Look closely at the picture above. As you can see, it's King Kong. Look closer, though, if you will. Notice the red rimmed eyes, the vacant stare, the hunched, lurching pose. Observe the battered, bruised face and the dirty, matted hair. He looks tired, lost, demented. It's as if he doesn't even know where he is. Is this the King Kong that you remember? The tall, majestic creature with a fierce sense of pride once known as the Eighth Wonder of the World? The fearsome beast who would willingly take on a giant dinosaur in order to protect a hot blonde? Certainly, it is not. What you see is the ragged remnants of that once awe-inspiring creature, a crumbling, destroyed caricature of the bestial titan we once looked up to with a potent mixture of fear and amazement.

What you see is Crack Kong.

The year was 1962. Legendary Japanese movie powerhouse, Toho Studios, repsonsible for such classics as Godzilla, Seven Samurai and Rodan had signed the world's most famous giant ape, King Kong, to a contract and brought him to Tokyo with hopes of adding him to their stable of gargantuan stars already dominating movie theaters world wide. It had been a while since Kong had worked, of course, and there had been fewer and fewer offers on the table which had given his agent, Popper DeSantos, little leverage in contract negotiations with Toho, resulting in an extremely unsatisfactory agreement for the former marquee headliner. The bitterness and shame he would feel about the insulting, lowball negotiating tactics the studio used would set the tone for a dark chapter Kong's life as he arrived in Japan with a unhappy demeanor and a damaged sense of self worth.

His stature as it was, much dimmed from it's apex in the thirties, he was not given script approval for any of the projects Toho would involve him in. In fact, he would later admit to not having even seen the scripts until days before filming began. By that time, of course, he wouldn't even care how bad they were or the eventual damage such shoddy productions would do to his image. His first days in Tokyo were lonely ones, unable to speak the language or relate to the culture in any fashion whatseoever. Most of the locals seemed afraid of him, understandable after years of one giant monster disaster after another and the poor creature could harldy get room service without having to deal with a terrified Japanese girl, eyes downcast, trembling in terror. It wasn't long before he began to feel more and more like the monster he had portrayed on screen. It is easy to see, in hindsight, why he would ultimately find himself surrounded by unsavory characters eager to cash in on what remained of his once impresive name. They were, quite simply, the only ones who would talk to him.

Most prominent among such hangers-on was Kenjo Unicake, club owner and rumoured Yakuza bag man, known around town as a man who knew where to find absolutley any illicit pleasure known to simians of any sort. It was he who first introduced Kong to the two other Toho stars that would eventually lead the proud ape astray, the 30 foot tall Japanese Frankenstein and the tragic, embittered Samurai monolith, Giant Maijin. Neither were A-List stars at the time and they had chosen to make ends meet by renting themselves out to underground club owners, sometimes as scenery, other times as muscle. Kong quickly found himself sinking into this sordid scene with the two shady pseudo-monsters as guides leading him down a murky path of sex, violence and drug addiction. Unfortunately, he had found the two creatures in the giant monster movie circuit more fucked-up than he was and he soon became mired in their ugly, depressing world.

Frankenstein Giant Maijin

Certainly, his personal issues were reflected in his work. The films were uneven and his performances erratic to say the least. The crew of King Kong Vs.Godzilla (Toho, 1962) admitted they often found it difficult to focus the star's attention and the legendary giant lizard who was his co-star quickly became exasperated, leading to a high degree of tension on the set. Production was halted for a week at one point when Godzilla refused to work "under such unprofessional conditions" after an incident where Kong asked the great dinosaur if he could use his radioactive breath to "blaze up my pipe". Similar problems beset King Kong Esacpes (Toho, 1967) when he and Mecha-Kong engaged in a running fued, rumoured to involve the attentions of an underage prostitute, that eventually shut down production over a month before completion. The studio patched together what they could from what had been filmed and combined it with the similarly aborted special, Kong's Kooky Christmas, and released what would be remembered as an embarrassing failure for both the studio it's floundering star, now fallen into a state of true degeneration.

Thankfully, not everyone had given up on him. In his time at Toho he had managed to make two friends who had no connection to the darker world Kong had slipped into; The Ailenas( or Fairy Twins) from Mothra. They convinced their embattled friend to stay with them on Infant Island for a period of months during which he was able to dry out, shake his many addictions and begin to feel more like his natural self amidst the pastoral beauty of the Island. Ultimately it was these two little women who convinced him to return to Skull Island and try to rediscover the pride he had lost. In doing so, he would capture the attention of longtome admirer Dino DeLaurentis who would attempt to restore Kong to his formy glory in the big budget 1976 remake of the classic fim that started it all. Granted, his performance would seem decidedly wooden next to the efforts of Jessica Lange and Jeff Bridges but it would be difficult to fault him considering how far he had come emotionally to be able to even set foot on a Hollywood set. The film would be a considerable success and King Kong would once again have the respect and admiration of the entertainment industry.

Now, of course, on the eve of the release of Peter Jackson's wildly hyped new version of the film, it would seem that Kong has finally been returned to his former glory in full. Perhaps that is true but we would all be ill-served to forget the failures of the past in light of this new Kong Renaissance. For it was not the mighty ape himself who was responsible for his fall from grace. Rather it was we, the movie going public, ever starved for newer, brighter stars to build up before shooting them down just like those buzzing bi-planes around the Empire State Building did. We enabled heartless studio executives who removed the valiant creature from his natural habitat and used him to make untold millions for Hollywood corporations who, when his fame had waned ever so slightly, dismissed him as quickly as they once did Paul "Crocodile Dundee" Hogan.

For the sake of this majestic creature, we implore you to treat him with the respect and dignity he deserves as a proud monarch of the animal kingdom. Else we risk the horror of seeing the most harrowing episodes of The Surreal Life possibly imaginable.

Let Kong Be.

© Ken Socrates 2005. All rights reserved.