The Lost World changed cinema forever in 1925. Nobody could have guessed that film would be revolutionized just a mere 8 years later… with the same guy leading the charge.
King Kong is one of the most beloved and essential films of all time. It is a classic, groundbreaking masterpiece of creativity. It’s about a movie director, Carl Denham, who takes his film crew to the mysterious Skull Island that few have ventured to. Among his cast and crew is Ann Darrow, an actress brave enough to go on such an adventure. She also has a perfect set of lungs, because most of what she does is scream. She screams, does more screaming, and screams some more. Anyway, this island, as it turns out, is inhabited by prehistoric creatures, monsters, and a primitive tribe of people that worship a giant gorilla, who they call Kong. Ann is kidnapped and is used as a sacrifice to Kong. Instead of eating her, Kong finds an odd interest in Ann. He keeps her alive so she can scream even more, as she’s attacked by dinosaurs and other creatures. Kong is eventually captured and brought back to New York as an attraction. It’s an epic adventure all the way through, and it ends with one of the most iconic finales in cinematic history- King Kong fighting planes on top of the Empire State Building. It couldn’t get any more awesome than that.
It seriously is a more amazing plot than any Academy Award Winner. It’s amazing because something as strange and incredible as it is hadn’t been done many times before. The closest thing is The Lost World, but that film didn’t reach such a grand scale like Kong did. The Lost World seems very small in comparison, although there are some very obvious parallels between the two. For one, the plots are similar. Both involve a strange, unknown world filled with prehistoric life. Both involve taking a creature from that world back to civilization. Both involve the same creature breaking free of captivity and going on a rampage. The weirdest part? Willis O’Brien, the special effects master for The Lost World, was behind the effects for King Kong as well. It’s not very often that one person changes the field of filmmaking more than once in their life.
Aside from the ridiculously wonderful story, the special effects are what really make King Kong so revolutionary. O’Brien outdid himself in every conceivable way. The stop motion animation is vastly improved over The Lost World. Each movement of the creatures is smoother and has more energy to it. Every animal, while not scientifically accurate by today’s standards, is designed well. None of them look bad at all, given the inaccuracies and age of the film. The parts that will never get old are the fights. Throughout most of the time on Skull Island itself, it’s just creature attack after creature attack. It’s the only portion of the film that lacks in story, but I don’t hold it against the film, because it delivers some legendary action scenes, most notably the brawl between Kong and the T-Rex. That is one scene that never gets old, no matter how many times it’s watched.
The hand-made environments are praiseworthy by themselves. Some backgrounds seem to stretch on forever deeper into the jungle. One of my favorite backgrounds is during the part where Kong fights the Pterosaur on the mountain side.
I don’t know how to explain it, but I always loved the way the sky and horizon was done with this shot. All the other backgrounds and environments are just as wondrous, and the black and white format gives it a unique majesty that I’ve rarely seen matched in other movies.
What is shown on screen looks fantastic as it is, but it’s the hard work done behind the scenes in order to bring such a world to life that made King Kong so groundbreaking. Not only did the design of whatever was in front of the camera have to be creative, but the filmmakers had to use their creative genius to come up with new techniques in order to pull off certain shots. Sometimes actors would be performing with the action being projected onto a screen behind them. Other times, they would have to combine footage, create life size props, or animate stills of the actors frame by frame on the stop motion sets. There’s much more that remains a mystery in the visual sense, but the sound was a major part of the whole film. In 1933, sound movies hadn’t been around for that long, but somehow they managed to create some pretty impressive sound effects, as well as music from a full orchestra. I can’t even begin to imagine what else went into the making of King Kong.
For 1933, what the filmmakers did was extraordinary. I have a hard time believing they accomplished such feats with such primitive and crude methods. King Kong is a masterpiece of cinema that deserves as much credit and praise as it gets. The only thing I ever found off about it was a bit of the acting. The actors, for the most part, are okay, but there’s a couple of them that are a bit too cheesy. Given that it was 1933, it’s reasonable to expect some rather… insensitive stereotypes. And as I stated before, almost all that Ann does is scream for help. The acting and character departments are hardly perfect. But if you can look past any cheesiness, and respect King Kong for what it accomplished in its time, I think you may actually enjoy it as much as any lover of film does.
FINAL RATING: 43 / 50
STORY: 4 / 5
ACTING: 3 / 5
CHARACTERS: 3 / 5
EFFECTS: 5 / 5
ADVENTURE: 5 / 5
SOUNDTRACK: 4 / 5
TONE: 4 / 5
ENJOYABILITY: 5 / 5
REWATCH VALUE: 5 / 5
OWNING VALUE: 5 / 5
Sadly, King Kong had a remake. Even worse, it was in 1976. I’ll get to that atrocity. Soon.
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