They lead the paper with it, but you have to click down to see him (and watch the clip).
WTF? What's with the Times?
They can't even respect and report this correctly?
WTF am I to do, readers?
"Joy of Fright: Old Chillers That Should Scare (but Not Terrorize) the Kids"
"THE natives pushed back as hard as they could, but slowly, terrifyingly, the huge door started to open. Then the giant ape burst through, sowing fear through Skull Island — and the living room of my family’s brownstone in Park Slope.
I was all of 5, and I had stumbled on the original “King Kong” on television. I didn’t switch it off. Instead I turned down the volume and hid behind the couch. Every time I peeked, things only got worse: Now Kong was chewing on a native like a toothpick; now he was squashing another into the mud with his giant foot.
My dad tells the story of how he got home, found the television on, silently, and then noticed the top of my cowering head. On screen Kong ran amok. My dad asked if I was O.K. “I’m fine,” I reportedly said.
Then — and I remember this distinctly — he leaned over and switched off the set, and Kong was gone, and waves of relief rolled through me.
Fast-forward about 36 years. My own son, Dean, is about to turn 8. He was completely unfazed a few years ago when I first played the original “King Kong” for him. “Look, look — this is scary,” I said as the Skull Island climax began, eyeing him but getting nervous myself. I felt a little of that old hide-behind-the-couch instinct coming on.
“What?” Dean shot back as Kong rampaged. “He looks so fake.”
[Then take him to see this movie.
Either way, they are both fantastic.
Kid doesn't know what he's missing, so how can he appreciate such great art?!]
Why had I been scared and not Dean?
He has certainly been exposed to all kinds of computer-enhanced on-screen mayhem that my childhood self could never have imagined. I wondered: Have those fast-cutting kaleidoscopic images of action dulled his senses, paved over his fear receptors, and denied him the joy of being scared by a movie not filled with blood or over-the-top special effects? Part of me had clearly loved this feeling when I was 5; otherwise I would just have turned the set off.
So with Halloween approaching, I decided to try a little experiment: Can my jaded 7-year-old be scared, or at least have his pulse set racing, by a little old-fashioned smoke-and-mirrors, black-and-white moviemaking?
I would stay away from the classics — “Frankenstein” from 1931 with Boris Karloff is too scary, I think — and pick movies I’d never seen.
[That's not scary to the kids now.
That's not scary to me, and I watched it in a college classroom.
But you didn't get the NEW King Kong for him to watch?
Pffffftttt! Sigh!
You can go see what they selected, I'm done with them.
What a waste of space and print.
Greatest movie of all-time, and the puke ignores it!
I'm ready to roar like Kong now!
