Review #224: King Kong (1933)

This review was originally written in October 2022.

Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #78: King Kong (1933)

Believe it or not, I've never seen ANY King Kong movie until now. My only frame of reference for it was the part that got parodied on the Simpsons (the part where he escapes the theater in New York and climbs the Empire State building), which surprisingly-but-not-that-surprisingly turned out to only be the final fifteen minutes of this 1-hour-40 film.

This is probably going to be a more scattered review than usual, so I'll get the plot out there: Denham, a famous filmmaker, has chartered a ship to take him to a mysterious island for... some reason (he wants to shoot a scene there but if his intention wasn't to see the island's unique fauna I don't know why he didn't just go somewhere less remote) and he brings along Ann, a woman he picked up on the street for being hot. On the island they discover a secluded tribe of people who kidnap Ann and try to offer her up to Kong, a giant ape who lives on the island among a ton of other giant prehistoric creatures. Kong takes Ann, the crew chase after and bring her back, and Denham knocks out Kong and somehow they transport the giant beast back home so they can show him off and become rich. Kong breaks free, climbs the Empire State Building, and is shot down and dies. The end.

While this movie was clearly intended for spectacle more than characters or story (most of the film is long, intricately-choreographed stop motion battles between Kong and various dinosaurs), King Kong was better than I expected. All of the action was easy to follow, it was well-made, and although the characters and story felt a bit lacking it wasn't to the point where it detracted from the experience. Although it probably belongs more in the "Action" genre, I have no real problem considering this film Horror, as it contains a lot of what would eventually become staples of the genre; in particular, it felt relatively modern how the characters were given multiple opportunities to quit and just leave (when they first discover the indigenous tribe, when they knock out Kong while trying to escape, and so on)- but like most Horror entries, the characters don't take the proverbial life preserver, and then they get what's coming to them. At the end of the day, this is a cautionary tale showing that the true horror is not the giant beasts that lurk beyond the periphery, but the darkness and greed that lurks in the hearts of men.

King Kong was a fun movie with goofy special effects that don't really hold up, but were surely breathtaking back in the 30s. I don't see myself watching this again anytime soon but I won't be intentionally avoiding it.

Overall Rating: 6/10 Sleepy Grenades

Stop-Motion Trivia: According to the IMDB trivia, some of the foliage used in the stop-motion scenes was made up of actual, living plants. This caused a problem, however, when an entire day of filming had to be scrapped because a flower had slowly begun to bloom on-camera. It was moving slowly enough that the photographers didn't notice until the film had been compiled and sped up, which made the blooming incredibly obvious compared to the slow-moving ape walking by!