The History of Giant Monsters in Movies – Silent Film Era



The History of Giant monsters from the silent film era in the early 1900s to 1933

I was coming down with a cold while filming this and didn’t realize. Apologies for the extra nasally sounding voice.
The Conquest of the Pole 1912 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uf-A8Dymqvc

Passed Uncut Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@passeduncut1854/featured

Kong Unmade: https://www.amazon.com/KONG-UNMADE-ISLAND-REVISITED-1925-1960-ebook/dp/B09ZY1MGMZ/ref=sr_1_2?crid=2T93AZPZTBKI1&keywords=Kong+Unmade&qid=1674678826&sprefix=kong+unmad%2Caps%2C134&sr=8-2

The Lost World 1925: https://www.amazon.com/Lost-World-Deluxe-Blu-ray/dp/B071LTF6TN/ref=sr_1_2?crid=120NLAK99YK2Z&keywords=the+lost+world+1925+blu+ray&qid=1674678863&sprefix=The+Lost+World+1925%2Caps%2C136&sr=8-2

Art from Thumbnail :https://www.deviantart.com/christianwillett/art/Attack-of-the-Giant-Monsters-Color-840835247

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25 thoughts on “The History of Giant Monsters in Movies – Silent Film Era”

  1. I’m going to turn my 82 year old mom on to Godzilla while she recovers from her knee surgery. I need to pick three movies to show her, the first will be the original movie but I can’t decide on the other two but maybe the last one with King Kong. Any suggestions? She’s never seen not one. It was something I did with my dad. Any advice?❤😊

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  2. Way back in 2002, we started to make a stop-motion horror movie, which live-action scenes, in our basement. It was not finished. It won't be finished, at least not by us.

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  3. Just came across this video and subscribed. It's amazing to see just how many movie monsterscreatures there were before King Kong. Great job on the video – well researched and written. I'm looking forward to the next one!

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  4. Melies also had a film, Palace of the Arabian Knights, about a would-be prince and his warriors going into caverns to fight monsters, including skeletons, and one of them is a large dragon, so that might count, too.

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  5. I love the video and the subject . That being said , I don’t totally agree with critiquing the character of the filmmakers and whether or not they were racist and failed to act in the best of light. Bare in mind the time period . I won’t argue about Griffith , he was obvious. Doyle may have been progressive in thinking, but movies were still new overall and having his work actually adapted was probably so flattering that he most likely didn’t think of his principles at the time . Many authors might do it now , and fixing it is a good thing , but in the early days things were different.

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  6. The consensus is that The Lost World is pretty much complete now, with the latest restoration. Not such an unfortunate situation after all. Watching it now you’d never guess it was so butchered and partially lost for so long. Incredible job of restoration.

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  7. I hadn't known before seeing this about the controversy between Dawley and O'Brien. It's very interesting because there's things about O'Brien's career that make you wonder about him. His work was served well by a model maker like Marcel Delgado, and yet when O'Brien worked on his own (The Giant Behemoth, I believe, and the Black Scorpion) the model work was less impressive, and the creature in The Giant Behemoth looks like it's right out of the silent era. (O'Brien fared a bit better with Black Scorpion, I think, but it's said some of the models seen in the underground scenes were leftovers from Kong). He couldn't seem to get projects off the ground, and so only worked sporadically. Ray Harryhausen, for instance, supposedly animated most of Mighty Joe Young. O'Brien was clearly an inventive guy–his signature animation style (best seen in Kong) is wonderful and Kong is full of character and charm, and that's obviously due in large part to O'Brien's choices. And yet he seems not to have been able to parlay his success into a solid career. Was he difficult to work with, or was he just unable to convince people that his ideas were worthy of spending money on?

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