creature from the teal lagoon

If it wasn't as lazy as Turner's Kong it might look good. Colorization just hasn't been there as an option because the colors always sucked. I'm sure nowadays they could use colors that were true to form. I think certain fifties sci fi movies might be cool, just as a DVD feature or something. Only showing colorized things or colorizing everything is of course stupid. If somebody colorized Vampyr or Eyes Without a Face for example, it would suck, but color was often not used because it wasn't an option budgetwise instead of for artistic reasons. I'm sure a lot of directors who couldn't afford color film would be thrilled to see what their movies would have looked like if they had the means. The colorized It Came From Beneath the Sea looks awesome and Harryhausen was glad to see it.

Perhaps we should go back and colorize the paintings from Picasso's blue period, because- you know- he didn't have the budget to paint with more colors...

Good point. I'm not suggesting it as a default, but as an exploration and I certainly wouldn't want it to be with Ted Turner's pallet. I don't want a chatreuse Godzilla or a magenta colossal man any more than you do, my friend.

I was trying to think of a way to word it, and I was drawing a blank.

My point exactly.

The films would lose something. Not just in quality, but in the atmosphere. When it's in black and white, it leaves a lot to your imagination. If it's colored in, you suddenly realize, that maybe it wasn't as fantastic and magical as it was before.

Not to mention, the dark, black and white, is what gave these movies their original feeling. The unknown.

but lots of early films (silent) were color- they hand painted the frames

I have said this before, elsewhere--I like the colorized King Kong a lot--it could be done better, nowadays, but I don't disagree with most of the color choices, overall, I think they work.

And definitely, the added color adds demarcation to the different elements of the scenes--the dirt, the trees, the vines, Kong, humans. humans' clothing, and so on. Totally aside from the color choices themselves, these demarcations allow the brain to "decode" the elements of the scenes more easily than is possible if the image is all in gray scale. This in turn allows the viewer to appreciate a lot of details that are simply muddy shadows in black and white.

In the case of King Kong, which is a pioneering effects film that offered up loads of carefully composed scenes featuring multiple layers of elements (humans, sets, puppets, glass paintings, miniatures, etc.), colorization allows the viewer a different avenue of appreciating and analyzing the shots and their artistry.

It doesn't replace the black and white (original) version; it would not presume to. But interested parties with an open mind should go to Amazon.com, search on "king kong in color," and check out a VHS tape. I love the damn colorized version of King Kong. I watch it as often as the original version.

Try it! Then knock it if you must.

The colourised Frankenstein looked horrible. The monster way way too... green. Just looked stupid. Corpses are not lime green. Unless it is a martian's corpse I guess.

But it wasn't. He was human! Dumb fucks!

Corpses ARE lime green. ALL of them! Every single freaking one of them! Except the ones that are neon green.

Corpses of dead limes perhaps :)