King Kong (1933)

• Release Date: April 7, 1933
• Directed by: Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Shoedsack
• Written by: Edgar Wallace, James Creelman and Ruth Rose
• Runtime: 1 hour 44 minutes
• Series: King Kong

When I was about seven years old, my uncle lent me two VHS tapes that would shape my taste in movies for the rest of my life. One tape had the original Dracula, Frankenstein, and The Mummy films recorded off of TV, and the other was a discarded library copy of the original King Kong. I don't remember everything about my first viewing of Kong, but I do remember that even at such a young age, I was totally captivated by the movie. Watching the titular giant ape duke it out with creature after creature was a real treat for a kid who loved his dinosaur stuff, and if there's one thing that I remember most of all, it's that I cried when Kong met his tragic fate at the hands of the humans who took him from his home. I watched that tape several times until I eventually had to give it back, and when Christmas of '05 rolled around, my mom bought me a DVD copy that I continued to watch over and over again. In fact, it's the same copy that I have to this day. This movie has some sort of special power to it that can hook any young monster movie fan and turn them into a fan for life. Even looking outside the boundaries of horror / monster films, movies in general simply wouldn't be the same if Kong had never reared his giant, ugly head.

Where do I even begin with the things that I love about this movie? I guess the most logical place to start is its star attraction: the giant ape himself. Kong is an extremely expressive creature, and the ways in which he's brought to life are a marvel to watch, especially when you consider the time in which this movie was made. Most of the creature action is done via stop-motion animation spearheaded by one of the granddaddies of special effects, Willis O'Brien. The model for Kong is able to convey a pretty wide range of emotions for such primitive technology - whether it's snarling rage, wide-eyed curiosity, or even sadness in a couple of scenes. Stop-motion is my favorite type of special effect because it combines the camerawork and lighting of live-action filmmaking with the frame-by-frame, done-by-hand methods of classic animation, and this movie is probably the best showcase of the technique ever made. When you watch each special effects-heavy sequence and remember that all of that action was done by animators adjusting physical models by hand over the course of hours, the amount of effort required to pull it off is staggering to think about. The same also applies when you consider the skill required to invent new techniques to combine the actors with the animation. I love watching closely for the moments where the actors are replaced with small look-alike dolls so the creatures can pick them up, eat them, or throw them around. My favorite little detail in the movie is the constant shifting of Kong's fur. It was clearly an unintended consequence of the animators touching his model, but to me, it's like seeing the fingerprints of the artists on the masterpiece that they created.

While black-and-white monster movies have a reputation of being pretty tame by modern standards, King Kong has to be one of the most violent and shocking ones of its era. I never counted the specific number, but it may have the highest body count of any monster / horror film of the time. People are trampled and eaten by various dinosaurs, crushed in Kong's jaws and thrown to the ground, smashed under his giant feet, and an innocent woman is even dropped off of a building at one point. One memorable shot in the aftermath of the famous T-Rex battle shows blood oozing out of its broken jaws, and it always stands out to me because it's rare to see blood featured so prominently in such an old movie. As if all the onscreen violence wasn't scandalous enough for the time, another infamous scene has Kong undressing his love interest Ann one layer of clothing at a time, and he even smells his fingers at one point! The moment is played for laughs and he seems to be doing it out of curiosity rather than malice, but I can imagine that a giant monster stripping a woman was something that audience members had never seen before.

All of these highlights are emphasized by one of the best film scores in classic cinema. Sound films had only existed for a few years at this point, and having a movie feature music throughout its entire run was still a pretty new idea. Films like Tod Browning's Dracula in 1931 had music from Swan Lake over its opening credits, but the rest of its run time featured dialogue with no underlying music, leading to long periods of atmospheric silence. Just two years later, King Kong delivered an original, feature-length score with recurring themes and cues from beginning to end. The amazing opening theme perfectly conveys a feeling of thrilling adventure on a grandiose scale, and it's one I always like to turn the volume up loud on to set the tone for the ride ahead. The same goes for the Sacrifice theme that gradually builds the tension and excitement until the big reveal of Kong himself. Perfectly on-theme, everything feels and sounds larger than life. If I had one pick of a movie to see accompanied by a live, full-size orchestra, this one would definitely be it!

I could go on and on with more things that I love about King Kong (I didn't even get around to talking about Denham, Ann, Jack and all the other characters), but I feel like that would just be wasting everyone's time. Every minute that you spent reading this writeup is a minute that could have been spent watching the movie instead. It's a masterpiece that towers above any other genre film of its time, and it set a standard that barely anyone has been able to reach in the 90+ years since its release. Movie monsters have come in hundreds of shapes and sizes over the years, but at the end of the day, they all have to bow down before the King.