King Kong (1933)
is hands down one of my favorite movies of all time (and arguably one of the
best ever made, not that I’m biased). It
succeeds as an adventure picture. It
succeeds as a monster picture (and how sad is it that the spider pit scene
doesn’t survive as anything other than a few fascinating stills?). It even succeeds as a love story (bestiality
aside). Over the Thanksgiving holidays
in my youth, WWOR-TV out of Secaucus, New Jersey used to show not only the
original Kong, but also the lighter
but no less fun Son Of Kong and the
exceptional Mighty Joe Young. The day after the Kong fest, they would play some Toho daikaiju eiga, though the
lineup that sticks in my mind included King
Kong Escapes and King Kong Versus
Godzilla.
Back to the point, what really makes Kong such a fantastic
character is he has personality to spare.
As a performance created mostly by a one-foot-tall puppet, the giant
simian manages to go through a range of emotions and sell them all. There are live actors who to this day cannot
convince me that they’re not robots, yet a piece of aluminum, rubber, and
rabbit fur is capable of bringing an audience to tears. Even the fabulous Rick Baker, whose ape
makeups have fooled watchful eyes, couldn’t quite wring the same emotions out
of his creation in the John Guillermin version of the story in 1976. Naturally, this didn’t stop less talented
creators from trying to convince viewers that primate costumes barely one step
up from Don Post get-ups (man, they were great) were in fact giant apes,
invariably to hilarious results. From Konga to Mighty Peking Man and everything in between, convincing ape suits
have been the exception rather than the norm.
A mysterious man in an old age disguise (or is it?) wanders
into a book store where Dr. Otto Lindenbrock (Kenneth More) peruses the shelves. Taking an enigmatic guide (written by the
never-glimpsed Arne Saknussemm) from the old man, Otto ropes his niece Glauben
(the truly beauteous YvonneSentis) and her beau, soldier and all-around wimp Axel (Pep Munné), to join him on an
expedition to Mount Sneffels in Iceland, where a portal leading to the center
(sorry, centre) of the Earth is located.
Bribing stoic shepherd Hans (Frank Braña) with sheep (yes,
really), the group descend into a world filled with not only wonders but also
with dangers.
Juan Piquer Simón’s Jules Verne’s The Fabulous Journey To The Centre Of The Earth
(aka Where Time Began, aka Viaje Al Centro De La Tierra) is yet
another in a long list of adaptations of fabulist Jules Verne’s famous
story. Verne has been linked with cinema
almost as long as there has been cinema (just ask Martin Scorsese or better yet
Georges Méliès). His work is tailor-made
for the film medium, loaded as it is with visual wonders. Despite the dubiousness of much (but not all)
of Verne’s science, his concepts were set and written in a time when discovery
was still very possible (in a broad scope sense of the word). The world was vast and large sections
remained unexplored. Consequently,
Verne’s tales would be about probing a certain aspect of the world (and the
universe) and pondering the possibilities of what could be out there awaiting
man. It didn’t matter whether or not a
ship like the Nautilus could take on a giant squid in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea. It didn’t matter that a cannon can’t launch a
manned missile From The Earth To The
Moon. It didn’t matter that
traveling Around The World In Eighty
Days in a hot-air balloon would be a foolhardy venture at best. What matters is that the concepts invite
flights of fancy. The stories are about
the power of imagination and the fueling of the sense of wonder we all have
inside us (admit it, you do) more than they are about rendering the astonishing
with verisimilitude. Any adaptation,
then, must also maintain such a sense, and Simón’s film does, or at the very
least it does halfway.
The fantastical elements of the film kick in once the
characters reach the underground ocean, and when they do, I feel fairly
confident in stating that they can be enjoyed on multiple levels. The rubber puppet monsters are cheapjack in the
extreme, but they are still monsters, and that counts for a lot. A fight between two Plesiosaurs (?) is
actually quite violent, with chunks of meat being ripped out and blood roiling
the water. The absurd giant ape
(certainly a ripoff of Guillermin’s King
Kong, though a large man-ape is mentioned very briefly in Verne’s story)
will prompt flashbacks of The Mighty
Gorga, I’m sure, but the scale and sets are handled relatively well. Also, there are a number of composite, forced
perspective, and matte painting shots which are better than some stuff being
done on computers today. The filmmakers
never succeed one hundred percent in convincing the viewer that the expedition
is actually inside the interior of the Earth (except for the scenes obviously
shot in caverns), but the effort is definitely there, and that really goes a
long way. There are also elements like
the character of Olsen (Jack
Taylor, exploitation cinema’s answer to William Fichtner before the
question) which are truly intriguing but are brushed aside, amounting to little
more than teases. The film’s major
problem is that it takes its sweet time getting to the interesting bits, but it
does so without managing to flesh out its characters in the slightest or
building much tension, which we need in order to keep us hanging on. And once it gets to the dinosaurs, giant
mushrooms, and so on, the film gives them all short shrift, rushing as it is to
reach the end. So, what could have been
some low-fi, dirt poor fantasy instead comes off like a highlight reel of same.
More’s Lindenbrock (and we won’t get into spelling
variations or name changes between the written work and this) seems completely
unfazed and mostly uncaring about just about everything in the world as well as
what he witnesses underground. It makes
it difficult to believe that he is a man as interested in exploration as he
claims to be. Hans also is granite-like
in mien. Even when he gets to embrace a
lamb towards the film’s end, his countenance betrays no sense of joy
whatsoever. Conversely, Axel and Glauben
do nothing but show emotion (usually delight and awe), being (as they must have
been) the audience’s point of view characters.
There are no complex emotional moments whatsoever in the film, for good
or ill. Some would argue that’s because
the film is aimed at children, so these things need to be kept simple. I would argue that’s horseshit, and most children
not only understand the meaning behind subtle acting, but they probably intuit
it better than many adults. The problem
is most kids would be bored to tears by this film, so the filmmakers’
simplifications are essentially for naught.
And that’s kind of a shame, really.
MVT: The special effects are the meat and potatoes
of the film. Unfortunately (and
frustratingly), they are not dwelt on at any length, depriving the audience’s
inner child from fully satisfying itself.
Make Or Break: The Make is the first monster scene, while
the gang is still in the caverns. A
five-and-dime dinosaur pokes its head out of a pool of thick movie fog. It lights the fuse which doesn’t quite fizzle
but certainly never “goes boom.”
Score: 5.75/10
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