by Enigmatic-Ocean Sun Dec 21 2014

Does anyone have any recordings of King Kong, Son of Kong, Mighty Joe Young or the following days Godzilla marathon? I have a recording of King Kong from 1981 that is complete with commercials and I am looking for old VHS copies (with commercials)of the aforementioned movies to watch on Thanksgiving. Anyone?

Responses

by bridget-801-701890 Mon Apr 13 2015

I used to love watching these on Thanksgiving morning! When the commercials came on, I'd switch to the parade.

by Enigmatic-Ocean Tue Nov 24 2015

Yeah, me too. I have a few parades from that era that I transferred from VHS to DVD. I am always on the look out for more old video footage from back then. Everything is so dreary now. So, watching things like that brings me back to a more simple (and arguably) better time.

by GSPdude Tue Dec 29 2015

Channel 9's Gorilla-thon was the best thing about my young Thanksgivings.

by Taylorfirst1 Sun Apr 3 2016

To this day I watch my DVDs of these movies on Thanksgiving because of WOR.

by RustyShackleworth Fri Oct 21 2016

Thank you for posting this. I was going to start a thread about it.

I grew up in NY and among my strongest memories of Thanksgiving are those of watching the King Kong films on TV. I never understand why they did this. Was there a specific reason? Could never figure out the relationship between King Kong and Thanksgiving.

by Enigmatic-Ocean Fri Oct 21 2016

They stopped showing the marathons mostly because of rights issues. Ted Turner bought the rights King Kong, Son Of Kong and Mighty Joe Young. So, starting in the late 80s those movies were only shown on Turner Network Television. I am not sure who bought the rights to air all of the Godzilla movies, but around the same time that WOR lost the King movies they lost the rights to air the Godzilla series too. It really is a shame as it was truly the end of an era. Network television is just dreadful these days. If you turn on any of the major stations during Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter or any other holiday they just air their usual everyday crap. It's like all of those major holidays are just regular days to the dumbasses who pick what programs to air. It's just so sad. I am glad I grew up when I did. These days everything is so bleak and depressing. Anyway, I hope I answered your question.

by RustyShackleworth Sun Oct 23 2016

Thank you for the response. That explains a lot why it stopped. I just never how or why it started in the first place. Thanksgiving and King Kong?

You're right about TV these days. I don't know if you are from the NYC area but back in the late 70s, early 80s, WOR-9 and WPIX-11 were great stations. They were almost always airing something interesting, especially on weekends.

by Enigmatic-Ocean Mon Oct 24 2016

I do know a little bit about how the marathons started. Someone at WOR figured that they would air King Kong and Mighty Joe Young On Thanksgiving. What they didn't figure is that it would garner big ratings. So, they added Son of King to the mix. After a couple of years someone figured why don't we just make the marathon into a two day event and air a bunch of Godzilla flicks on the second day. So, it seems (to me at least) that it was a pretty organic process.

Yeah, I am from the New York area (I grew up on Long Island in Suffolk county). Pretty much everyone that I knew watched these marathons in the tri-state area. No matter who's house I was at on Thanksgiving there were monster movies playing. Back in those days it seems like there was a MUCH larger effort put into making programing fun for the entire family. I have so many memories of my family and friends making a big bowl of pop corn, gathering in our living room around our little Hitachi television to watch whatever the movie of the week was. Those days vanished a long time ago. It doesn't seem like any families do that type of thing anymore. And if they do they can do it at their own leisure and as a result the sense of community that we had back in the 70s and 80s is completely lost. It was so great to go into school, church, store or anywhere really and run into someone and start talking about what you watched on television the night before and it almost always turned out that they watched it too (the original Salem's Lot was one of those movies).

Sorry, I don't mean to be a downer :/ It's just that I am of the opinion that we lost something with all these modern gadgets and gizmos. I know that the time that I am referring to is gone forever and it cannot come back, but if I could I would trade now for then in a heartbeat. In my opinion it was just a time.