Primate Profile: Wild Willie
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The Wild Willie primate profile is the 78th episode of Wikizilla's Kaiju Profiles video series. It was uploaded on April 1, 2024.
Video
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Transcript
Hey kaiju fans, I’m The Boy Who Cried Godzilla, and I’ve got a Kaiju Profile for you about a lanky, ill-tempered primate with a link to King Kong… Wild Willie!
Wild Willie, the Missing Link
Aliases: The Baboon, Monkey
Height: Approximately human-sized
Weight: No data
Wild Willie features in the silent 1915 stop-motion short The Dinosaur and the Missing Link: A Prehistoric Tragedy. This was the first film ever made by Willis O’Brien, who would go on to lend his stop-motion prowess to the likes of The Lost World, King Kong, Son of Kong, Mighty Joe Young, The Black Scorpion, and The Giant Behemoth. The animation in The Dinosaur and the Missing Link is much cruder, but the creatures in it set the tone for the rest of O’Brien’s career. Described by an intertitle as the “terror of the countryside,” Wild Willie is technically an antagonist, although the poor guy proves to be more of a danger to himself than others.
Design
In 1914, Willis O’Brien was working in a marble shop and, during what must have been an especially slow day, dueled his coworker Stenberg with boxers made of clay. He soon hit upon the idea that he could make the models appear to move on film by photographing them one frame at a time and adjusting them slightly between each shot, inspired by what he had read about the production of animated cartoons. His test footage, drawing upon his long obsession with prehistoric creatures, persuaded San Francisco-based exhibitor and producer Herman Wobber to hand him $5,000 to film a short. The characters in “The Dinosaur and the Missing Link: A Prehistoric Tragedy“ sported metal ball-and-socket skeletons and sections of rubber for skin, their joints sealed with a latex solution. Wild Willie was also covered in rabbit fur. Presumably, O’Brien named the character after himself. He worked on the short for two months, and a year after it slayed with a test audience, Conquest Pictures, a family-friendly film unit of Thomas A. Edison, Inc., distributed it across the country to great success. By then O’Brien already had another caveman comedy, Birth of a Flivver, ready to go, and he would animate fervently for Edison until he fell victim to downsizing at the end of 1917. Hardly discouraged, his ambitions only grew—he wanted dinosaurs as the stars of his films, not just supporting players, and for them to share the frame with real actors. It’s not an exaggeration to say those ambitions would change the field of special effects forever.
History
The Dinosaur and the Missing Link: A Prehistoric Tragedy (1915): Wild Willie watched a group of cavepeople from a tree and descended to raid their food stores when they all went inside. Mr. Rockface tasked the Duke, Stonejaw Steve, and Theophilus Ivoryhead—who were all competing for the affections of his daughter Araminta—with killing something new for dinner. Theophilus, the smallest of the three, had the unglamorous assignment of catching fish. Meanwhile, Wild Willie journeyed to a stream to grab a few snakes to eat. He somehow mistook the tail of a sauropod for a large snake, angering the dinosaur when he bit the tip of the tail and bashed it with a rock. After noticing the rest of the sauropod, he threw the rock at its side and climbed onto its back to fight it. He landed a few punches, but the sauropod soon scored a fatal blow. Theophilus, a witness to the battle, confirmed his death, then boasted that he had effortlessly killed the Missing Link himself, winning Araminta’s heart.
Abilities
Physical abilities: Wild Willie was skilled at climbing both trees and sauropods, also jumping over three swings of the latter’s tail. He was a tool user, employing a boulder against the sauropod, and followed up the throw with bites and punches.
Intelligence: While clever enough to avoid a direct confrontation with the cavepeople when he raided their camp for food, Wild Willie later became a victim of tunnel vision. He was so focused on catching those succulent snakes that he failed to notice his quarry was part of a massive sauropod. Rather than retreat in the face of the larger animal, he pressed his attack… with predictable results.
Durability: The fight between Wild Willie and the sauropod isn’t shown in its entirety, but the dinosaur apparently killed him simply by throwing him to the ground, where he cracked his head on a rock. Godzilla must have been taking notes.
Trivia
Izzat a monkey? A shot list for “The Dinosaur and the Missing Link“ submitted to the U.S. Copyright Office on March 28, 1917, simply called Willie a monkey, while his sauropod killer was deemed an alligator. For anyone curious, this thing is apparently an ostrich. Conquest Pictures re-released the film later in 1917 as “The Dinosaur and the Baboon,” giving Willie yet another moniker.
Willis O’Brien described Wild Willie as the ancestor of his most famous creation, King Kong. They’re both primates who menace humans, brawl with dinosaurs, are killed by a fall, and owed the fur on their real-life bodies to rabbits. Kong also copies the pose struck by Theophilus when he stands over Wild Willie’s corpse, itself inspired by O’Brien’s stint as a boxer. Theophilus himself is sort of a Stone Age Carl Denham, a fast talker who exploits a simian to advance his station. So though we’re told the Missing Link is a public menace before we even meet him, and he does nothing to prove otherwise, it’s hard not to feel sorry for him. I’ve been The Boy Who Cried Godzilla, and I thank you for watching.
