King Kong (1933)

Okay, I know. Who hasn't seen this movie? Show of hands. All right, so maybe you haven't seen this movie, but you've surely seen Peter Jackson's CGI-fest from 2005. Or maybe you saw that stinker they did back in the 70s with Jessica Lange and Jeff Bridges. At any rate, you know the story, right? Show man Carl Denham (Robert Armstrong, in 1933) sails off to the south seas with a film crew including Jack Driscoll (Bruce Cabot) and Ann Darrow (Fay Wray). They sail to the mysterious Skull Island, where they find that the natives have built a colossal wall to protect themselves from the creatures that live on the island. Chief among these is Kong, the 24-foot tall gorilla. Ann - being white and blond - is soon kidnapped by the natives and sacrificed to Kong, who takes her to his jungle lair. But Kong doesn't eat her, as he has done with all of the unfortunate native girls. No, he's completely enamoured of her, and protects her from all danger. Well, the boys from the ship naturally go after Ann, and a good many of them are killed in the process. Only Jack succeeds in reaching her. Together, they escape from Kong, while he's busy fending off a pterodactyl. When Kong realizes that Ann is gone, he pursues them, reaching the giant wall just as they're closing the gate behind Ann and Jack. But Kong's not gonna let a little thing like a stone wall stand in the way of true love. He bashes through the gate and stomps the snot out of the native village in his search for Ann. Eventually, he's felled by "gas bombs," which apparently are hand grenades fill with sleeping gas. Never heard of them before. Oh well. Kong is down, and Denham has a new exhibit for his show. When we next see Kong, he's chained to a post in an auditorium. Kong makes quick work of the chains and storms out of the theater in search of Ann. Along the way, he pauses to take in the sights, to terrorize a few innocent bystanders, and crush an elevated train. But true love leads Kong to Ann's window, and the long arm of Kong reaches in and gets her (talk about stalkers - he's the greatest). Kong climbs to the top of the Empire State Building with Ann in tow. There, we have the iconic battle between Kong and the airplanes. Kong may have been king of the jungle, but he's no match again modern air power. Mortally wounded, Kong plummets to his death just as Jack reaches the top of the Empire State Building and rescues Ann. When someone says to Denham, "Looks like the planes got him," Denham replies, "It was beauty killed the beast."

Does any of that sound familiar? It should. The movie's only been made three times now. Why? Cuz it's a darn good story, and that's one thing that Hollywood seems to be in short supply of these days. So they just keep remaking older movies and turning old cartoons into movies. But, in my humble opinion, nine times out of ten, the remake cannot compete with the original. Such is the case with King Kong. Don't get me wrong. Those other versions are fine movies in their own right, but they are copies of something that was done so well that it not only revolutionized the movie industry, but it also changed what the public would accept from movies. You gotta remember that when this thing first came out back in 1933, the people thought they were actually seeing a real 24-foot tall gorilla tramping around New York City. Admittedly, folks were a bit more naive back then, and they had were not used to special effects of this caliber. I mean, the effects by Willis H. O'Brien are so good that they still stand up today. Interestingly, Jackson's crew decided that they would try to recreate a missing scene from the original movie using the exact same methods that O'Brien employed in 1933. Jackson's team couldn't believe how difficult it was to create these effects, how much time went into them, and how much they cost to do. But those old effects are wonderful. Take the fight between Kong and the T-Rex. It is unbelievable. The way both Kong and Rex move, and the gore as Kong rips Rex's head apart. Then there was the famous scene on the log bridge, where Kong shakes all of the men off and they fall to their deaths in the gorge below. I'm still amazed at the level of detail and realism when I watch this today. All of the jungle scenes in this film are incredible. They used mattes and cutouts to give the jungle a depth that you don't acheive with a few potted plants and a cyclorama.

As I pointed out above, I'm not comparing the 1933 King Kong to the remakes because the original film stands alone. It is without peer. Made just five years after Al Jolson made talking films the standard, Merian C. Cooper and Willis H. O'Brien created a masterpiece of cinematography. They pushed the boundaries of what could be done in film and paved the way for the likes of George Pal, George Lucas, Stephen Spielberg and John Carpenter. King Kong has a wonderful look to it. The velvety black and white images lend the film a dreamlike quality, though many would say it's a nightmare rather than a dream. The acting is a little bit wooden, but then, you must remember that we're only five short years away from the silent era, with it's highly stylized acting. All things considered, the actors do a pretty good job. But of course, the star of the show is Kong, the 18" model gorilla. Amazingly, that little model wins our hearts in the end. We feel for him, root for him, and are sad when he finally falls. It's telling when a movie can produce that much pathos from an audience. If you need more proof of King Kong's worth as a movie, you need only remember that we're still watching and talking about it 78 years after it first premiered. It takes a mighty big movie to last that long. King Kong is about as big as they come.

King Kong is rated G and is filmed in black and white.