King Kong (1933 film)

Still from King Kong (1933 film)...

Summary

"A monster of creation's dawn breaks loose in our world today!" A film crew goes to a tropical island for an exotic location shoot and discovers a colossal ape who takes a shine to their female blonde star before getting captured and brought back to New York City for public exhibition.

There have been a number of remakes, sequels, and (generally awful) thinly-disguised rip-offs of the original 1933 classic, but the films most likely to interest fans of pulp horror will probably be the 1933 original, and the 2005 remake.

Details

• Release Date: 1933; 2005
• Country/Language: US, English
• Genres/Technical: Fantasy, Sci-fi, Horror, Adventure, black-and-white, stop-motion animation
• Runtime: 1 hr 40 min; 3 hr 7 min
• Starring: Fay Wray, Robert Armstrong, Bruce Cabot; Naomi Watts, Jack Black, Adrien Brody
• Director: Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack; Peter Jackson
• Writer: James Ashmore Creelman and Ruth Rose (screen play), Merian C. Cooper and Edgar Wallace (story); Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens (screenplay)
• Producer/Production Co: Willis O'Brien, RKO Radio Pictures; Universal Pictures, WingNut Films, Big Primate Pictures
• View Trailer: (link); (link), (link)

Ratings

MPAA Ratings

• Rated: (not rated) (perhaps equivalent of a G or PG for mild and mostly off-screen Violence and 1930s Adult Content)

Tentacle Ratings

A rough measure of how "Lovecraftian" the work is:

• S____ (One Tentacle: Debateably Lovecraftian; has almost no direct connection to Lovecraft's work)

Chances are that any similarities between the better-known (and perhaps best) King Kong films and Lovecraft are coincidental, by way of a shared ancestry through pulp fiction, though Peter Jackson might easily have included Lovecraft among the inspirations for his remake. In any event, the mysterious (and geologically impossible) Skull Island, covered in Atlantean ruins, peopled by degenerate natives and human-sacrificing cultists, huddling beneath a vast wall against the Unknown, should surely be of at least minor interest to fans of Lovecraftian film....

Note: This rating is not intended as a measure of quality, merely of how closely related to Lovecraftian "Weird" fiction the work is.

Reviews

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Synopsis

 Spoiler Section (Highlight to Read)

• 1933 - Actress Ann Darrow and director Carl Denham travel to the Indian Ocean to do location shoots for Denham's new jungle picture. Along the way, the actress meets and falls for rugged First Mate John Driscoll. Upon arriving at a mysterious island, Ann is taken hostage by natives who prepare her as a sacrifice to the enormous ape Kong who rules over their jungle. But when Ann is rescued and Kong is captured, the real trouble begins.
• 1976 - When a research ship is sent to explore an island thought to be rich in oil, paleontologist Jack Prescott) sneaks aboard, having heard strange rumors about the island. En route, the crew rescues Dwan [sic], the sole survivor of a shipwreck. When they arrive, they find native people living in fear of a monster called Kong. The natives kidnap Dwan and sacrifice her to what turns out to be an enormous ape. Dwan is eventually rescued, and the ape captured for a gala exhibit.
• 2005 - Peter Jackson's expansive remake of the 1933 classic follows director Carl Denham and his crew on a journey from New York City to the ominous Skull Island to film a new movie. Accompanying him are playwright Jack Driscoll and actress Ann Darrow, who is whisked away by the monstrous ape, Kong, after they reach the island. The crew encounters dinosaurs and other creatures as they race to rescue Ann, while the actress forms a bond with her simian captor.
• THE LOST WORLD (1925) - can be thought of as a sort of "prequel" to King Kong by the same film maker (Willis O'Brien), in which dinosaurs are found living on an isolated plateau. Scenes from a related and failed O'Brien project, Creation, also about a group of people stumbling into an environment where prehistoric creatures have survived extinction, were re-used for the 1933 Kong.
• SON OF KONG (1933) - A sequel released the same year concerns a return expedition to Skull Island that discovers Kong's son.
• KING KONG vs. GODZILLA (1962) - A film produced by Toho Studios in Japan brought the title characters to life via detailed rubber and fur costumes, and presented both characters for the first time in color.
• KING KONG ESCAPES (1967) - Another Toho film (co-produced with Rankin/Bass) has King Kong facing both a mechanical double, dubbed Mechani-Kong, and a giant theropod dinosaur known as Gorosaurus. This movie was loosely based on the contemporaneous cartoon television program, as indicated by the use of its recurring villain, Dr. Who/Dr. Huu, in the same capacity, Mechani-Kong as an enemy, Mondo Island as Kong's home and a female character named Susan.
• KING KONG LIVES (1986) - A sequel to the 1976 film by the same producer and director involves Kong surviving his fall from the sky and requiring a coronary operation. It includes a female member of Kong's species, who, after supplying a blood transfusion that enables the life-saving surgery, escapes and mates with Kong, becoming pregnant with his offspring.
• MIGHTY JOE YOUNG (1949) - Everything goes badly when a charismatic showman convinces a young girl and her giant gorilla friend to travel from Africa to perform in an American night club.
• KONGA (1961) - British film where a chimpanzee is turned into a giant ape after being fed growth serum by a deranged scientist, and attacks London.
• THE MIGHTY GORGA (1969) - American film which features a circus owners's quest to capture a giant ape in an African jungle.
• A*P*E (1976) - Korean 3D film where a giant ape runs amok in Seoul South Korea.
• THE MIGHTY PEKING MAN (1977) - Hong Kong made film that featured a huge Yeti that attacked Hong Kong after it was brought to Hong Kong from its territory somewhere in India near the Himalayas.
• MIGHTY JOE YOUNG (1998) - Remake of the 1949 film. A legendary fifteen-foot tall mountain gorilla named Joe is taken to an animal sanctuary in California by a zoologist and a young woman whom he grew up with. A poacher from the past returns to seek vengeance on him.

Notes

Associated Mythos Elements

• TO DO (some detail for the island, Atlantean ruins, degenerate natives, and their King Kong cult would be appropriate here)
• deity: Kong

See Also

• Tarzan (1918 franchise) for similar pulp jungle adventures with Tarzan, Jungle Jim, and other such "king of the jungle" characters....
• Godzilla (1959 franchise) for other "Kaiju" giant monster films, some of which assume King Kong exist in the same universe....