King Kong (1933)

     "Beauty and the beast."

King Kong (1933) is a highly influential RKO Adventure/Monster movie which combined live action, stop-motion and models.

Filmmaker Carl Denham travels to a remote, uncharted island in search of his next film subject, a legendary creature known only as "Kong." On this Island, Denham finds more than he could have ever imagined and makes a risky choice to take Kong back to New York in hopes of earning a fortune.

[Note: this review is referencing the original completely uncut version, running approximately 100 minutes.]

This film's really brutal action sequences really do a lot to enhance the danger and drama of the otherwise mindless action scenes, (like the excessive amount dinosaur attack sequences!) This film really doesn't hold back: there's vicious dinosaurs attacking a man in a tree, men crushed to death after battling Kong and even Kong beating a T-rex by breaking it's jaw, (then continuing to play with it after its dead!) These sequences make you really feel like the main characters may not make it out of this which is truthfully something lost on the comparatively "mild" action films of today.

I didn't care too much for the designs of most of the creatures in this film. I just felt like they were all a little dated and most looked fake by today's standards. And apparently a lot of the dinosaurs were recycled from earlier stop-motion films for years before, which might show. However, the wonderful animation and acting of said creatures by the early stop-motion guru Willis H. O'Brien is so good that it often helps to "sell" what is happening far better than the actual creature designs.

Also the score brings a lot of excitement and helps put you on edge during various sequences here, I've heard a lot of Max Steiner's classic scores and when you put this one up against them, it really shows the range the guy had. This score may not be as memorable or "classic" as Casablanca's (1942) or Gone With The Wind's (1939) scores but it really shows the skill of the guy, and it fits this movie quite well too.

I enjoyed the film's morals relating this fairy tale to that of Beauty and the Beast, however the film tries to hammer this home a couple too many times for modern audiences. With a little more subtlety it would have been really magnificent.

The writing in the film is mostly decent/passable with the exception of being overall sexist. Granted this is a product of its time but characters don't even bat an eye at talks of trading women, there's chauvinist characters who outright and openly hate women which is well... just kind of awkward.

The bad writing is only further enhanced by some really bad acting our romantic leads are really pretty awful. Early starlet Fay Wray is an absolutely terrible actress (with a great scream though, so maybe that's why she was cast?) Her rushed romance with (not much better at acting) chauvinist sailor Driscoll, played by Bruce Cabot, is barely watchable on mute. But with such great lines like, "Say, I guess... I love you" I wonder how much was really their fault in the end. And the romance really isn't the focus for most of this film (they prefer to focus on the titular character most of the time) so once you get past a certain point, you forget the human characters are there for most of the film.

There's also some bad science here and there like man-eating herbivore dinosaurs. And some leaps of faith like the fact they were able to keep Kong under-wrap, and under some form of continual sedation for 6 months until the end of the film. and when Kong finds Anne at the end of the film among a whole building/skyscraper of people in only the second window he looks into, what a lucky ape! These all kind of seem like just carelessly lazy writing/direction. But as my friend pointed out it's a movie about an island where giant apes (who eat humans) and dinosaurs still live so who really cares anyways.

And lastly for my taste (and I'd assume most modern audiences) the mindless dinosaur/monster fights go on a bit too long, it's actually surprising to learn that a bunch more actually got cut before the initial release even! I would have just appreciated a little more substance during these sequences.

The film has a great "modern" action pace that seems unique for such an early film, even more so considering Kong isn't even seen until about 45 mins into the film!

Most of the special effects and stop motion action borders between amazing and good! There are some exceptions here and there, but when you consider that nearly all of these shots is comprised of stuff I can do in my living room (with modern technology) the shots are set up in a way that they are well thought out and have great staging to show scale and depth in a shot. It's actually so effective that sometimes its hard for me to even tell whats plastic, whats a painting and what is real life in some shots! This is especially true in the city sequences where there's a lot of masterful cuts between stock shots of real cities, studio shots and models, all done with great calculation and superb planning.

King Kong (1933) is one of those films you watch and its easy to forget how long ago it was made, highly influential still to this day and yet very modern feeling. It's actually surprising people keep attempting to remake it.

4/5 Stars.

Happy watching!


This is the precursor to my next few posts which will be tackling the early Toho Studios' Godzilla and Kaiju films in anticipation of the newest Godzilla (2014) movie. Check back next time for the original Japanese kaiju film, Gojira (1954).

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