King Kong Year: 1933 Director: Merion C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack Written by: James A. Creelman, Ruth Rose Threat: Giant Ape Weapon of Choice: Gas Bomb Based upon: none IMDb page:

Other movies in this series:
Son of Kong

The tyranist's thoughts
Growing up, we all knew who Kong was. He was as much a part of the landscape of my childhood as Godzilla, Robin Hood, and the pantheon of Grimm's fairy tales. I didn't see King Kong until I was in college, but even so, he was alive for me for most of my life. When Rish and I finally saw Kong, huddled around an old television, eating pizza and tuned in to a rival college's PBS station, it was magic.
Carl Denham is trying to make a little adventure movie. He's rounded up one actress, the lovely Ann Darrow, and a ship full of misfits and pointed them in the direction of the undiscovered Skull Island. They arrive, the natives sacrifice Ann to the local beast-god, and the grand adventure begins.
I love this movie. The wonder, the innocence, the adventure, the horror. It has it all. What they accomplished with the character of King Kong wasn't matched for decades afterward. He is still the ideal for stop-motion characters. If you can make something as clearly alive as Kong was you've accomplished everything you needed to.
In fact, as much as I think Fay Wray is beautiful, Bruce Cabot appropriately rugged, and Robert Armstrong conniving, it isn't the human actors that make this movie what it is at all. They could all have been background. Only Ann Darrow gets the kind of attention on screen that her ape counterpart gets.
The romance is beautiful, the setting exotic, the creatures magnificent, and the action virtually non-stop. This one deserves to be seen and beloved.
Posted: December 27, 2005

Rish's Reviews
Guess I waited long enough to review this one. I had a short workday today, so I went to see the Peter Jackson King Kong a second time, and as soon as I got home, I watched this one again.
I really enjoyed this film. It was exciting, amusing, and most of all, a lot of fun. I imagine it was the Star Wars of its day. Kong is amazing, but it was only after watching the lengthy DVD making-of documentary (which I heartily recommend to fans or film students) that I could appreciate the amount of work and breakthroughs that went into this film. Things that we would take for granted, merely shrugging off as computer-generated images in this Sci-Fi year of 2006, were truly amazing to the grateful Depression-era audiences of 1933. To them, these things were quite simply magic.
And I pity a generation with no magic.
I don't have a great deal to say here. Black & white films are underappreciated. And as much as I prefer Peter Jackson's over-long and over-done 2005 version, this will forever be the King Kong people remember. Even in that Sci-Fi year of 2050.
I'd Recommend It To: Just about everybody.
Posted:

Total Skulls: 4

Sequel
Sequel setup
Rips off earlier film
Horror film showing on TV/in theater in movie
Future celebrity appears
Former celebrity appears
Bad title
Bad premise
Bad acting
Bad dialogue
Bad execution
MTV Editing
OTS
Girl unnecessarily gets naked
Wanton sex
Death associated with sex
Unfulfilled promise of nudity
Characters forget about threat
Secluded location
Power is cut
Phone lines are cut
Someone investigates a strange noise
Someone runs up stairs instead of going out front door
Camera is the killer
Victims cower in front of a window/door
Victim locks self in with killer
Victim running from killer inexplicably falls
Toilet stall scene
Shower/bath scene
Car stalls or won't start
Cat jumps out
Fake scare
Laughable scare
Stupid discovery of corpse
Dream sequence
Hallucination/Vision
No one believes only witness
Crazy, drunk, old man knows the truth
Warning goes unheeded
Music detracts from scene
Death in first five minutes
x years before/later
Flashback sequence
Dark and stormy night
Killer doesn't stay dead
Killer wears a mask
Killer is in closet
Killer is in car with victim
Villain is more sympathetic than heroes
Unscary villain/monster
Beheading
Blood fountain
Blood spatters - camera, wall, etc.
Poor death effect
Excessive gore
No one dies at all
Virgin survives
Geek/Nerd survives
Little kid lamely survives
Dog/Pet miraculously survives
Unresolved subplots
"It was all a dream" ending
Unbelievably happy ending
Unbelievably crappy ending
What the hell?