MovieChat Forums > King Kong (1933) Discussion > Almost 90 years old... audience reaction

Almost 90 years old... audience reaction

posted 4 years ago by enriquesingh (1812)
28 replies | jump to latest

I wonder did audiences back in the 30s 'believe' Kong was a real creature or could people understand it was a puppet?

EDIT

When I asked the original question I did not mean to sound like King Kong the movie was a 'documentary', but that perhaps people believed that there was footage of this real creature that was put in the film, did some people actually believe that perhaps some of the interactions between the humans and Kong were a real animal?

In 1997's The Edge I totally believed that Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin were being attacked by a 10' bear in the middle of the wild, because it was a mixture of Bart The Bear and a fake one... I was really young when I saw this movie so the editing fooled me to believe that these actors were there with a bear.

I believe Jaws (1975) has some footage of a real shark for some shots, were people also convinced that the shark was real in the entirety of the movie or could they tell which was real and which was a mechanical shark?

That's why I asked if almost 90 years ago, without so many behind the scenes footage released to the general public, average person knowledge-idea of moviemaking, a handful of previous movies using these techniques, less exposure and access to media in general... were there audience members who believed that this creature really did exist and was perhaps used in parts of the film... since you can clearly see that there were different techniques used to bring Kong to life depending on the shots/what was required, etc.

I believe also that many people were fooled thinking The Blair Witch Project was also real.

[–] HelpMeRhonda (1158) 4 years ago

Probably both, but for the most part I bet people knew they were watching a movie. They probably had a hard time understanding the movie magic behind it, which so do I.

[–] thingmakersback (1404) 4 years ago

As so often, the answer is yes and no. I mean films, and I am particularly thinking of The Lost World (1925), had already been out that used stop motion puppetry, so the secret was not entirely a secret. But Kong was an improvement and so there was room for misunderstanding. I have scanned a page from an old issue of Closeup (no.3 1977) which depicts an article from The Illustrated London News, May 13, 1933, which is apparently a reworking of material from the American magazine Modern Mechanix and Invention. The use of stop motion for dinosaurs is depicted with simple accuracy but Kong is shown to be an actor in a suit.
https://imgur.com/a/mfAUefA

[–] enriquesingh (1812) 4 years ago

Interesting... thanks... your link took me to an error page though.

404. That’s an error.

The requested URL was not found on this server. That’s all we know.

[–] thingmakersback (1404) 4 years ago

Weird. I just tried clicking on it and then simply copying and pasting. I works for me, both ways.

[–] [deleted] 4 years ago

It's on Google Photos. Maybe you have to be logged in to your Google account to see it?

Edit: The post above was edited to use imgur instead.

[–] thingmakersback (1404) 4 years ago

Yes. Damnit. I couldn't use my old favorite image host cuz they aren't free anymore so I tried the first one that came up as a recommended free host... which seems to be useless for sharing links.

[–] thingmakersback (1404) 4 years ago

OK, I'm an idiot... is this working? I notice that the 2.6 meg jpg doesn't look that good and you probably have to download it to read the small print...

[–] enriquesingh (1812) 4 years ago

Not working. Would have been nice to see the magazine, but you also provided a good description of the content.

[–] FilmBuff (7355) 4 years ago

I can see it...

[–] thingmakersback (1404) 4 years ago

Ahh well... Sorry. Imgur seemed like a good option. I remember using it in the past.

[–] enriquesingh (1812) 4 years ago

On imgur it's working... I'll even save it, very interesting... thanks!

[–] [deleted] 4 years ago

Imgur is just fine. You can right-click the picture and do "Open image in new tab" and then view it at 100% size in the new tab.

[–] enriquesingh (1812) 4 years ago

Now on imgur it's working... thanks!!

[–] kwestmo (4385) 4 years ago

Do you really think people on the 30's believed a giant ape existed and that the giant ape could act?

It is mind boggling that you could ask that question.

I bet you believed the gremlins were real.

[–] enriquesingh (1812) 4 years ago

A couple of years later a lot of people totally believed that Martian aliens had arrived on Earth and that it was the end of mankind.

There were several cases of people fainting while watching The Exorcist back in the 70s totally believing that they were basically watching The Devil on screen (even though it's Pazuzu, not The Devil).

Several decades later millions of people worldwide thought that 3 film students had recorded their last couple of days while looking for a witch in the middle of a forest.

Etc...

I wonder what a person from 1931 would think if they watched a 2021 special effect scene like the recent Planet Of The Apes movies, etc

[–] thingmakersback (1404) 4 years ago

I assume that most people in 1933 were familiar with "trick films", which had been around for well over thirty years. Skeletons dancing, people appearing and disappearing, ghosts, the devil, Melies' Trip to the Moon... The dinosaurs of The Lost World had actually been surprising enough that people briefly took them for real, but Kong is eight years later and the likeliest assumption was that the ape might be a man in some sort of suit (An assumption that would have been right in 1976).
Now -- if you filmed a real UFO landing and three legged cyclopses from Alpha Centauri anally probing the president on the White House lawn, only conspiracy loonies would believe it wasn't CGI. I think we are now a little too familiar with trickery.

[–] kwestmo (4385) 4 years ago

"a lot of people totally believed that Martian aliens had arrived on Earth " It was a relatively small number of people who believed they were listening to a news broadcast. The legend is bigger than the truth.

"There were several cases of people fainting while watching The Exorcist back in the 70s totally believing that they were basically watching The Devil on screen" I doubt you can find credible documentation of that claim but several (your word) means more than three, but not many..

Blair Witch a few thousand people wanted to believe and may have deluded themselves.

I suspect you would have been in any of those groups.

[–] enriquesingh (1812) 4 years ago

Yeah sure, I believe in all of those things, Big Foot, Nessie, chupacabras and wookies... I'm part of a group, you should join us.

[–] kwestmo (4385) 4 years ago

No, but thanks for the invite.

[–] Galactus03 (4381) 4 years ago

Well there are a few people still alive from 1931. In fact Norman Lloyd producer and actor is 106. Hes still sharp as a tack. So he was alove when Kong came out and I bet he saw it. I'm sure he has seen his fair share of recent special effects movies. He was also in his last film in 2016...

[–] [email protected] (2036) 9 months ago

A lot of people today believe we are not alone in the universe. The way the Martian attack was set up over the radio, as if it was a real breaking news is what sold it. It's always the presentation.

The Exorcist is still shocking today for It's grossness, crassness from a sweet 12yr old girl, and it was shot in a documentary feel style. People were horrified by the violence, people today will still walk out of films they find too violent or disturbing. The Exorcist was disturbing then and now, no horror film has topped it imo. People were not fainting g and walking out because it was and is a very disturbing and scary film.

Planet of the Apes look cartoonish imo, a better example would be Jurassic Park.

[–] huwdj (4571) 4 years ago

I wouldn't be surprised if at least some of the audience accepted that Kong was real - daft as that sounds to us. Gorillas had only been discovered (by the west) 30 years earlier, there was no TV or David Attenborough and many were uneducated. If fact a few years earlier it was supposed to be common for some people to read out the words in silent films because so many couldn't read.
Plus, there are some very silly people around.

[–] enriquesingh (1812) 4 years ago

When I asked the original question I did not mean to sound like King Kong the movie was a 'documentary', but that perhaps people believed that there was footage of this real creature that was put in the film, did some people actually believe that perhaps some of the interactions between the humans and Kong were a real animal?

In 1997's The Edge I totally believed that Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin were being attacked by a 10' bear in the middle of the wild, because it was a mixture of Bart The Bear and a fake one... I was really young when I saw this movie so the editing fooled me to believe that these actors were there with a bear.

I believe Jaws (1975) has some footage of a real shark for some shots, were people also convinced that the shark was real in the entirety of the movie or could they tell which was real and which was a mechanical shark?

That's why I asked if almost 90 years ago, without so many behind the scenes footage released to the general public, less than a handful of previous movies using these techniques, less exposure and access to media in general... were there audience members who believed that this creature really did exist and was perhaps used in parts of the film... since you can clearly see that there were different techniques used to bring Kong to life depending on the shots/what was required, etc.

[–] huwdj (4571) 4 years ago

I suspect the answer is yes, there would have been at least some people at the time who would unthinkingly have assumed they were looking at real footage. Which may seem silly to us with all our advantages but times change and when you think about it they are changing pretty fast.

[–] kwestmo (4385) 4 years ago

Yes, children might have believed a stop-animation giant ape was real just the the young version of you believed a CGI bear was real.

But most people didn't in either case. If a significant number of people believed Kong was real, it would have been documented at the time. Not unlike the people who heard the "newscast" for the Martian invasion. And like that event, it would have been documented in the news.

[–] R_Kane (15828) 4 years ago

NOBODY thought Bruce the Shark was real. Nobody.

[–] millsey72 (10585) 2 years ago

I was one of the people who saw this in the theater in its original run. This movie was very ground breaking at the time. The only improvement I had hoped for was the overture in the beginning was too short. I wish it was about 15 minutes longer

[–] liscarkat (18960) a month ago

Are you kidding? Do you think people in 1933 were just a bunch of rubes with the minds of four-year-olds? They were every bit as sophisticated, if not more so, than audiences of today. I guarantee that not one viewer in the 1930s over the age of five or six believed Kong was anything other than a model or puppet of some kind, or at most a guy in a suit like the original Godzilla. No older child or adult thought it was a real creature.