{"id":42,"date":"2011-06-22T19:07:05","date_gmt":"2011-06-22T23:07:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/?p=42"},"modified":"2020-12-06T21:40:05","modified_gmt":"2020-12-07T02:40:05","slug":"kongo-speaks-karloff-clams-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/?p=42","title":{"rendered":"Kongo Speaks! Karloff Clams Up!"},"content":{"rendered":"

I had an interesting conversation last year at a film convention.\u00a0 I had brought a chapter of King of the Kongo <\/em>(1929), which didn\u2019t go over especially well.\u00a0 That\u2019s not a surprise; it\u2019s not particularly good.\u00a0 Most of the Mascot serials aren\u2019t particularly good.\u00a0 They\u2019re a lot of fun, full of action, and most of them don\u2019t make a lot of sense.\u00a0 This was where the conversation came in.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s known that King of the Kongo <\/em>was film was released in both silent and sound versions.\u00a0 I\u2019d seen another version of the serial on VHS tape, and it trumpeted the serial\u2019s theme song, \u201cLove Thoughts of You.\u201d\u00a0 My print didn\u2019t say this.\u00a0 With this missing, I simply assumed that I\u2019d gotten the silent print.<\/p>\n

Not so, said the gentleman speaking to me.\u00a0 How could I ignore the fact that there were long stretches of film that showed actors speaking\u2013without intertitles?\u00a0 The film didn\u2019t make any sense!\u00a0 I figured that the producer sent out the same print regardless of who ordered it, and if it was for a silent show, then he just didn\u2019t ship the sound discs.<\/p>\n

King of the Kongo <\/em>was produced as a sound-on-disc film, which meant that the sound had to be played back from a set of records that accompany the film.\u00a0 There are tons of these films that were made in the early sound era.\u00a0 The problem is that in order to see the films today, it\u2019s necessary to have a copy of both the picture and <\/em>the discs.\u00a0 By early 1931, all films went to the easier-to-use optical soundtracks that we still use today.\u00a0 (Well, they\u2019re similar… no hostile notes please.)<\/p>\n

The gentleman went on to tell me that he knew of collectors who had sound discs for King of the Kongo<\/em> and, to top it off, several people told me of the legend that \u201ca reclusive collector\u201d had the complete serial on film.<\/p>\n

That reclusive collector is yours truly.\u00a0 Many years ago, in 1989 to be exact, I bought a 16mm print of King of the Kongo <\/em>from a collector named JM Gillis.\u00a0 (I can use his name because he\u2019s deceased now.)\u00a0 He was liquidating a collection of films he\u2019d amassed since the 1950s.<\/p>\n

I wanted King of the Kongo <\/em>because it was historically important (it was the first sound serial), and because I love Boris Karloff.\u00a0 I bought it even knowing the print was silent.\u00a0 Other people wanted it, so it went for a premium.\u00a0 Even though it was licensed by a video company, I never made my money back on it; they didn\u2019t sell very many copies.\u00a0 No one was ever interested in putting it out on DVD, much less Blu-Ray.<\/p>\n

Gillis told me that he\u2019d had a guy make several 16mm reduction prints from 35mm back in the late 1950s. \u00a0 It was that song credit for \u201cLove Thoughts of You\u201d that kept bothering me. I wondered if the lab technician who\u2019d made Kongo<\/em> just snipped it out because he didn\u2019t have the discs.<\/p>\n

As I mulled it over, I wondered if the guy at the film convention had been right all along. I might have the sound version, but with the song credit removed.\u00a0 That would explain the long sections without dialogue.\u00a0 It would also explain why I was never able to make heads or tails of the plot.<\/p>\n

The idea occurred to me that it might be possible to test my theory by getting access to some of the extant sound discs.\u00a0 I contacted Ron Hutchison at The Vitaphone Project, which is dedicated to finding lost movie sound discs.\u00a0 It\u2019s named for the Vitaphone process that pioneered the successful sound-on-disc movies in the 1920s. Ron told me that he had material for 3 reels of King of the Kongo<\/em>.\u00a0 He was more than happy to make me CDs of them.<\/p>\n

The complete serial is 21 reels!\u00a0 He had only 3: Chapter 5, reel 1 and 2, and Chapter 6, reel 2.<\/p>\n

I went to the basement and grabbed the two chapters involved.\u00a0 I quickly transferred Chapter 5 to video and loaded it into my snazzy new computer.\u00a0 With a few minutes of work, I saw that I could roughly get a dialogue scene to work in the first reel.\u00a0 It was going to have to be done all by hand, not by calculation: my print had some splices in it, and was missing a few frames at the end each reel.\u00a0 The length of the soundtrack proved that the credit for \u201cLove Thoughts of You\u201d had indeed been chopped out.\u00a0 The sound was about fifteen seconds longer than the actual reel, just enough time for the missing title.<\/p>\n

The lab work on this particular chapter was pretty bad.\u00a0 It was dark and hard to see.\u00a0 I loaded it into a video enhancement program and corrected it the best I could.\u00a0 That way I could at least see the lip movements.\u00a0 I sent the audio to sound king Dave Wood; he scrubbed it and got it resynchronized until it looked OK.<\/p>\n

The results?\u00a0 Well, with about 15 hours of work, I have a complete, restored Chapter 5.\u00a0 The serial is not a great work of art, but it never was.\u00a0 The sound sequences give the story a lot more clarity!\u00a0 It appears that they had already finished the serial as a silent and then added one talking sequence in each reel.\u00a0 The rest is silent with the original 1929 score on the discs.<\/p>\n

I felt sorry for the actors.\u00a0 In the early days of talking films, the microphone was heavy and nailed down. Later on, as microphones got lighter, and mike booms were invented, the sound man could follow the actor.\u00a0 In Kongo, <\/em>the microphone is in one place and the actors have to dive for it to say their lines. Immediately, they must move away for the next poor guy.\u00a0 Quality acting is out the window.\u00a0 The idea is to get through the scene without having to stop and cut. Incidentally, Boris Karloff has no lines in the available sound footage, although he\u2019s highly visible in the rest of the chapter.<\/p>\n

And then the song.\u00a0 \u201cLove Thoughts of You?\u201d\u00a0 What <\/em>is this doing in here?\u00a0 It has no place in an action serial.\u00a0 The song is pleasant enough, sung by a typical 1920s tenor, but it clashes with the hard-edged African atmosphere of the rest of the film.\u00a0 It even distracts the cliffhangers.\u00a0 Typically, when the hero is in dire peril at the end of the chapter, the music swells dramatically and we cut to the \u201cDon\u2019t Miss the Next Chapter\u201d title card.\u00a0 Not here.\u00a0 As Walter Miller is charged by the baddies, the title fades up, accompanied by a bubbly instrumental of, yes, you guessed it, \u201cLove Thoughts of You.\u201d<\/p>\n

I have no idea if any archive has a better print of King of the Kongo<\/em>.\u00a0 I\u2019m certain that it\u2019s not high on anyone\u2019s restoration list.\u00a0 I doubt that my material is good enough to make a proper restoration on archival film.\u00a0 Next year, there may be a world premiere special showing of the complete chapter\u2013on video.\u00a0 And you can see two clips of the dialogue sequences here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

How\u2019s that for a so-called reclusive collector?\u00a0 That\u2019s a discussion for another day. Call me crazy… I think this material should be seen<\/em>!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I had an interesting conversation last year at a film convention.\u00a0 I had brought a chapter of King of the Kongo (1929), which didn\u2019t go over especially well.\u00a0 That\u2019s not a surprise; it\u2019s not particularly good.\u00a0 Most of the Mascot serials aren\u2019t particularly good.\u00a0 They\u2019re a lot of fun, full of action, and most of … Continue reading “Kongo Speaks! Karloff Clams Up!”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"powered_cache_disable_cache":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[207,4],"tags":[35,34,36,38,37],"class_list":["post-42","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film","category-views-and-reviews","tag-boris-karloff","tag-king-of-the-kongo","tag-restoration","tag-serial","tag-sound"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=42"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42\/revisions\/57"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}