King Klunk

King Klunk (1933)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

This pleasant Universal cartoon has been forgotten over the decades but it's in fact the first film to spoof RKO's KING KONG so that reason alone gives it some historic importance. In the film, Pooch the Pup takes his girlfriend to the Africa so that they can make a movie about a giant ape. They find the ape, return it to the U.S. and of course it breaks free and steals the girlfriend. The plot to this 9-minute short pretty much follows all the major points in KING KONG and I'm rather surprised how obvious it was as I'm sure there was some sort of legal matter that the studio could have done. With that said, fans of the giant ape will certainly want to check this out just to see how well it does spoof the film. I thought the stuff dealing with the fight between the ape and a dinosaur in the jungle was extremely well done and I won't ruin the ending but the final shot of the ape was perfect. The thing that keeps this short from being a classic is the Pooch character and the fact that he's just not that memorable or funny. There were several attempts at humor but most of them fell flat on their face. Some will probably find some of the humor around the jungle people to be offensive as it's the (for the time) typical black characters and their stereotypes.

King Klunk. You heard about it. You read about it (specifically in monster books that talk about anything related to the Eighth Wonder of the World). Now finally you have an opportunity to see it! It is either available on disc one of the "Woody Woodpecker Classic Cartoon Collection" DVD set or on YouTube. It starts off when Pooch the Pup, who looks like a combination between Bimbo from those Betty Boop cartoons and Mickey Mouse, takes his unnamed girl-friend down to the jungle to film the title beast. However, after the Klunk is munching on a sacrifice, he finds Pooch's girl-friend and with the help of cupid arrow, he falls in love with her. Meanwhile Pooch is trying to avoid the victim of sacrifice that the giant ape rejected and before you know it, the majority of the film is spoofing the original 1933 RKO classic, from the battle with the Tyrannosaurus Rex to the attack at New York where he climbs the tallest building (called The Broken Arms). Walter Lantz cooks up the film with his creative humor such as inanimate objects that have minds of their own (like the movie camera, the cactus and the airplane), the 6 7/8 gag (which appears in later cartoon as 1951's "slingshot 6 7/8" and those Inspector Willouby cartoons where his badge reads 'Inspector 6 7/8') and the most original gag in this cartoon, the drum-chest gag. On another note, the monster's size keeps changing. One scene he is as big as the gate, then he is as big as the sea. In another scene his head and shoulders are sticking out of the water while his feet is at the bottom. For the city scene, the gorilla's height is as big as the stage and then in the next scene he is holding the entire building above his head (must be "the think strong to be strong" technique which appeared in later cartoons). When he's chasing the people, the buildings are up to his legs and the panicking crowd are like ants. When he is holding Pooch's girl friend, the buildings are about his size, especially before he climbs up the building. This cartoon only aired on TV in the 1950's, but it never aired in the "Woody Woodpecker Show" (1988-1994). Why?! What's the matter? Is it because of the portrayal of the natives in this short are too racist? Is it because you are afraid of showing you early pre-Woody works from the 20's and 30's in fear that people will find them too boring? It worked on shows like "Donald Duck Presents", "Looney Tunes on Nickelodeon" and "The Popeye Show". Why can't you show it to the new generation of audiences, because black and white cartoons fascinated my brother and I when we were kids! Or is because you want nothing but Woody Woody Woody, so you can create a new generation of trouble makers to drive people of all ages bananas! Rant aside, this film should of been a short subject to the unmade Universal film, "The Legend of King Kong" (if Universal only bought the rights of original) or Peter Jackson's remake. Before I end this review, I would like to say that I uploaded for various reasons: 1. Because that DVD set is too expensive and I don't have any equipment to capture DVD footage to the computer. 2. I found a link to download it. 3. I stopped liking Woody Woodpecker when I was 10 because he was too mischievous. He caused nothing but trouble, drove people up the wall and gave maturity and growing up a bad name! Like "Hook Line and Stinker" (1969), where he was fishing and drove the guy next to him bananas and at the end, he was sobbing because he wanted some peace and quiet. Shame on you Woody! You make Popeye look like and angel!

Bottom line: A must for anyone who is fan of (old) cartoons and monster movie fans (like me).

No Motion Picture Association of America rating, but a G rating would work well (if it was re-released in 2005).

Woody Woodpecker creator Walter Lantz was quick off the mark with this animated parody of King Kong, which came out in 1933, the very same year as the classic monster movie; but perhaps he should have taken a little more time, because in his rush he forgot to include any decent gags or memorable characters.

Giant amorous ape aside, the main character is Pooch, a generic 1930s animated animal (dog?) vaguely reminiscent of Betty Boop's pal Bimbo. Then again, he's a bit like Mickey Mouse. Or Felix the Cat. When his equally generic girlfriend is abducted by King Klunk, Pooch sets off in hot pursuit to rescue her.

Technically and stylistically, this early cartoon is fairly typical of the era, with repetitive use of looped frames to extend the action, random inanimate objects coming to life, and politically incorrect depictions of natives, but with humour that is as prehistoric as the titular ape's home it will probably be of little interest to anyone but animation historians or avid fans of King Kong who feel the need to watch anything remotely related to the film.

While back issues of Mad Magazine afford us the opportunity to study contemporary movie parodies since the 1950s, KING KLUNK, produced by the Walter Lantz animation unit at Universal Pictures, gives us a rare opportunity to see what happens when a famous monster film from 1933, KING KONG, is parodied in a nine-minute cartoon the same year. The hero here is Pooch the Pup, billed prominently in the credits, a dog character apparently modeled on Bimbo from the Betty Boop cartoons. He plays a filmmaker who journeys to the island of King Klunk with his unnamed light-colored female dog girlfriend. He takes with him a camera fastened to a tripod, which, in the fashion of cartoons of the era, walks on its own through the jungle.

The natives on the island are portrayed in the typically stereotyped big-lipped fashion of cartoon "cannibals" in the 1930s. However, this cartoon does something really interesting in the midst of the racial stereotyping. You may recall that in KING KONG, the island natives had picked a girl from their village to be sacrificed to Kong, but once they spot blonde Fay Wray they completely forget about the native girl, who's never seen or heard from again in the film. Well, this cartoon doesn't forget her. When giant gorilla King Klunk spots Pooch's girlfriend, he decides he'd rather have her than the native sacrifice, so he deftly picks up the girlfriend as she's walking behind Pooch and replaces her with the native girl, all without alerting Pooch who then takes the native girl's hand. When Pooch turns and sees her and reacts with shock, the native girl declares "Goona," presumably the word in her language for love, and begins chasing Pooch with great ardor.

The action quickly shifts to the pursuit of Klunk and Pooch's girl and includes a fight between Klunk and a dinosaur, as in the original, and an encounter between Klunk and a dinosaur egg, followed quickly by a voyage to New York, Klunk in chains on a Broadway stage, and Klunk's rampage through the city. (Just as Kong indiscriminately chomped on New Yorkers or dropped them to their deaths on the street below, Klunk picks up handfuls of fleeing pedestrians and tosses them off to the side.) Klunk takes Pooch's girlfriend again and climbs with her to the top of a building identified only as the "Broken Arms." Pooch takes to the air in a plane and combats Klunk singlehanded.

In the final shot, the native girl makes a surprise return appearance with a gag bit that clearly broke a prevailing racial taboo of the era. It's quite a clever and subversive bombshell dropped into a deft satire.

Klunk himself is, for the most part, a growling, drooling, fanged gorilla monster and, despite being hit with a native Cupid's arrow, is never quite convincing as the lovestruck ape Kong was in the live-action film. The match with the dinosaur is fun, though, with Pooch providing blow-by-blow commentary. This cartoon is found in the "Woody Woodpecker and Friends Classic Cartoon Collection" DVD box set.

SUCCESS IN ANY field spawns both imitation and parody. It has long been said that: "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery." If this is so (and we're sure it is)then the spoof, the send-up and that old standby, parody should rank right up there also. (And don't forget Lampoon, either!)

THIS 1933 CARTOON short does a credible job in recreating in cartoon world similar settings that mimic Skull Island of KING KONG fame. The cartoon opens up with Pooch the Pup and his female companion already having arrived on their version of that mysterious island far southwest of Borneo, New Guinea, Java, Sumatra and Australia. They arrive during the sacrificial rite that offers up a female native to the giant godlike ape.

THROUGH SOME ERROR, Pooch's lady friend get's switched and is taken by the super simian, who apparently would actually have eaten her as a tiny morsel of his dinner. Cupid appears and does his bit with bow and does his thing; which renders the big ape helpless. (This in a direct spoof of the quotation in the opening credits and prelude to the KING KONG story of" ".......and he (the Beast) was as one dead."

AFTER THE INTRODUCTION of an all-purpose dinosaur from either the Jurassic or Cretaceous periods and their version of the Kong vs. Tyrannosaurus bout, a brief tip of the hat to MGM's TARZAN THE APEMAN, the capture of the ape sees his sight gag ridden trip to the big exposition of "Klunk" in NYC. His eventual escape and final fate is sealed with his tumbling off the skyscraper and his crashing and burning!!

WE CAN SUPPOSE that this was a very amusing to audiences of the day. We did our best to look at it both analytically, as well as objectively. Having done so, we can only suppose that it produced about a 5 or 6 on the old Laugh Meter. Like any theatrically released picture, its appeal and enjoyment factor would rise when viewed as a part of a live, red-blooded and breathing audience.

ONE ELEMENT THAT jumps out of the screen at a viewer in this 21st Century is the casual use of racial stereotypes concerning the native (indigenous, aboriginal peoples). Their character design was that of those being derivative of the Minstrel Show.

WE HAVE JUST only today heard of this title and screened it for the first time. It is one in a series of POOCH THE PUP Cartoons produced for Universal Pictures by Walter Lantz. This predated his successes with ANDY PANDA, WOODY WOODPECKER, WALLY WALRUS, CHILLY WILLY and others.