Kong - A New Breed Of Terror

The 1976 John Guillerman King Kong. It's a bit shit isn't it? I mean, yes, it's one of the last glorious gasps of the 'man in a monster suit' genre, and there are some brilliant bits when he goes on the rampage in the Big Apple, and yes, Jessica Lange was extremely fit back in the day. And Rene Auberjonois is always good value for money.

But it's still bobbins. Whoever thought Jeff Bridges was leading man material (he's a good actor, but his is the domain of character roles, he's too low key to be a star) was nuts.

Oh yes. That would be Dino de Laurentiis, wouldn't it, responsible for, among others, Conan, Barbarella, Flash Gordon, Red Dragon and dozens of other films of highly variable quality. Always after the big bucks was Dino.

And King Kong Lives, despite a brief appearance by Linda Hamilton's boobs, is even worse. I hired the video out of the store way back when it first came out and for years was convinced that I had somehow made it up because I could never find it again. The same thing with The Garbage Pail Kids, which I still haven't managed to track down a copy of.

Which brings me, in a somewhat roundabout way, to the subject of this blog: Forgotten movies.

Not movies which have gotten lost n the mists of time, but those half-remembered movies from when you're a kid which stick with you. For me the list includes Howard The Duck (a fifteen year quest to track down a copy of that film), Supergirl (a strange one because it's got none of the weird shit in it tha most of the other films in this list have, but it never seemed to be on telly and you couldn't get a video of it for love nor money), Jaws 3-D, Brides Of Dracula, King Kong Lives, Child's Play (traumatised me as a kid that one, I now own a copy but haven't quite got up the nerve to sit down and watch it - 21 years after seeing it, forced to watch it by my sister, I still remember the nightmares I had about Chucky, and the scene from Damien - The Omen 2 where that woman gets er eyes pecked out by the Devil in the form of a crow and then wanders right in front of an articulated lorry, which is strange because I remember watching all three Omen movies with her and now, watching them as an adult, there's much more disturbing stuff in them than that - the death of the nanny ("It's all for you, Damien!"), the kid who gets trapped under the ice and for some reason the whole scene where Gregory Peck digs up Damien's real mother and finds a jackal skeleton disturbs me immensely). It's mainly stuff that I probably shouldn't have been watching at that young and impressionable age.

There was a video shop in the next village over (we weren't posh enough to have a video shop, hell, we didn't even have a proper newsagents until a few years ago) and because the guy who ran the shop knew me and he knew my dad, he tended to let me get out what I wanted. Sounds awful now I know, but my mam used to send me round the shop for her tabs and they would sell me them. My sister bought her own first tabs by saying they were for our mam. But it was a more innocent age. I suspect that if I had tried to rent out Nine and a Half Weeks or something he would have had something to say. But I wasn't interested in sexy movies. In fact, I got a little nervous when they came on. I was watching The Terminator with my gran and the sex scene came on. I got a little nervous - you don't want to look too interested in case they notice you getting excited, but you don't want to make your apparent disinterest too obvious. Needless to say, when Kyle Reese kicked the bucket, I was over the moon, because it meant that there wouldn't be any more awkward sex scenes. Of course, my gran was a very strange woman. When I was ten, shortly before she died, I went over to her house. She was watching Fatal Attraction and bade me to come and sit down with her while she watched it. That's another movie that's stuck in my mind, and put me off Glenn Close for life.

My Gran was always the first port of call for movies in my life. My mother never really took me to the pictures (in fact, I can only remember two occasions - Superman 4: The Quest For Peace and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: The Secret Of The Ooze, the latter of which I had won free tickets for and I can only remember her ever mentioned going to the pictures another two times - for Top Gun and Grease) but my gran would always take me. She would always fall asleep halfway through the film, but she took me. We would go to the Cannon in Sunderland, or the Empire Theatre, which has a small screening room and would tend to show slightly older films. After her death, I only remember going to see Jurassic Park at the Cannon. It closed down shortly afterward, stood derelict for the longest time then reopened while I was at university as a nightclub. Not that I've ever been in. Even when I was in the depths of my degree I still went out in Newcastle.I can't remember a single occasion when I actually have gone out drinking in Sunderland. Sure, I've had a few quiet drinks in the pubs round there (The Transporter, now sadly changed hands and name, The Royalty, Chesters, the Manor Quay) but Sunderland as a night out has never quite appealed. The Empire doesn't show movies anymore, at least, not that I'm aware of.

My first experience of a modern multiplex was when my sister took me to see GoldenEye at the Warner Village in Newcastle (a complex which no longer exists, they knocked it down some years ago to make student accomodation). I'd skived off school for the day, with my mother's persmission amazingly enough. It was the beginning of December and our Clare took me out to Newcastle Christmas shopping. I bought some Doctor Who books in Forbidden Planet - this was at the very beginning of my love affair with that shop. We argued and Clare almost didn't take me. But take me she did - our Clare has always had a very high tolerance for my idiocy - and I was amazed. The Cannon had two screens, obviously the bare minimum that it could have to qualify as a multiplex. The Warner Village had twelve. It was an eye opening experience, let me tell you. But that wasn't the big shock. The big shock for me was the fact that there were only around seven people in the screen with us. Now I was used to packed houses. I didn't believe that they could justify screening a film for this few people, but screen it they did (and I have subsequently been to screening with even less people in attendance, including when I went to see Shrooms and I was the only one in the theatre) and so my affair with modern cinema began.

And in a way my childhood ended then. Before GoldenEye, movies at the cinema were a transient, special treat, with the advent of my pilgrimage to the Warner Village, they became something that I could do whenever I want to. I was the master of my cinematic destiny, and I haven't looked back since.

Peace out.