Paging Mr. Psychotronic... Paging Mr. Psychotronic...

A quick jaunt up the coast this past weekend to Santa Rosa for a Capricorn party has left me practically movie-less for the past week (with one awesome exception), but not without some unexpected gains to my film library. And by "film library," I mean my actual library about film, not DVDs or videotapes. I'm talking books, people!

An unplanned side trip into Treehorn Books, a used bookstore in Santa Rosa, left two dog-eared -- but in far better condition than my original edition -- copies of Michael Weldon's The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film in my happy little hands. Long out of print (to my knowledge), I cannot stress enough how important this 1983 book was in developing my love of outré cinema, and while I still have not seen every film mentioned in its interior, I have made a pretty good run at seeing most of the pictures contained within its covers. (One of these copies is getting shipped up to Anchorage immediately to my fellow movie nut Aaron, who will appreciate its lurid cover, wonderfully descriptive film entries and black and white reproductions of a host of crappy movie posters greatly.) Weldon also started The Psychotronic Film Guide Magazine, and he doesn't so much review a film, as he does give you a list of all the reasons that you should see a film, whether or not it is a bottom-of-the-barrel scraper. Horror, sci-fi, juvenile delinquent, rock n' roll, jungle, and gorilla pictures, beach and surf flicks...really, exploitation of any sort. If you like any of these genres, this book is a must-have for your collection and further cinematic edification.

I also discovered a gorgeous hardcover copy (with protective book cover) of Astaire Dancing by John Mueller from 1985, and also long out of print. I have yet to break into its text, but much of the book is devoted to frame-by-frame breakdowns of many of the dance sequences from the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers musical series, covers the majority of Astaire's career, and will be great fun to go through in conjunction with the DVD set that was recently released (and which Jen and I will naturally now have to purchase).

A not-unexpected gain, since I left the book behind on my trip to my brother's in November, was a hardcover copy of Cut! Hollywood Murders, Accidents and Other Tragedies that Mark and Marci passed on to me. I've already noticed that they left Marie Provost out of the book (nothing like being devoured by dachshunds!), so I am unsure as to how complete the research is in the book, but I will wade into it the next time I am in a particularly gory mood. Maybe it will keep me from cracking my ancient copy of Hollywood Babylon again.

A two-hour wait in the San Francisco Airport left me with time to wander about Compass Books, where I snagged a copy of Stan and Ollie: The Roots of Comedy - The Double Life of Laurel and Hardy. I am about a third of the way through this very concise history of the boys, and even if the author (Simon Louvish) gets a little too lavish with his historical overview of comedy in the beginning, I am finding it a most intriguing read.

Didn't really have time to read on the flight, though... the flight is only an hour, and by the time the beverage service shows up and leaves, you are pretty much landing, so it is hard to really get into anything heavy on such a short zip. 

And don't get me started on that crappy little bag of pretzels that they term a "snack". Grrrrr...

Recently Rated Movies #11: We Just Let You Think We're Part of the Human Race...

A pleasant surprise this weekend was taking a remote control stroll past the Orange County Public Access channel late Saturday evening and discovering that some dementedly wonderful person was running Teenagers from Outer Space, a zero-budgeted and profoundly terrible movie from 1959. 

I came into the film about five minutes in, so I had to wait until they showed it again later that evening to find out if it was some yuckster's regularly scheduled bad movie show, hopefully graced with cheesy host segments before and after. It turns out that the latter wish was not to be, but neither was I able to ascertain whether it was a regular show either, as it was not actually on the scrolling index for the channel that runs between every program. So, now I will just have to wait until next Saturday night to see if they roll another science fiction anti-classic.

Ray guns that disintegrate clothing and flesh but not bones (portrayed by cheap plastic skeletons), a cute ingenue with a cross between a Louise Brooks and Bettie Page wig-do, the most stiffly, sub-community theatre acting level uncle in the history of the cinema, and lobster shadows that grow to gigantic proportions (though they are called "Gargons," they are undisguisedly lobsters in form) are unleashed upon the viewers. I was in "B" movie heaven.

The last few times I have seen the film was on the late, lamented MST3K, and I had not seen it in its non-robot puppet version since I was a teenager. Poor Sparky the dog, reduced immediately at the beginning of the film to a pile of bones; and yet, he becomes the chief proponent of the plot as his dog license tag survives the ray gun blast (but somehow his collar does not). [A side note: many good friends of mine will remember the dog-frying scene from our numerous viewings of It Came From Hollywood on video in the '80s.] The rebellious teenager from outer space, who goes by the popular interplanetary monicker of Derek, surmises quite correctly that this creature must have been someone's pet, and goes off in search of the owner. Luckily for him, Sparky's owner is a hot girl, and then the intergalactic whoopee commences!

Sure, the film is unintentionally funny enough to fill 27 movies and is inspiringly amateurish in every single regard; yet, it is still weirdly compelling, and it doesn't really require the Mystery Science gang to get you through it. I was delighted to run into the film in the middle of the night on a nothing station, as it reminded me of how I used to find my science-fiction and horror thrills as a teenager: almost completely at random, never knowing what film you were going to see, and without having any choice in the matter. You just tuned in and watched whatever you got, and also wherever you happened to tune into it. I really miss that feeling.

A planned viewing that I had this weekend was finally watching my recording of Seven Men from Now, which sounds like a gay porn title, but is actually a quite intriguing and enjoyable western from Budd Boetticher, for whom this film was the first of seven consecutive team-ups with Randolph Scott. Of their films, I had only seen The Tall T and Comanche Station previously, but had read about this film quite a lot over the years. So when TCM showed Seven Men for the first time a couple weeks back in conjunction with a documentary about the director and bullfighter called Budd Boetticher: A Man Can Do That, I made sure to set the DVR up for its recording.

It seems a generic western until you get deep into it, and then you discover a couple of well-choreographed gun battles, some excellent camera set-ups and location usage, a fun dose of sexual suggestion, and a scene of Scott suffering severe psychological torture at the hands of the conniving yet charismatic snake-in-the-grass Lee Marvin, who completely swipes the picture out from under the stoic Scott. I'm sure Scott could have cared less, because once the film is finished, there is a shot of him with gun drawn that resonates deeply with the viewer, and I have had it stuck in my cranium since I finished watching the film, which I now believe to be a piece of subtle, unshowy genius. It is now the next film that I shall purchase on DVD.

The List:
The Goldwyn Follies (1938) TCM - 5
Jaws (1975) DVD - 9
Teenagers from Outer Space (1959) PUAOC - 2
Kingukongu no gyakushu [King Kong Escapes] (1967) DVD - 4
Batman Begins (2005) DVD - 8
Gojira: Fainaru uozu [Godzilla: Final Wars] (2004) DVD - 6
Kingukongu tai Gojira [King Kong Versus Godzilla] (1962) DVD - 4
Seven Men from Now (1956) TCM - 7
Around the World (1943) TCM - 5
Swing Your Lady (1938) TCM - 4
Swing Fever (1943) TCM - 5
Night Must Fall (1937) TCM - 6
Budd Boetticher: A Man Can Do That (2005) TCM - 7
The Producers (1968) TCM - 8

Cinema 4: Further into the Future!

Happy New Year, everybody!!! And a Happy Bastille Day to my brother Chris!! (I need not explain...)

I am beginning this new year by not going to the movies, a statement that many of you who have known me forever will find most shocking. I normally try to attend anywhere from three to four films on New Year's Day, with my all-time record in one day being an amazingly well planned-out five several years ago. But this year is different. The weather, my girlfriend's undue illness, and my desire to remain untouched by said illness are forcing a cancellation of my normal day of cinematic lounging. My planned third viewing of Peter Jackson's King Kong and also of Memoirs of a Geisha were cancelled by the rainy, rainy, rainy weather (Pooh would call it "blustery"), and a talked-about evening showing of Rumor Has It became exactly that: a rumor, due to the aforementioned illness.

But I did not pass the time at home in a completely idle fashion. I spent much of the afternoon setting up a second blog site, which is, instead of the focused concentration on all types of movies here at the Pylon, entirely dedicated to stuffing the internet to the gills with my musings on every animated film that I see in the next year. The site is called Cinema 4: Cel Bloc and can be checked out by clicking here. (Or click on the actual title, too. I like to cover my bases.)

Another feature that I added today, which many of you will realize because you are probably looking at this because you received an email today pertaining to it, is a mailing list for the Pylon. Until today, while I had spoken of the site to a handful of people and shown it to a few at work, I had not sent out the location of the site to most of my friends and family. That has all changed as of today. I have also added a mailing list subscription box at the bottom of the page to facilitate this process. (Much thanks to Lindsay of La La Lamarland for helping me set all of this up today.) Now, all members of my mailing list will receive an email informing them anytime that I put up a new post to this page. However, as there should be about 86,000 posts in the next year to the Cel Bloc, I will not send update emails for that new site to the mailing list. I didn't want to bother everyone each and every time that I decided to watch a Porky Pig cartoon. Of course, it could very well have turned out to be a lot of fu-fu-f-fu-fu-fu-fu-fu-fu-f-f-fu-fu-uh--a g-g-good time!

And for Pete's sake, people, start up your own blogs! It's so easy, I can do it! Let's go, Bohemians!

Rating Systems and That Darned Third Rule

I'm taking some time out of my busy Kong schedule to conclude the year, and my first three months of blogging, with a couple of features that I promised to post, but have thus far failed to fulfill. This would be the explanation of my #9 Ratings System, and the grand unveiling of the third of my Movie Attendance Mottos.

THE #9 RATINGS SYSTEM

I find that 4-and-5 numbered ratings systems, however starred, ticketed, monkeyed, breasted or whatever gimmick you might wish to employ to display it, are too truncated for my purposes. Too tight. I need room to spread out. The other standby is the #10 system, but I find that slightly too, too long. Roger Ebert goes with a #2 system on his show, thumbs up or thumbs down, but in his column he resorts to a 4 star system, which is actually a #7 system once you count his 1/2 ratings. I chose to roll with a system based on 9, with the list broken into three sections:

9: Classic

8: Excellent

7: Very Good

6: Good (Above Average)

5: Average

4: Bad (Below Average)

3: Very Bad

2: Bordering on Nauseating

1: Excruciatingly Awful

The center of this list is just that: it centers everything that goes on in the system. My assumption is that the bulk of films that are released are not actually good or even bad, but simply average. Average films for a populace that accepts mediocrity as a critical vanguard. It is where Chris Columbus films go to die, it is where 18-kid family movies can rest in pieces, and it is where the bulk of Julia Roberts' and Sandra Bullock's careers can gather dust for all eternity. (I say "the bulk" of their careers, for they do have good films on their resumes.) The worst place that a film can land on this list is not at #1, "Excruciatingly Awful" No, it is its being relegated to the middle of this list, the merely "Average" slot, for my next assumption is that if a film is actually bad, then there must be a certain level of interest in it. Not so with the average films; to me, the worst cinematic crime that a filmmaker can perpetrate on his audience is lulling them into numbing acceptance of subpar material. Hey, Hamlet, are you drilling for oil? No? Then why don't you stop boring?

That leaves 4 slots up, and 4 slots down; up for excellence, down for putrescence. On the low end of the scale, it might shock you to find out that a certain renowned "Bad Film" does not reside at the bottom of my ratings well. The truth of the matter is that Plan 9 From Outer Space is not the Worst Film of All Time. There are films of far greater incompetence out there, and despite what you may have been lead to believe over the years, Ed Wood did possess a certain rebel ingenuity in producing his pictures. They may seem haphazardly made, and they were, often on the fly, and it is the sheer gall and chutzpah that he used which comprise the reasons why I actually admire him. More filmmakers should be possessed of the sheer drive that he had to complete his poverty row affairs. So, Plan 9 does not get a 1 on my list; I actually rate it about a 3. It is a very bad film, but it is quite endearing in its naïveté, and there are far worse films to have to endure. (Manos: Hands of Fate is certainly one of them. I fully agree with MST3K's and EW's assessments.)

As for the good ratings slots, they are easy to figure out, but I must say that I have an awfully hard time letting a film make the jump to "Classic" status. Even films generally considered to be classics will often get short shrift at my hands, and even many films that I number amongst my favorites do not end up in that hallowed category.

I am still working out some of the details of the list, and am still undergoing a slow and monotonous renovation of my ratings on IMDB to fit its parameters. Anytime I see a picture anew, I reevaluate my rating to make sure that it is properly placed, and as I continue to list films on my sporadically posted Recently Rated Movies feature, all of the detailed films will have been changed or added to IMDB prior to posting (you may access my IMDB ratings but clicking on the link on the side of this page).

THE MOVIE ATTENDANCE MOTTOS

I had previously announced two of my Movie Attendance Mottos in a post over two months ago, and mentioned them only at that time because they pertained to the subject at hand. The third had not come into play with that subject. It is now time that I laid out all three together:

1. I Will See Any Movie At Least Once.2. I Will See Any Movie at Any Time (Barring Previous Engagement or Deathly Illness).3. I Must See A Film First Before Critiquing It.

Pretty basic summation of what keeps my movie-watching engine running. The first movie mainly makes me watch any movie that I am confronted with, whether buddies want to check out the latest action flick, or a niece wants me to watch a Hilary Duff movie with her. Rather than barring my eyes from different genres, styles, and actors (whether I actually have an interest in their work or not), it keeps things fresh and keeps me up on new trends in the cinema. It also means that I am more apt to check out that most likely crappy film that I pass on Sci-Fi or USA, but the truth is, you never know what you will discover until you actually check something out. Especially things off of your well-beaten path.

The second rule means that I won't sneak out of showings of films at odd times when my friends are going, even if I don't really want to see a certain film. It's the "Well, why the hell not?" rule. I take a certain measure of pride in following through on this rule, and I have to be truly in pain to not go. (Sometimes, in the case of the first time I saw the modern version of The Mummy, I was in intense pain but jammed a bunch of prescribed painkillers down my throat and went anyway. When I saw the picture again a couple months later, I realized that I had been lucky to have slept through most of it the first time, and longed to have some of those painkillers back in my pocket.)

The third and last rule stemmed from a life spent ragging on my co-workers' choices of reading material: Danielle Steel, Harlequin romances, Harold Robbins, Nora Roberts, The Destroyer and Executioner serials, Patrick MacManus' outdoors larf-fests, and V.C. Andrews' (or rather, her ghostwriters') inexplicably popular incest novels. I read examples, sometimes more than one, of all these series or writers in a quest to ascertain exactly why they were all so popular, and especially with people that I had to deal with on a daily basis. A little research helped me understand the earthlings a little better, and supplied me with ample ammunition for future attacks on character and taste (if needed). (For the record, Nora Roberts is a pretty damn good writer, MacManus is intermittently amusing, and the Destroyer novels were more fun than I like to admit to having had reading them. The rest can suck it.) I eventually found my attacking the filmic choices of others to run counter to what I applied to literature, so I simply adapted that rule and added it to my list.

And there you have it...

Well, What'dya Know! A Little Kong! [The Ballad of Kong Pt. 8]

[Kong crazy? Read Pt. 1, Pt. 2, Pt. 3, Pt. 4, Pt. 5, Pt. 6 and Pt. 7 too!]

My copy on VHS.

The general consensus regarding sequels is that they are invariably disappointing. The Empire Strikes Back and The Godfather Part 2 are generally considered by most critics of note as being those rare exceptions, actually not just equaling their progenitors, but also slyly improving on their respective formulae in many ways.

Such is not the case with The Son of Kong, the quickie buck-grabber that RKO squatted out late in 1933 after Baby Kong's Big Daddy took the world for the biggest cinematic thrill ride yet seen at that point in history. It rides the usual course of sequels, especially those that attempt to follow the successful first film too quickly to grab those too appealing consumer dollars. The original King Kong took a couple years to plan and produce, so it is not surprising that a followup jammed into theatres only a few months later was not going to fulfill the promise of the first one.

The only real problem with this go-around is that The Son of Kong is just not King Kong. That's it. There is nothing overtly terrible about the film. It has the same producers, the same special effects team, and much of the same crew. The pedigree is the same, but The Son of Kong simply fails to fill the insanely huge footprints that were left in its predecessor's wake. The film itself is exactly a half hour shorter than King Kong, and because of this brevity, along with the slow build getting back to Skull Island, the main characters, and the viewers, are practically off the island as quickly as they arrived on it. And not by choice, as the film also leads to a sad and memorable ending, but one which shows off the cheapness with which the project was approached from the beginning. Producer and Kong co-creator Merian C. Cooper had little input in the production whatsoever, leaving the work almost solely to original co-director Ernest B. Schoedsack and stop-motion wizard Willis O'Brien, and with a much smaller budget to boot.

What is right with the film? The expected elements are there: Robert Armstrong is back as a now remorseful Carl Denham, finally taking the blame on himself for the elder Kong's death, as he should. (C'mon, Carl! I thought "'twas Beauty killed the Beast!" You really must have been in denial at the end of King Kong.) O'Brien's effects work is still impressive, if a bit short-cutted in a few scenes due to budget and time restrictions; Frank Reicher makes a welcome return as the loyal Captain Englehorn; and Victor Wong also shows up again as Charlie the Chinese cook, in an expanded role this time, with a good amount of fractured dialogue that should create expectedly nervous results for the modern viewer.

Due to a lack of Fay Wray, the Betty Boop-ish Helen Mack fills in as the cutie pie ingenue, who this time only has to befriend a much smaller (just twelve ft.) albino "baby" gorilla who is the supposed progeny of Kong. Where's is Kong's original intended mate in this film? Was Ann Darrow simply a fling, or are there nine months of post-NYC "outtakes" hidden somewhere? Mack also has to play love interest to Denham, something that wasn't even a consideration with Wray in the original film. The romance between Mack and Armstrong, though, is kept low-key and sweet, and adds to the film's aura of being a mere child's entertainment. Such a mood is in the same tone as the violence on the island, where the fights between the young Kong Jr. and Skull Island's monstrous denizens is quite as savage as the battles his father engaged in for the original.

The Son of Kong does have considerable, early '30s atmosphere, and for a good while in my youth, this was enough to convince me of its worthiness as a film. The low-rent vaudeville scenes at the beginning of the film almost seem like they were cut out of Freaks (which is a plus), and the murderous drunkard bastard of a villain is perfectly hissable and deserves his fate. While there is much less screen time, the battle scenes between little Kong and his fellow stop-motion opponents come one right after the other, which means the film moves pretty quickly and well through its final two-thirds. All of this appealed to me greatly in the summer of '77 when I first saw The Son of Kong as part of that afternoon monster matinee slot that I tuned into every weekday. Thanks to Famous Monsters of Filmland Magazine, I knew of the existence of The Son of Kong, but never thought I would get a chance to see it. Overall, the film is not a bad entertainment at all, and I quite like it.

It is just not Kong. No matter how many times it is attempted by various parties to equal that original film, or how they try to modernize the effects, costumes, acting, and everything, they all fail to match it. While I greatly enjoyed the new Peter Jackson version, and it has much that is of a high excellence, it is still a remake. While I was watching it, and even while loving most of what I was seeing, I was always aware that my feelings in watching it would be the same as when I watch The Son of Kong. That is, there would always be a sense that, as soon as I finished watching this other version, that I would probably have to return to the original to capture that full feeling when I saw it as a kid.

The Ballad of Kong is over... for now.

My Corns Always Hurt When They're Near A Monster! [The Ballad of Kong Pt. 7]

[Want more Kong? Read Pt. 1, Pt. 2, Pt. 3, Pt. 4, Pt. 5, and Pt. 6 first!]

Let's get this straight right from the beginning: Even in a flat-out test of pure strength, Godzilla is going to nail King Kong to the wall. Godzilla, even in his clownish hero persona of the late '60s-early '70s, is still going to clean the clock with the mighty Kong. Godzilla, even at the lowest estimates of his height (say around 200') is still several times bigger than the true Kong, who ranges from 25 to 50 feet, depending on the scene in which he appears.

Remember, Godzilla is sung about in the theme song to the '70s Hanna-Barbera cartoon series as being "40 stories high". Using ten feet as an average for a story in a building, that's 400 feet tall right there, people. Even at half that size, Godzilla can easily step on Kong and then scrape him off his foot onto Mt. Fuji, if he chose, and I haven't even begun to factor in his radioactive breath, which is far more effective in his current incarnation. [Editor's note: "current incarnation" referred to his status as of 2005. The most recent Godzilla film was Godzilla: Final Wars, where the Big G full-on blasts the American 'Zilla from 1998 into the Sydney Opera House in about 30 seconds of screen time. In that film, Godzilla kicked major ass.]

But, the Kong that Toho rented from RKO in the '60s was a different breed of cat... er, ape. He suddenly equaled Big G in height and strength, and mostly shrugged off the fiery blasts from the Japanese King of the Monsters. (Kong's arm catches on fire briefly at one point, which seems to bother him, but then he picks up the fight again.) I was shocked by this behavior when I saw the film not long after first watching the original Kong fall off the Empire State Building. In my head, Kong was dead, and then suddenly there was this ill-suited, scruffy imposter calling himself King Kong and fighting a giant octopod on a South Seas island, and eventually careening in and out of battles with the Big Green Guy around Tokyo. Even then, I noticed the decided lack of quality in the Toho version when measured against the RKO classic, and was especially disappointed in the use of the standard man-in-a-suit for Kong, rather than the far more impressive use of stop-motion animation. (I was already used to Godzilla being a guy in a suit; it was, and is, part of the charm of the character.)

No, this was not my Kong. This one was the same size as Godzilla! I already knew Godzilla to be of unimaginable proportions (around 150 feet tall in the '60s films), and suddenly the big ape that still had to climb laboriously up the Empire State Building was now going to be over a tenth of the size of it? To be sure, there is a plotline about some berries on Kong's island (that is never called Skull Island, so perhaps he is a further-removed offshoot of the species?) that allow the creatures to devour them to grow to monstrous sizes. Maybe this Kong was once normal Kong-sized and ate enough berries to be Godzilla-sized? (The berries also conveniently cause Kong to fall asleep, thus providing a plot device with which to transport the beast.) It also causes Kong to look constantly like he just woke up from a three-night bender.

Who designed me? Idiots...

Whatever the cause for his inflation, this suited version of King Kong battles Godzilla to what most Americans would consider to be a clear victory for the big gorilla, as he is the only one seen swimming off at film's end. There is no sign of the giant green monster at all across the surface of the ocean's waters. Of course, Godzilla is famously amphibious, and can walk or swim underwater without coming up for air for an amazingly long time, so to forget this point in order to declare a sure victory for the fuzzy primate with perpetual bedhead is foolish at best.

I had two copies of KKvG on VHS,
including this version.

For much of my life, I and much of the western world was under the belief that there were separately filmed outcomes to the battle for the American and Japanese markets, owing to Kong somehow being considered representative of America, and thus Americans would only accept an ending where Kong was the winner. While it is probably because the original movie Kong was filmed by an American studio, and merely as simple as that, there are some people who take perverse pride in claiming pop cultural figures as being their own kith and kin. I have indeed met many a person who have seen this silly kaiju film and exacted a firm measure of patriotism from its conclusion. I say they only can claim this due to the fact that America KILLED Kong; after all, Americans capture, ship and enslave Kong to perform against his will, and then Americans KILL him when he misbehaves. Setting aside parallels of the slave trade that is one of this country's many great shames, the way I see it, Kong only represents our country because his trophy head sits prominently on a wall in America's National Man Cave. So, if you rabid knee-jerk patriots need an easy victory to salute because you think one movie monster "killed" another movie monster, then you have more problems than just being... well, you.

It doesn't matter. In the Japanese release of King Kong vs. Godzilla, we not only hear King Kong roar in supposed triumph as he swims away toward the horizon, but we also hear Godzilla's roar one more time. As for me, I'm taking no political sides in the King Kong vs. Godzilla debate, except to say that the Kong in the movie is not the Kong that I love and that Godzilla in the film is the Godzilla that I love. I absolutely declare the ending a draw. The Myth of Two Endings is just that: a myth. There were never two endings; just one big ambiguous earthquake-and-tidal-wave-causing fall into the ocean by two monstrous titans of pop culture. And whoever said you can't love them both? Not me, clearly.



Long Live the Kings...

[To be continued in Part 8...]

Recently Rated Movies #10: Before the Kiss, A Recap...

Before I got lost in the Happy Holidays Blizzard of Insanity, and before I got mentally trapped yet again on Skull Island for the last month or so, I had been regularly posting my movie ratings. I've also been bad about keeping notes on the films that I've been watching, so I probably have left a handful of titles out.

It has now been almost a month since my last batch of freshly viewed titles, so I will make this quick and painless. Which means that, for once, I will say very little. I did have things to elaborate on for many of these movies, but that will now have to wait for a later time.

All I know right now, is that "I want to be a producer!"

The List:
Bride and Prejudice (2004) - 7
Pride and Prejudice (2005) - 7
King Kong (1933) (DVD) - 9
Son of Kong (1933) (DVD) - 6
Mighty Joe Young (1949) (DVD) - 8
Where the Buffalo Roam (1980) (Sundance) - 5
The Hulk (2003) (Sci-Fi) - 4
Millions (2005) (DVD) - 7
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005) - 7
Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid (1982) (TCM) - 7
All of Me (1984) (TCM) - 7
FM (1978) (IFC) - 5
Mystery Science Theatre 3000: The Movie (1998) (Sundance) - 6
Melvin and Howard (1980) (IFC) - 6
King Kong (2005) - 8
Up in Arms (1944) (TCM) - 5
The Kid From Brooklyn (1946) (TCM) - 6
The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) (TCM) - 8
Kong of Atlantis (2004) (ToonDisney) - 4
A Song Is Born (1948) (TCM) - 6
The Producers (2005) - 7