ABSTRACT
Collectively, George Simpson’s laser disc review columns make up a rare artifact, a critical study of movie sound for home entertainment in this period. Murray Spivack felt that he could not draw from a pre-existing library in creating his monster voices. So, for Kong’s roars, he went to the lions’ section of a zoo and recorded the big cats at feeding time. Then he reversed the roars, slowed them down an octave and re-recorded them. To manufacture each sync roar needed for the film, he cut together several of these effects with a start and a tail. Movies have always performed best in a crowded theater with a participating audience, each individual responding to the emotions generated by the film and flowing around her or him. Except in early kinetoscopes, film watching was never meant to be a passive experience, personified by a lonely soul blinking at shadows in a darkened room.
