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Holiday Special - King Kong Your thoughts on the original KING KONG? e-mail your comments!
King Kong & Thanksgiving
But, with this "new thing" - cable...we got eight channels in 1968! Imagine that - eight channels to choose from. And, believe it or not, there was more choices I liked to watch then, than with 200 channels today. It was all because of three New York City stations (technically one was Secaucus, New Jersey): WNEW 5, WOR 9, and WPIX 11. Wow....independents that played an almost non-stop rush of movies from the 1930s-1950s.
On Thanksgiving, Channel 9 started a tradition that would carry on for over a decade. KING KONG on Thanksgiving Day. In fact, if I'm not mistaken, I think there were a few Thanksgivings that KONG played multiple, multiple times during the day. MIGHTY JOE YOUNG would be in the mix as well. And, in between things, I'd flip over to Channel 11 for the Thanksgiving showing of MARCH OF THE WOODEN SOLDIERS! Laurel and Hardy meeting up with those manimals - The Bogeymen. Hideous man-beasts that lived in caverns below the earth.
So, it is with joy, I had Thanksgiving with KING KONG (1933), SON OF KONG (1933), MIGHTY JOE YOUNG (1949), and MARCH OF THE WOODEN SOLDIERS. The combination of Thanksgiving and those movies branding themselves in me. All this while, the aroma of baking turkey came from the kitchen. The house, overly warm from the oven being on since the wee hours of the morning. And that smell of sage meant stuffing (my favorite) was to be had by all too! During commercial breaks, I would slip out to the kitchen and snitch a green olive and a piece of celery. Sugar cookies had been baked by my mom and my sister. I'll be watching all of those films every Thanksgiving. And now, cooking the turkey and making the stuffing with my wife and daughter at Thanksgivings. My daughter will also know that Thanksgiving and KING KONG are inseparable. -Ron Adams
Relive a Slice of it....and pass the stuffing, a can smell the sage and see Kong:
Loved the recollections of WOR-TV Channel 9's Thanksgiving King Kong marathon back in the 70's and '80s. Just wanted to let you know that this extremely memorable tradition (which many of us still re-create to this day) and how it came to be is covered in detail in the forthcoming book FRIGHT NIGHT ON CHANNEL 9, now due out early January 2012. Sadly, the publisher moved the date back. But hopefully, it will be worth the wait! ---Jim Arena Thanks Jim! Fright Night, the book, will be carried right here at Creepy Classics. We have a case of them on pre-order. Stay tuned to the Creepy Classics/Monster Bash News for details! -Ron
Hey Bash Synchers! Kong! What can I say about it that hasn´t been said before? Always fantastic, breathtaking, wonderful. My favorite scenes...The fight with the Tyrannosaurus, the music from the first presentation of the bride, the attack on the village. I didn´t have the East Coast Channel 9 memories, but I do remember a time I saw King Kong at a revival theater when I was a kid. The censored scenes had recently been re-added and it was a treat to see! They also showed a clip from an unfinished film with a guy being chased by a triceratops. For a young stop motion fan, it was a great time! -Ken Blose, Mexico Ken, here's a photo (below) of the chase you probably saw! It's test footage of CREATION by Willis O'Brien shot before KONG. I think in 1931. -Ron
Ron, Hi, Jim Nester here.just wanted too wish everyone at Creepy Classics a great Thanksgiving.and read your article about Kong being a TV traditional at Thanksgiving.same here with channel 43 from Cleveland.believe they showed Son Of Kong too between Mighty Joe And Kong.plan on doing the same thing this year with the dvd's,since those days are long gone here.take care. -Jim Nester, Ohio
All the best, Joey, Diane, and the Beast from 20,000 Jessica's!!
Above: VERY rare Thanksgiving photo taken by Ted McKosky! Ron,
To my favorite Creepy Classics have a wonderful Thanksgiving. I knowI'm going to have a howling good time! -John Scott
Truly, one of the all time BEST, even after almost 80 years, it still Willis O'Brien's special effects still continue
Very fond memories of this-in second grade (1969-70), started to get For third grade, we were living in a small town, Novato CA and my Everybody have a wonderful Thanksgiving-I have to work, but we had As for KING KONG...***** all the way! Steve Schimming Get KING KONG (1933) on DVD at Creepy Classics in the Complete DVD Catalog.
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Thanksgivings were magic for me back in the late sixties and early seventies. We lived in State College, PA at that time (my parents and sister still do, I moved to the Pittsburgh area in the 1980s). We had early cable in 1968. It was Centre Video. If we didn't have cable, we only got three channels...Altoona, Johnstown (fuzzy),and University Park - PBS. I don't count Channel 16 from Scranton, it came in only sometimes, fuzzy, with a lot of rabbit ear antenna struggling.
The meal and family are together....and Carl Denham has captured the biggest gorilla ever. Stan and Ollie have beaten the Bogeymen and the evil Barnaby. Joe Young was climbing a tree and saving a little girl from a burning orphanage. It's all the 8th Wonder of the World.
Hey Ron!! A Happy Thanksgiving to you and the family...hope your Kong Pteranodon gets cooked just right!! The WOR-Television-Channel 9 Broadcasts of the all day King Kong and Godzilla films are cherished memories at our house. Not a Turkey Day would go by without my Dad Sonny and my Uncle getting the TV set for a wonderful day of food, fun and Kong!!! Much like Halloween, i would wait for it all year!! Something about the totally bad print they showed..of course everything today is digital and crystal clear...but something about those broadcast prints made it all special and...prehistoric!!! Thank goodness we have the whole broadcast day captured on DVD to enjoy again and again each Thanksgiving, with all the hokey commercials intact!! Kong and the monsters of Skull Island live again at the Haunted Barn this Thanksgiving, and to all our MonsterBash friends, have a happy and blessed one. 
