MEDFORD - King Kong lives.

The most famous of Hollywood's stop-motion film stars still moves -- one frame at a time -- in the basement of Eric Kessler.

Kessler uses a King Kong puppet to make videos of the legendary furry movie star.

"I just loved watching King Kong because he was the coolest monster," Kessler said. "I liked dinosaurs, but I loved it when King Kong broke T-Rex's jaw."

Back when the original King Kong movie was made 75 years ago, a stop-motion puppet was used for filming. That's just like Kessler does today at his Medford home.

"I like this stuff," Kessler said. "It has a certain charm to it."

Now, monster movies are mostly made through computer-generated imagery (CGI).

Kessler, however, feels too much CGI in a movie can look fake.

"I think it is overused," he said.

Kessler's videos of King Kong can be seen on YouTube.

"A couple of people have commissioned me to do some stop-motion for their films," Kessler said, "but I can't just leave and go to Hollywood."

Kessler is filming a prequel and a sequel to the original King Kong movie. He has the two scripts written and has filmed about 40 minutes so far.

"I wrote the scripts to follow the rules and the legend of King Kong," Kessler said.

"I hope to get Warner Brothers to see it," Kessler said. "I'd like someday to sell it to Warner Brothers, who has the rights to the 1933 King Kong movie look."

In addition to the original in 1933, two other Kong movies were made in 1976 and 2005.

Kessler attended the 75th anniversary showing of the original on March 2 in New York.

"Faye Wray's daughter was there," Kessler said about the original movie's starlet who caught King Kong's eye.

Kessler, 44, first saw the original King Kong when he was 4 years old.

"I liked monster movies and my cool Aunt Jane called and said to put on Channel 17, and on the Wee Willie Webber show was the King Kong log scene, which is one of the iconic scenes.

Always on

"From that day on, I would look in TV Guide for when King Kong was on. It was always on Channel 9, WOR-TV out of New York, so my dad put up an antenna so I could watch," Kessler, who grew up in Marlton, said.

"And King Kong used to be on every Thanksgiving. I had to watch it and my uncles wanted to watch football," Kessler said about the time spent before eating his mother, Ginny's, holiday dinner.

Kessler comes from a great sports family. His father, Joe Sr., was a longtime parks and recreation director in Marlton. His brother Joe is the highly regarded boys' basketball coach at Shawnee High School.

Kessler, who was a three-sport standout at Cherokee High School in the early 1980s, and his brother, Kirk, have run the popular JKMBA basketball leagues and AAU programs out of Marlton for the last nine years.

Kessler has estimated he has seen the movie more than 1,000 times -- thanks to VHS and DVD -- as he is always trying to learn more about how the movie was made.

Kessler said he turns on the DVD of the movie every so often just so he can "figure out how to do scenes."

"All the people I know through the movie say I know the movie better than anyone," Kessler said.

Popular

Kessler started making his own movies about two years ago. He now has five two-minute videos on YouTube. A couple of the videos have received more than 60,000 hits.

Each video takes about two months to make. Kessler will draw up a storyboard for the video, sometimes on a napkin. He will take shots and then edit background into the video and add music and, of course, the famous sounds of Kong.

"King Kong wasn't just a gorilla, he was a monster," Kessler said. "He was a gorilla-like creature."

Kessler has two 18-inch King Kong puppets and a smaller one. The 18-inch puppet is the exact dimensions of the original King Kong puppet.

"I have met Bob Burns, who has the original metal armature, so I was able to get the measurements," Kessler said.

For the sets, Kessler will buy trees from hobby shops.

"There is a lot of good stuff you can get from fish tanks," he said. "I found they look good on film."

Kessler also buys little plastic army men to use in his movies. He alters them a bit, however, to make them look real in action shots.

"I cut out their joints if they are not poseable and put wire in there and close it up so they can move," Kessler said.

Tedious

Kessler shoots 30 frames to make one second of video. He will move an arm or a leg -- or both -- 1/16th of an inch and take a still photo.

"You don't want to move too much, you want to make sure it all looks good on the screen," Kessler said. "If you do move too much, you have to retake the shot."

Before each shot, he will smooth the rabbit hair of the Kong puppet so a touch can't be detected, or as the perfection-seeking Kessler feels, less detected. He will move T-Rex's eye with a needle before each shot.

Kessler has a blue screen in the background of his basement. By using the blue screen, he can take jungle scenes from movies and use them in the background of his shots. The blue screen is surrounded by bright work lights.

"You don't want to have shadows," Kessler said.

Kessler uses some sounds off the Internet.

No detail is too small.

And all this knowledge didn't come from a book.

"Trial and error, most of it, Web sites have helped, too," he said. "I have so many things that I did wrong -- you will never see them on YouTube."

Kessler had to get started somewhere.

"More people became a director in Hollywood because of the King Kong movie," Kessler said.

Maybe Kessler will become another one. He is already keeping King Kong alive.

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