The True Meaning of Thanksgiving: King Kong vs Godzilla
If you were a kid in the 70’s or 80’s living in the NJ/NY area, you know the true meaning of Thanksgiving. It wasn’t about family. It wasn’t about turkey. It was all about watching King Kong, Son of Kong, and Mighty Joe Young on WOR-9 NY, channel 9’s Holiday Movie Festival. Or the miscellaneous Godzilla movies they showed all weekend like King Kong vs Godzilla, Godzilla vs Megalon, and Godzilla vs the Smog Monster (Save the Earth! Man that was a catchy theme song.)
It also meant Crazy Eddie (His Prices are Insane!) commercials starring Crazy Eddie Dressed up in cheap King Kong and Godzilla costumes.
Those days are long gone now, but do yourself a favor and honor the true meaning of Thanksgiving this year by playing a couple of the old classics you grew up with. Most are available on DVD.
Here are a couple videos to get you in the mood.
More detailed info is available at these sites
I still shed a tiny little tear every time I see that T-Rex get all frothy and dead. Poor Crazy Eddie has been rotting in a Middle Eastern Prison for countless Thanksgivings. Thanksgiving is so sad 🙁
Thanksgiving is kind of sad. Like when son of Kong is holding that guy up and he drowns. Or when the stuffing comes out mushy and the turkey is dry.
This year it’s living kongs, t-rex and moist turkey for all!
Was that Turkey Comment aimed at me….LOL
You’re not a turkey are you????? Haha.
The original 1933 version of KING KONG still holds true to me as a personal viewing tradiiton every Thanksgiving because of my memories of the Channel 9 Thanksgiving monster festival when I was a kid. I consider as true a holiday classic as those who would consider MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET and IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE.
You’ll get no arguments here. The original King Kong is a holiday tradition.
Aw, thanks for this post! I’m glad I’m not the only one who thinks of Kong when they think of Thanksgiving. I grew up in Cleveland, OH, and they showed the original King Kong there in the late 70’s and early 80’s, too, so it wasn’t just NY and NJ!
Cool. Did they pipe WOR channel 9 up there or was it a different channel completely?
WOR 9 was a staple of early cable, Many cities across the US saw the King Kong Holiday movie festival on cable.
Good info. Thanks.
we used to get the same line up here on the west coast. did you also get ‘santa clause conquers the martians’ at christmas time?
(…since it was the 70’s i guess i mean “X-MAS”)
That may have been a west coast thing. I don’t remember seeing that one.
oh. but you did get that daffy duck cartoon where the turkey wants him to hide him from porky pig (or was it elmer fudd?) whose hunting for t.g. dinner? that was usually on before the movies and stuff. and they also had that tex avery cartoon that had the indian with the big droopy nose?
Not that I remember.
that jap kong looks so lame!
Thankgiving USED to mean hack TV and turkey when I was a kid.
Now it just means meth, masturbation and mac and cheese.
Last thanksgiving I drew a poster of dinosaurs and turkeys having sex with indians!!
I will never forget seeing the original King Kong for the first time on Thanksgiving in 1976. The annual rerun of the film proved to be a kind of behavioral conditioning for me – I played all the movies I used to associate with Thanksgiving last year and I’ll be damned if they didn’t make it feel more like the Thanksgivings of my childhood, without the interminable commercial breaks, which was a welcome change.
What I find amazing is how we watched the films on what looked like muddy, blurred TV screens, a far cry from the HD and DVD images we take for granted today. Even with my appreciation for King Kong as a groundbreaking, influential film, I still can view it for its pure entertainment value.
Other films I commonly associate with Thanksgiving viewing are March of the Wooden Soldiers, the original Last of the Mohicans, and an old anime flick, Alakazam The Great. Seeing these films only once a year made them special, as much a signal of the Christmas Season as any of the Christmas Specials that would air in the weeks ahead. This was well before home video and cable, so replaying films or rewinding was out of the question. I wonder sometimes if people didn’t have a pause or rewind button, would their memories and attention spans be better?
I highly recommend using your DVD player for a Thanksgiving movie festival, if only to see if you, too, were conditioned to associate your holiday frame of mind with what you watched on TV. Some may find it this association disconcerting, but I’m actually happy that some of what I remember from those times is readily available in a package of sorts, especially when one considers that many of the relatives and friends from Thanksgivings past are no longer with us.
Thanks A.C. It’s good to see there are people like you out there still. I should bust out the monster movies this month.