Nitrateville Whiners: Kong and the Wax Museum

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Richard M Roberts
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Nitrateville Whiners: Kong and the Wax Museum

Postby Richard M Roberts » Fri Jul 12, 2013 9:59 pm

Well, I have been busy the last few weeks, so who’s had time to go take a look over there at Nutrateville, but, let’s face it, when one finally does have the time to take a gander, it’s beyond deadly dull over there these days.

But one can once more chuckle at the general jack-assery , particularly in two recent threads, one regarding the “botched job” on the transfer of MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM and the other on “gee, why can’t they give us more information on KING KONG when the terrific book on that subject came out more than thirty years ago “.

For one as old as I and a lot of us here, MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM was once a lost film, much talked about in the pages of FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND, and much sought after, but apparently after a post-war showing in London in 1946 and the destruction of the British nitrate print in 1954, the film was out of commission and the 2-color Technicolor neg disintegrated. Like LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT these days, WAX MUSEUM was talked up into classic status and the remake HOUSE OF WAX, reissued in all its original 3-D glory in the early 70’s decried as an inferior rehash.
Then a somewhat worn nitrate on WAX MUSEUM turned up in Jack Warner’s private vault, and much ballyhoo was made in its rediscovery until a showing of the print in Los Angeles elicted the usual response from hyped-up film-snobs over a film that couldn’t possibly live up to a now over-inflated reputation. The film cognoscenti labeled it a “disappointment”, and then the preservation done on the materials was done in a quick, cheap, down and dirty fashion. The first prints of MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM that came out of United Artists pre-1948 Warners TV package in the early 70’s were practically black and white for all intensive purposes, no effort was made to recreate anything like an original color scheme, and the new preservation materials done on good ol’ fading seventies Eastman, with the original film’s two-color trying to fill the new film-stock’s five.

Nevertheless, gradual television viewing restored the film’s original reputation among fans, but by then, the original nitrate print was no more, and any further attempts at color correction were going to have to be done on an artificial level. This has brought whole new levels of whining from film buffs when the digital transfer skewed blue for a film in which there was no natural blue to be found within it’s red and green spectrum. They point out the restoration of DOCTOR X getting it right and bang their widdle fists that WAX MUSEUM cannot be so preserved. Well, DOCTOR X fortunately did survive a bit longer in an original nitrate 35mm 2-color Technicolor print, beautifully preserved in the nick of time by UCLA, another of those prints the same fans whine about being “hoarded” by the Archives and never shown that, in fact, is out there for all to see and thank you UCLA for the hard work in making it possible. Unless another nitrate turns up on WAX MUSEUM, such grandness is beyond the reach of same preservation and restoration, and now most likely the previous “down and dirty” Eastman preservation is in need of restoration work itself.

Once again, this person old enough to remember not being able to see the film at all makes one want to tell these spoiled rotten brats to stuff it and be happy they have anything to see at all. The blue in the video transfers may be incorrect, but it is not that annoying, and certainly beats the very muted colors of the prints we first saw in the 70’s. Any color restoration will have to be done artificially with the surviving materials and most likely will earn more whines from someone no matter how it looks. Get over it and get on with your lives. Nobody seemed to whine when David Shepard put blue into his video transfer of THE BLACK PIRATE, and it definitely didn’t belong there either.

Similar high-pitched droning reached the thread on KING KONG, referring to George Turner’s great 1975 book THE MAKING OF KING KONG and another nameless one’s whinny of “Gee, even if that’s a great book, why can’t they do yet another book with more info and better quality pictures on KING KONG”. Ironically, the whiner was immediately directed to the Amazon site for the revised edition of the book put out by MIdnite Marquee a few years ago, apparently they now do not even bother to scan the net to see if they need to whine at all, but it was also fascinating to read the reviews of that revised edition where a number moaned that this revision was not what satisfied the screaming voices in their heads as to make them happy that someone bothered to take all of Turner’s further found information after his death and put it into some usable form to share with you all. Again, one must roll ones eyeballs at the level of stupidity that comes from a fandom group that cannot do, but has no problem playing wannabe critic of those that can and do, who can never be satisfied because they have no clue what it takes to do anything in the supplying of their ancient entertainments and historical information regarding thus.

Lessons never learned: It was just this sort of whining by the film buffs when they finally got their treasured MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM viewing that failed to give them their hyped-up orgasmic brainshot when they actually got the chance to see it that then gave them the cheaply preserved poorer print quality that the film now exists in today, giving current generations of film buff all the more excuse to be hyper-whiny about it. You reap what you sew, and damned well get what you deserve.

Ah well, it was nice and nostalgic to delve again among the lower levels of film fandom, but it is sure nice and civilized and intelligent over here.

RICHARD M ROBERTS

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