Ken Hulsey over at Monster Island News reports that a rare print of the legendary King Kong was uncovered within the walls of Grosvenor Cinema during a restoration of the venerable London movie house.
| Quote: |
| During recent renovations to the Grosvenor Cinema, a worker named Ross McMillan was working on knocking down a partition wall in the projection room when he noticed something odd looking in the rubble. To his amazement he discovered that it was a copy of "King Kong." Not just any copy, mind you, a copy that has been missing from the vaults of RKO for more than seventy years. |
The most promising and perhaps most exciting bit of news was in the very next line.
| Quote: |
| An original print, that many[sic] very well contain scenes cut out of the film, including the long-lost Lizard and Spider canyon sequences. |
After the infamous scenes terrified the test-screening audiences, they were cut from the final release of the picture and are presumed lost. Only one still exists from that scene. Peter Jackson recreated the scene, using special effects and filming methods of the original 1933 feature, for the 2005 DVD release.
Only known surviving image from the Spider sequence
Though dubious, I hold out hope that the scene is indeed on that print. The stuff of countless Kong fans’ dreams!
(Thanks to Mark London Williams for the link.)