A Night with King Kong

On a recent evening one of the cable channels broadcast the original King Kong. Mama Goof had fond memories of watching monster movies with her father and King Kong had been the first. She remembered it being awesome. So she and GoofGirl curled up to watch it together. This was the uncut version, where the gorilla-dinosaur combat was pretty harrowing. I was not 100% percent on Mama Goof’s judgment here. I still have nightmares about the flying monkeys from Wizard of Oz, and they weren’t the size of grain silos. But who am I say – I watch The Ten Commandments with the little Goofs, which is borderline child abuse.

Maybe Mama Goof was hoping to scare her a little and take her down a peg.

I wandered in and out (because I get scared) as they were watching and was pretty impressed. This was the first great monster movie and there were so many visual images and plot elements that were later adopted in its successors. And, in a post-9/11 world the final scenes take on a new resonance. Monsters did attack the tallest building in New York.

GoofGirl was completely underwhelmed. She thought King Kong “looked like play-doh.”

She was, however, pretty perturbed with Fay Wray’s “heroine.”

“Why does she just scream and fall-down? Why doesn’t she do anything?” Goof Girl demanded, “If that thing came after me, WA-POW!”

Mama Goof smiled and said to me, “A couple generations of feminism has had some effect.”

Of course GoofGirl isn’t completely fearless. While watching another show she saw a commercial for Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Her eyes got wide with concern and she asked, “Is that real?”

I guess it isn’t the size of the monkey, but the number of them – after all GoofGirl only has two fists.

And kissing, she runs out of the room whenever there is kissing. That’s okay with me.