Alex Lella's Blog

My Favorite Old Movie

Now they want to know my favorite old movie.

That's another tough call, but I am going to pick the original version of King Kong.

When I was a boy, that movie used to be on every year on Thanksgiving. I don't know why, but that made it an important holiday tradition. Remember, this was back in the olden days when we didn't have these DVDs or even VCRs. Nope. So when it came to determining when we saw a given movie, we were at the mercy of the programming executives.

But I digress, King Kong was on every year on Thanksgiving afternoon. In fact, it was usually first in a marathon that included, Son of Kong and Mighty Joe Young. There was just something in that movie that I liked. You know, these days, they computer effects to make movie monsters look realistic, but there was something about the jerky movements of the model monsters which made them seem more "fantastic" to me. Anyway, every Thanksgiving, after the turkey, when we all feeling stuffed, my father and I would get comfortable on my grandmother's couch and watch those movies, and at the end, we might say the last line, "It was beauty that killed the beast" in unison with the television.

Some years ago, my father gave me the DVD of that movie as a Christmas present. It's one of my favorite possessions.