Mighty Joe Young (1949)
Wow, there sure are some silly moments and bad acting in this movie--and yet I watched it to the end! Why? For the story itself (I love the King Kong idea) and for the campy fun of it. It's actually pretty horrible, and the special effects are interesting but not exactly convincing, so I would recommend not seeing this movie unless you are especially into the genre. The director, Ernest B. Schoedsack, is the very same Schoedsack who directed the original King Kong way back in 1933, but after a series of similar adventure films in the 1930s, he had been inactive for nearly a decade before getting involved here.
The story we've seen before--big ape taken from the jungles of Africa to become a stage act for a impresario of dubious character. The acting is terrible terrible. Say no more there (okay, Robert Armstrong isn't quite terrible). The effects, for all their Harryhausen fame, are pretty basic, though there are a lot of them (the ape, but also lions behind glass, and some mutilation to the lions, PETA folk and other decent people beware). Remember this isn't the early 1930s, when the effects for King Kong were pretty amazing in that context. This is post-war America. The fact that everything has to be created by hand and matte shot (double exposed in a selective way) does make it impressive, but even if you like Harryhausen's efforts, the rest of the movie will likely let you down.
Wow, there sure are some silly moments and bad acting in this movie--and yet I watched it to the end! Why? For the story itself (I love the King Kong idea) and for the campy fun of it. It's actually pretty horrible, and the special effects are interesting but not exactly convincing, so I would recommend not seeing this movie unless you are especially into the genre. The director, Ernest B. Schoedsack, is the very same Schoedsack who directed the original King Kong way back in 1933, but after a series of similar adventure films in the 1930s, he had been inactive for nearly a decade before getting involved here.
The story we've seen before--big ape taken from the jungles of Africa to become a stage act for a impresario of dubious character. The acting is terrible terrible. Say no more there (okay, Robert Armstrong isn't quite terrible). The effects, for all their Harryhausen fame, are pretty basic, though there are a lot of them (the ape, but also lions behind glass, and some mutilation to the lions, PETA folk and other decent people beware). Remember this isn't the early 1930s, when the effects for King Kong were pretty amazing in that context. This is post-war America. The fact that everything has to be created by hand and matte shot (double exposed in a selective way) does make it impressive, but even if you like Harryhausen's efforts, the rest of the movie will likely let you down.