Log chasm
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The log chasm is a turning scene in the three King Kong films. It appears in the original 1933 film, the 1976 remake, and the 2005 remake. The majority of the characters meet King Kong himself for the first time in this scene, and the main rescue mission of Ann Darrow or Dwan ends here. Several of the supporting characters die. In the 1933 film, it leads to the lost spider sequence.
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[edit] What happens
[edit] 1933 film
Who's Involved:
- Jack Driscoll
- Carl Denham (indirectly)
- Jimmy
- Six sailors
The chasm is first introduced when we see Kong walking across the log carrying Ann Darrow. Meanwhile, Jack, Denham, Jimmy, and the rest of the surviving sailors are running pell-mell through the jungle following an encounter with a brontosaurus. Denham's shirt sleeve snags on a tree branch, but Jack and the seven others race across the log bridge. Kong, hearing them coming, sticks the unconscious Ann in the branches of a lightning-riven tree and doubles back to the chasm, roaring menacingly just as the eight men make it to the other side.
"Look out! Look out!" one sailor cries. Jack slides down a handy vine to the relative safety of a small cave several feet beneath the log, as the other men try to go back across. Before they can, however, Kong grabs his end of the log and lifts it up, causing one man to lose his balance and fall down into the chasm. Jack watches with horror as his body slams into the rocky ground below.
"Hang on, fellas!" another sailor yells as Kong then begins to rock the log back and forth, shaking all of the sailors loose until only Jimmy, Denham's bomb carrier, is left. Jimmy clings tenaciously to a nub of a branch sticking out the side of the log, and refuses to be shaken loose. Kong, infuriated, simply hurls the entire thing down into the chasm. Jimmy screams all the way down and is crushed when the log smashes into the bottom and cracks in half.
Kong then attempts unsuccessfully to get at Jack in his little cave, and is fended off by the first mate's knife. Jack is also briefly menaced by a giant lizard that crawls up on a vine from the chasm below (the only remnant of a deleted scene in which the sailors at the bottom were attacked by giant insects and reptiles). Jack disposes of the reptile by cutting the vine, dropping it back down into the chasm below. Kong then resumes his attempt to get at Jack, and the first mate is only saved when, nearby, Ann is menaced by a large meat-eater (either an allosaurus or a tyrannosaurus), and her screams cause Kong to forget about Jack and come racing to the rescue.
Jack then climbs up out of the chasm, and Denham, who had avoided the entire log-shaking sequence because he fell behind, appears on the other side. With no way for him to cross, Denham is told by Jack to return to the native village and tell Captain Englehorn what happened, while he continues after Kong. "And don't get yourself killed 'till you see Englehorn," Jack jokingly warns him. The two then go their separate ways.
The log chasm is mentioned a couple more times in the movie: first when Denham tells Englehorn of the incident ("Why, I tell you, he shook those men off that log like they were flies!"), and again when Denham briefly entertains the idea of re-bridging "that ravine" in order to send reinforcements to assist Jack.
[edit] 1976 film
Who's Involved:
- Jack Prescott
- Carnahan
- Joe Perko
- Boan
- Garcia
- Timmons
The lead-up to the log sequence is less frantic, here. Late in their mission to rescue Dwan, Jack Prescott, First Mate Carnahan, and four sailors (Joe Perko, Boan, Garcia, and Timmons) come upon the chasm bridged by the huge log. At Perko's suggestion, Jack crosses first, to see if it's safe. He makes it to the other side, then calls to the others: "All right, come on, it's solid as a rock!" "Okay, let's go," Carnahan says, starting across with the other four right behind him.
Suddenly, Kong appears, roaring down at the men. The sailors on the log panic and fire on him with their rifles, but all this accomplishes is angering Kong. As before, Jack slides down a vine and onto a ledge several feet down, as Kong, reaching the log, grabs it and begins to roll it back and forth. The men try to balance themselves, but Garcia falls off, plunging to his death in a river hundreds of feet below. Timmons hangs on to a nubby little branch, but loses his grip and drops, too. Perko tries to move his feet in time with the rolling of the log, like a lumberjack, but then he too falls.
Soon only Carnahan and Boan are left. Although Boan manages to leap to safety and grab ahold of some vines dangling from the cliff opposite Kong, Carnahan isn't so lucky. The first mate tries to stand and go back across but topples off, falling right past where Jack is crouching, horrified at the massacre. Noticing Jack, Kong tries to grab him, but only gets a handful of dirt and rocks as Jack manages to squeeze into a small crevice nearby. After failing to dig Jack out with his fingers, Kong roars menacingly, throws the entire log down into the chasm, and then leaves. We hear Dwan, offscreen, scream (which makes little sense, as scenes prior to this one showed her beginning to bond with Kong).
Noticing Boan climbing up on the opposite side of the chasm, Jack calls over: "Boan! Try to make it back! Tell Wilson I'm goin' on!" Because Boan wordlessly informs Wilson of the deaths of the other members of the search party (using a throat-cutting gesture when Wilson asks "Where are the others?"), the log chasm is never mentioned again, although Jack and Dwan, escaping while Kong battles a giant python, do come upon the chasm itself and jump off at a lower point and fall into the river below.
[edit] 2005 film
Who's Involved:
- Jack Driscoll
- Carl Denham
- Ben Hayes
- Preston
- Jimmy
- Lumpy
- Choy
- Three sailors
Only ten members of the search party trying to rescue Ann Darrow remain at this stage: Jack Driscoll, Carl Denham, Denham's assistant Preston, First Mate Ben Hayes, Jimmy, Lumpy the cook, Lumpy's friend Choy, and three other, unnamed sailors. A brontosaurus stampede, loss of heart, and an attack by a swamp monster (in the extended edition of the film) has reduced the group's original numbers.
Hayes takes the lead across the huge log that has fallen across a deep, narrow chasm. Hearing a noise coming from a cave ahead on the other side, he halts the group and tells them to run if anything happens. Jimmy refuses, saying, "I ain't afraid!" Hayes tells him, "It's not about being brave," and then crosses over by himself while the others remain on the log. He cautiously approaches the cave, tommygun at the ready, and then suddenly yells to the others, "Go back! Back across the log!" He turns and empties his machine gun into the cave, and then Kong bounds out, snatching the man up in one hand.
Jack is forced to restrain Jimmy as he tries to rush to Hayes' aid. Hayes tells Jimmy to run, and slowly cocks his pistol while telling Kong to look at him. His attempt to shoot the gorilla in the eye fails, and Kong violently casts him aside. Hayes' body sails over the heads of the men on the log, slams into the adjacent cliff wall, and then falls down into the chasm. Jimmy screams in anguish, and Jack and everyone else with a gun begins shooting at Kong, as Denham, sitting down, films the action with his movie camera. Enraged, Kong retaliates by hitting the log with his fist, causing one of the sailors to fall off. Kong then picks up his end of the log and begins violently shaking it, knocking loose a second sailor as the rest of the men cling for dear life.
Denham's camera is knocked from his hands, but saved from falling any further by a branch that is out of the director's reach. Lumpy fires at Kong defiantly with his tommygun. Choy slips, clinging to the side, and yells to Lumpy, "Lumpy, help me!" Seeing him, Lumpy cries, "Bloody hell! Choy!" and drops the gun, grabbing his hand. Preston also tries to reach for him, but can't quite make it. Lumpy is unable to hold onto Choy, and he falls down into the chasm. Kong now begins to roll the log along the cliff in an effort to shake loose the remaining men. But when they refuse to let go, he drops the entire thing down into the chasm.
It falls to the bottom. On the way down, Preston jumps off and grabs onto some hanging vines, and relative safety, but the others fall to the bottom with the log. These five survive the fall, and then the film cuts to a protracted sequence of Ann Darrow being menaced by several V-rexes and Kong's subsequent battle with them.
When we cut back to the chasm, everyone recovers from the log's plummet. Jack comforts Jimmy, who cries at the demise of Hayes (whose body lies nearby), while Lumpy grieves over the dead Choy. Denham, meanwhile, awakens to discover his camera has been smashed, the film ruined. Suddenly, all manner of gigantic insects and other vermin begin emerging from the dark recesses of the chasm and converging on the survivors, in a scene that is a tribute to the deleted sequence from the original film. Jack, Denham, and Jimmy are menaced by giant wetas, while Lumpy tries to defend Choy's body from being eaten by giant leeches. In doing so, he himself is killed and eaten. The one remaining unnamed sailor tries to climb out of the chasm, only to be grabbed and yanked into a crevice by a gigantic claw.
Jimmy finds a discarded tommygun and ammunition for it, and uses this to shoot several of the giant wetas off of Jack. Denham uses an empty rifle to fend off what appear to be giant mole crickets, as huge insects called arachno-claws toss the body of one of the sailors who died in the fall back and forth between themselves. Jimmy runs out of ammo, and he, Jack, and Denham huddle together as the insects close in, but suddenly gunfire from above catches their attention.
They look up to see Captain Englehorn and several crew members standing on the edge of the chasm, firing down upon the giant insects. Bruce Baxter, who had earlier desserted the search party, swings heroically down on a vine and kills more of the creatures with his tommygun. Later, everyone crawls out of the chasm. Englehorn, Baxter, and the others assist Denham, Preston, and Jimmy in climbing up their side, while Jack is seen climbing up on the side where Kong was, obviously intending to continue following the giant gorilla. Although the log chasm is never mentioned again in the film, it is while standing at its edge that Denham persuades Englehorn to try trapping Kong.
[edit] Trivia
According to the 1991 Monster Comics adaptation of the original film by Don Simpson, the name of the chasm is "Devil's Chasm," although this name does not appear in any of the other versions of the story. The log chasm appears at the tail end of issue two, Kong's Island, and in the first few pages of issue three, Death in Devil's Chasm!.
