Jackson re-creates missing scene from original King Kong

Peter Jackson

In between preparing his King Kong remake for its release next month, director Peter Jackson has taken time to also recreate scenes missing from the 1933 original.

At a test screening in San Bernadino in 1933, a scene featuring Kong rolling a log with his fingers and hurtling four sailors into a giant spiders' lair caused such hysteria that the film's director Ernest Cooper decided to cut it for fear that people would run out of the cinema.

A new release from Warner Brothers of a DVD of the original film said the filmmakers were also worried the scene slowed down the film and distracted from Kong himself. But Jackson's recreated scenes have been inserted into the original version.

Generations of film historians have failed to find the lost giant-spider-pit sequence, but fans can get an idea of what the scene would have looked like, the Vancouver Sun reports.

Jackson and his Weta Workshop crew have replicated the sequence, based on surviving still photos, storyboards and the original script.

It takes place at that point in the film where a group of sailors are fleeing a raging dinosaur on Kong's jungle island. They start to cross a log bridge over a chasm and come face to face with Kong on the other side.

The big ape begins to shake and roll the log, pitching the helpless men into the pit below. Some of the men get up only to be set upon by giant spiders and insect creatures who emerge from caves and begin devouring them.

Jackson's crew used 1930s film equipment and technology to try and replicate the stop-motion and matte techniques that were pioneered by the original Kong's chief technician Willis O'Brien.

Jackson said on the DVD the team developed a profound respect for what was accomplished onscreen more than 70 years ago.

They deteriorated the film they shot to match the original footage, employed some of the 20 unused minutes of Max Steiner's original music score and even recreated their own animal sounds.

The horrible encounter with the bugs and beasts at the bottom of the pit is edited seamlessly into the original film as the crew's homage to what they are pretty sure the lost scene would look like.

- NZPA