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The Silver Scream Spook Show returns to the Plaza Theatre with a cleverly timed flick: the original King Kong on Sat., Jan. 26. Just eight days after Cloverfield stormed into theaters to show a giant, uh, whatever it was destroy New York, King Kong shows how monsters were kicking it old-school in 1933 (and by “it” I mean “national monuments in Manhattan”). Peter Jackson’s recent remake is literally twice as long as the original film but, despite some cool set pieces (especially the giant bugs and nearly all of the last act in New York), it isn’t nearly as good. Even the dated quality of the special effects makes the film less realistic, but more dreamlike. This fan trailer edits clips from the original King Kong as if it were a preview you’d see today:

Incidentally, I’d name both King Kong and Cloverfield as two of the very best giant-monster movies of all time, along with:

The original Godzilla from 1954 (which has aged even more than King Kong, but has undeniable symbolic power);

Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park (which has its share of dumb moments, but the scariest cinematic dinosaur in film history);

South Korea’s The Host (for the way it turns monster conventions upside down, as well as the monster itself);

and an obscure Japanese film called Gamera 3: The Awakening of Iris. It’s the final film (so far) in a series of Godzilla knockoffs about a flaming, flying giant turtle called Gamera, which has a pretty infantile heritage — and yet, in the final film, combines an “X-Files”-worthy plot, harrowing footage of collateral damage and imaginative effects (even though it’s a guy in a suit) that portray Gamera along the lines of a Christian martyr. (Really!)

I must be forgetting some; something by stop-motion special-effects pioneer Ray Harryhausen definitely needs to be on my list, too, but I can’t decide which one.

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