it hits one of the already fallen crew, the body bounces left, when it should be crushed into a bloody mess.

Now yes, obviously, you won't get hardcore gore in a 1930s proto-blockbuster, but in more modern films which aim to convey the horror of a monster attack, usually on a 12A rating, bloodless violence is creatively hidden and obscured by camera motion, or objects on screen. That said, this can sometimes be just as, if not more horrifying than the 'real' thing, as our imaginations make the violence that much worse. In Jackson's King Kong, we follow the characters into the ravine, and as they fight off the deadly, hellish insects, the soundtrack and methods of dispatch, while not showing gore, are horrifying. Andy Serkis' Lumpy, who perishes to writhing, muscle-like ring-worms has stuck with me since my teenage years, and remains one of the most disgusting character deaths I've seen in any film, and that's a 12A!

I'm not one to criticise effects-work out of hand, and I don't for one second feel that those unrealistic corpses reflect poorly on the film. They are an on-screen representation of the deaths of the sailors, utilising the best methods available at the time. Your imagination can write away the take where the log fell and the body bounced instead of being crushed. The deaths do still have impact, as the sudden cut off of the screams, and the hard impact of the bodies hitting the floor still resonate to this day, just as in Jackson's Kong, the near-silent, bloodless shot of a crewman's corpse being flung from pincer to pincer still resonates the horror of the ravine. 

This is King Kong for god's sake, criticising the effects for not looking 'realistic' isn't the point! At this point in time, this was the top-tier of film effects work, where a monstrous, giant ape could realistically fling sailors into a ravine. It's notable however that this bold new film-making technique more convincingly animates an inanimate object to life, than the then-current effects work available to represent a real human being. 

Nonetheless, the imagination and skill at work in the entire film lit the fire for generations of effects artists, stop motion animators (including Harryhausen), and filmmakers such as Jackson himself, whose 2006 remake was a passion project, birthed from his childhood love of the film. So much was his passion for the original that he used era-accurate techniques of stop-motion, costuming, and back projection to re-create the legendary lost Spider-Pit Sequence, as a supplemental on the home video release of his film. 

The sequence was animated originally by O'Brien and takes place immediately after the log sequence, as the fallen soldiers, some of whom survived, are picked off, one by one, by the creatures which dwell in the dark recesses of the ravine. Jackson's recreation is a delight, and makes me appreciate the passion of Jackson to recreate a piece of film history, now lost. The original sequence was cut due to pacing issues, as the already long log scene extends into a superfluous massacre of the sailors down below. The footage was lost to time, with only still photographs of the scene surviving. A real shame, and one which loses the revolutionary work of O'Brien, whose animation of insects, rather than giant apes, and dinosaurs would have been interesting to see. 

As noted earlier, Jackson included his own interpretation of the sequence with his own interpretation of the characters in his remake, to great effect. My own childhood/teenage imagination was sparked by the doom-laden atmosphere, and the CGI creepy-crawlies conjured by Jackson; it's a real-stand out scene in a film which I admire very much, and goes to show the direct influence of the incredible effects work of the original King Kong. 

Technology and film are inextricable, but the quality of both are not co-dependant. Many criticise the shallow plot/scripting of Cameron's Avatar, while the effects filmmaking is clearly superb. Other films have robust and effective stories, but are hampered by poor effects work, say, The Mist. Indeed, many, including myself, criticise the early scenes of King Kong, for hokey dialogue, mediocre framing, and now, somewhat dated sexism and racist portrayals. With that said, King Kong could not exist without the technological aid of stop-motion, back projection, model-work, and camera trickery, and so more than most films, it is a film that is inextricable from technology in conception. But, it is a film that uses that inextricable nature, and runs away with it, embracing it, creating and developing bold new techniques of filmmaking that echo in time. A few dodgy dummies of dead sailors can't stop movie magic of this scope.