ultramatt2000-1 I heard about it. I read about it. The only thing that ever came out was the clip of the Triceratops family, the man hunting the baby triceratops leading him to be chased by the angry mother where he gets gored. You can find the footage exclusively at the second disc of the original KING KONG Two-Disc Special Edition. But, there was more to it than just test footage. I saw storyboards and photographs of the puppets (such as the prehistoric mammal Arsinoitherium). The story of the film can be seen on the second disc of the original KING KONG Two-Disc Special Edition. It features storyboards, and narration from the film's outline. It played out like a READING RAINBOW episode. It is fun to watch. In a nutshell, the plot is like SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON meets THE LOST WORLD. This was Harry O'Hoyt's idea and Willis O'Brien would do the animation effects along with the talents of Marcel Delgado and Mario Larrinaga. However, the plug was pulled when Merriam C. Cooper and Ernest B. Shoedstack saw the test footage and had O'Brien and his team do the special effects for KING KONG. The dinosaur puppets, Stegosaurus, Brontosaurus, Triceratops, Styracosaurus Pterodactyl and Tyrannosaurus Rex, all ended up in KING KONG. In that production, new models were made such as the serpentine Elasmosaurus and the Spider Pit inhabitants. Harry O Hoyt changed the film to THE LOST ATLANTIS in 1937 and had Fred Jackman, who did the special effects for THE LOST WORLD be in charge of it and have the stop-motion animation be done by Edward Nassour (who later do 1956's THE BEAST OF HOLLOW MOUNTAIN) and Walter Lantz (of Woody Woodpecker infamy). The puppets were made. He pitched it for Colombia Pictures in 1937 and again in 1940. If CREATION did get made, it would end up being a monster movie memory on the late-night show in the 1950's, 60's and 70's and would end up playing on cable in the 80's and 90's on channels like AMC and TNT, plus it would end up sitting on Turner Classic Movies. Then there would be no KING KONG and it would disturb the chain of events. If THE LOST ATLANTIS did get made, it would give Walter Lantz a change of heart and he would become the next Ray Harryhausen. Or when he realized that his Woody cartoons are getting bad, he would stop and go back to his stop-motion roots. If only. Not rated, but the kids and adults wouldn't mind that extra on the KING KONG DVD, especially when they grew on READING RAINBOW. Give it a watch, but you don't have to take my word for it. I'll see you next time.

xerses13 We have always had a great curiosity about this film that has finally been satisfied by the release of KING KONG (1933) on DVD. Peter Jackson has recreated by narration, story boards and the surviving footage a coherent representation of the film. Enough for us to at least give some sort of realistic rating. The film was short circuited and canceled for three (3) reasons. Economic pressure on RKO due to the Great Depression, the expense of the film (several times that of the completed KING KONG) and that Merian C. Cooper did not like it. For details of the plot review the DVD, it is extensive.Though not a viable feature film, we think it could be made into a nice made for T.V. movie for the Sci-Fi Channel and would certainly be better then a lot of their other efforts (they are not all as good as BATTLESTAR GALACTICA) and would fit into their Saturday programing. Like Peter Jackson's KING KONG (2005) it would be best to keep it in it's original 1930's time-line. If successful the THE WAR EAGLES could be looked to next. You might even coax Ray Harryhausen as a technical director. If anybody knows anything about these films he does.ADDENDUM; Understand that Ray Harryhausen is a producer of a version of THE WAR EAGLES as of this date 05/01/08.

BijouBob8mm There are a number of films in Hollywood history that went into preproduction, even actually shot test footage for a presentation reel, only to be shelved by the studio for various reasons. Usually such ventures are forgotten to all but a few film fans & scholars, let alone actually listed on the Internet Movie Database. So it was very surprising (but a pleasant surprise!) to find Willis O'Brien's CREATION actually given a full listing here, especially since less than a full reel of film still survives. When JURASSIC PARK came out, there were dozens of bargain bin tapes on dinosaur movies that popped up to cash in on the interest in dino-films of the past, many of which included the CREATION footage in their collection of clips. Perhaps, when the DVD of the original KING KONG finally gets its years-overdue release, the CREATION footage will be restored and included among the extras.

ramaken33 For the millions out there who may be unfamiliar with Creation, this was to have been the first dinosaur movie of the sound era. An extremely ambitious undertaking, the production was helmed by the people who produced the 1925 silent classic The Lost World- director Harry Hoyt and master of stop motion animator Willis O'Brien. As envisioned by director Hoyt, Creation would basically have been a sound retelling of the Lost World scenario: a group of survivors from a yacht and Chilean submarine find themselves in an extinct volcano where prehistoric animals have survived. Stranded, the human castaways fight for survival and are ultimately rescued before the island is swept away in a volcanic cataclysm.About a year of pre-production work went into Creation, but ultimately the film was dropped, due largely to the mounting financial troubles at RKO. Creation had already run up costs in excess of $100,000 (during the Depression- today the equivalent expense would probably be well in excess of several million dollars). While a great deal of preproduction work was finished, only two known sequences were completed. One was a high-speed filming of the volcano rising from the ocean during a storm; the other (the only footage that appears to have survived) is a stop-motion animation sequence involving a mother triceratops and two youngsters, animated by O'Brien. In this polished effects scene, the babies engage in a playful tug-of-war with a stick, until the mother nudges them apart. One of the youngsters wanders away, trekking through a very atmospheric jungle, where it has the misfortune to encounter the main villain of the story, a survivor of the shipwreck named Hallet (played by Ralfe Harrold, the only live actor to participate). Hallet shoots the poor little dino in the eye, killing it. Hearing the cries of her dying baby, Mother triceratops charges, goring the man to death. Viewing this surviving footage, it is clear O'Brien had vastly refined the quality of his work since The Lost World.O'Brien had been steadily improving the quality of his animation, which in the Lost World varied considerably. The dinosaurs (in particular the babies) are very lifelike in their movements, and OBie managed to instill a personality in the creatures that made them both appealing and compelling to watch. Another major improvement was the use of multiple glass paintings, rendered by gifted studio artists Mario Larrinaga and Byron Crabbe which gave a startling illusion of depth to the jungle vistas. Much of the visual inspiration for these exotic settings was from the work of Victorian artist Gustave Dore. However, it was the huge advancement in the Dunning traveling matte system in the years since The Lost World that made this sequence truly exceptional. Unlike the Lost World, which relied primarily upon static in-camera mattes to place live action into the miniature settings, the Dunning system could insert live action without blocking off a portion of the frame, allowing the live action to be inserted directly in front of the miniature settings. This ancestor of today's green screen digital compositing was put to much use in the early 1930's, but in Creation the process was all but perfected. Ralfe Harrold was inserted into scenes in a virtually flawless manner; the composite results are markedly better than even the work in King Kong- done two years later.It's too bad the film was never completed; however, had it not been for Creation, King Kong as we know it today would probably not have been possible. Due to O'Brien's flawless work on Creation, producer Merian Cooper determined stop-motion animation (combined with multiple glass paintings, improved traveling matte and rear projection process work) could bring his proposed adventure epic King Kong to the screen. Had Creation been completed, it probably would have been a fascinating spectacle. However due to it's rather uninspired plot line (Hoyt was successful with The Lost World, but his sense of drama and direction was hardly in league with Merian Cooper's) and like so much of today's overused CGI eye-candy films, it would have remembered for its use of effects, but little else. Kong, on the other hand, quickly became a cultural icon; one which has survived for over 70 years in spite of time, improvements in film technology, and innumerable knock offs and imitations. If you have an interest in the history of stop motion animation, I recommend trying to see this brief glimpse of what became the artistic foundation for King Kong. Fortunately, the surviving footage can still be seen as a special feature on the Most Dangerous Game LD released from the Roan Collection about 10 years ago. I don't know if it exists anywhere on DVD as yet, but we can all keep our fingers crossed that when King Kong is finally released in the US on DVD, someone will have had the foresight to include the Creation footage among the special features. It's definitely worth a look.