Assist when UHF television used to be the sizable babysitter for the nation, every form of loopy reveals wound up getting syndicated and parceled out to the upper reaches of the broadcast dial. A form of reveals used to be KING KONG / TOM OF T.H.U.M.B. Long after its normal 1967 premiere as phase of ABC’s Saturday morning lineup, this existing got a new rent on lifestyles piquant teenagers on weekday afternoons after school. That’s the place I saw it, sandwiched between MIGHTY HEROES and ROCKY & BULLWINKLE. Watched, loved, filed away as a elegant memory; and finest after I got copies of episodes from some man in Australia did I witness that KING KONG / TOM OF T.H.U.M.B. used to be engaging by the Toei Animation Firm of Japan, the a similar of us who produced most of the opposite reveals that populated my private pantheon of TV potentates. Who woulda thunk it?
In actuality, KING KONG used to be if truth be told among the first co-productions ever attempted between hungry American comic strip outfits and cheap Asian animation studios. It be a system that proved lucrative for both events and would consequence in increased and increased percentages of American TV cartoons being written within the States and engaging in Japan or capabilities east. KING KONG’s American facet, Rankin-Bass, would later change into famed as the producer of THE HOBBIT (a Toei co-production) and those endless Christmas specials starring end-motion puppets of Burl Ives and Fred Astaire and the kicky character designs of MAD MAGAZINE stalwart Paul Coker Jr. Rankin-Bass’s predilection in direction of cherry-picking high American illustration skill is evident within the credits for KING KONG, which lists MAD and EC Comics story and appropriate ol’ Georgia boy Jack Davis as character vogue designer. It be arduous to recount after the layers of cleanup, but his touch is visible, especially within the older characters.
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| greater than the Beatles |
But ample of this trivialities. What about KING KONG? Well, for what it’s miles, a 1967 TV comic strip written in one continent and engaging in some other, this existing is refined piquant. It be got a huge theme song (“TEN TIMES AS BIG AS A MAN!!”), the animation is stripped-down traditional, the character designs existing the clear-taking a see world type so nicely-preferred by all Jap exports of the length, and the reviews are all self-contained 8-minute vignettes with diminutive time for anything but action.
Younger Bobby Bond lives alongside with his scientist dad and teenaged sister Susan on Mondo Island, dwelling of the massive King Kong (copyright RKO Radio Photos, Inc). Jimmy and Kong manufacture a mercurial friendship and together they defeat monsters, invaders from design, centurions from the depths of the earth, tainted white hunters, and the machinations of the contaminated Doctor Who. No, now not the BBC man with the police field, but an tainted scientist who appears to be like Captain Wonder’s Dr. Sivana as drawn by Chester Gould, beefy of dastardly plans to kidnap Kong and exercise him to both overcome or execute the field, whichever comes first. You can furthermore take into accout him from the Toho film KING KONG ESCAPES – also a Rankin/Bass co-production.
As a foul between JOHNNY QUEST, GIGANTOR, FRANKENSTEIN JR, and ADVENTURE ISLAND the existing fits neatly into the mid 1960s, a time when teenagers’s TV cartoons had been in a position to goal action and trail, a aesthetic age of fun and pleasure ended finest by the hideous onslaught of Action For Adolescents’s Television. If now not for these shrewish bluenoses, American animation can private persisted to match Jap cartoons within the 2-fisted leisure category, and American comic strip followers could now be excited about American panty-flashing maid reveals somewhat than the Jap ones. KONG loved a diminutive bit of success within the ‘60s; merchandising integrated toys, books, and even a board game.
The associate existing TOM OF T.H.U.M.B. is solely as piquant, if now not extra so. A wacky seek romp within the GET SMART vein, TOM stars a undercover agent who frail to be a janitor. He and his assistant, a stereotypical 60s “Oriental” named Swingin’ Jack, had been caught in an experimental timorous ray and straight reduced to Smurf proportions. Naturally his minature stature comes in at hand when struggling with the contaminated plots of M.A.D. (which stands for “Maladjusted, Antisocial, and Darn Indicate”, as we’re reminded every episode). The present is composed fun to see. The dialog is deliberately corny, the plots are naked-bones excuses for gags, and the brokers of M.A.D. keep up a correspondence in foreign accents that range from Russian to Hispanic to Brooklyn, on occasion within the a similar sentence. Tom’s outfit, by the type, is the Runt Human Underground Militia Bureau. Optimistic, I take into accout all these items from after I was 8. And sooner than you bring up INCH-HIGH PRIVATE EYE, this existing did it first.
The DVD unlock is a swell bundle, you derive 8 Kong episodes, every with 2 Kong segments and 1 TOM OF T.H.U.M.B. segment, separated by the conventional bumper segments. Vol. 2 has the KONG pilot episode as nicely. The transfer is bright, and whereas the colors seem like a diminutive bit washed out, that is understandable for a existing that is been sitting in 16mm reels in somebody’s vault for the past twenty years. I observed some varispeed artifacting in one episode attributable to cheap time-compression, which is an outlandish reveal to behold in a existing that hasn’t been broadcast in twenty years. Soundless, that is a $10 DVD you purchase at Purpose, of a dimly-remembered licensed existing from the mid-1960s, launched by a now-defunct studio, so to presumably’t undoubtedly put aside a query to Criterion quality.
Unusual York crowds already private King Kong fever as we are in a position to see by this bystander’s T-shirt.
Certain, perchance this existing is extra healthy getting a DVD unlock on memoir of of the recent KONG film. So what? If it gets forgotten classics like this existing onto dwelling video, I’m serious about it. Perchance this series will inspire extra outfits to unlock their vaults and portion the goodness with us. At $10 a pop (or less, on the present time) that’s arduous to beat.
KING KONG VOL. 1&2, launched by Classic Media / Sony / Wonder.