Tuesday, October 14, 2014

King Kong (1933)

Today's film is King Kong.  I watched the new one directed by Peter Jackson first, and I really liked that, so I wanted to see the original.  The part of King Kong shall be represented by pictures of Rob Ryan, because I can.





So, we have our director, Denham, who is famous for making dangerous adventure films in the jungle.  His latest film expedition will take him to a remote island, where he is sure he will see something amazing.  The only problems is that the critics pan his films because there’s no romance in them.  So now he has to find a girl brave enough to come on expedition with him.  Most actresses’ agents won’t even let them audition for him. 
Denham finds a starving artist/actress while walking the streets of New York at night.  Her name is Anne and she agrees to go with him.  One of the sailors is mad because supposedly having a woman on board is bad luck (but sailors think everything is bad luck anyway) but we can tell he is totally crushing on her.
They get to the remote island, called Skull Island, in time to witness some kind of ceremony.  The chief and medicine man spot Anne and offer to trade six of their native women for her.  They say something about a bride for Kong, but at this point we don’t even know what a kong is. 
Late at night, the native sneak on the boat and kidnap Anne!  The men on the boat go to rescue her, but she is already in the clutches of King Kong.  King Kong is a giant gorilla that has taken an instant shine to Anne, because she is so beautiful.  



I wonder what happened to all the other girls that were supposed to be his brides.  King Kong, and the men who follow him, are attacked by all sorts of dinosaurs.  Everything is done in stop-motion, like the dinosaurs in Land of the Lost.  When the men encounter the dinosaurs, they instantly start shooting at it.  It's like, Oh look a majestic creature no one's seen in millions of years - let's throw gas bombs at it!

Now, hang on, I've seen enough episodes of Dinosaur Train to know that sauropods don't eat people.  Also, they need their own car because they are so big.  I had hoped they would only throw a gas bomb to knock them out, but they also shoot the dinosaurs to death, so if all the dinosaurs in the world weren't extinct then, they certainly are now.

King Kong defends his lady against the dinosaurs that attack him, as well as the men he perceives as a threat.  He very easily disposes of the humans, and wrestles the various dinosaurs to death.  I think that King Kong was the most powerful creature on the island, and as long as the natives left him alone and did whatever ceremonies they do, he protected them from the dinosaurs as well.  After he defeats a creature, he beats his chest and makes his triumphant cry:



Denham, and the remaining surviving crew gas-bomb and capture King Kong, as Denham intends on bringing it back to the mainland as an attraction.  Sort of like a giant sideshow.
Lots of questions arise for the transporting of King Kong.   Where did they keep him?  In the beginning, they mentioned have too many men, and yes some of them died, but where are they housing everyone on this boat, and now there’s a 50 ft gorilla?  Or is he an ape?  What’s the difference? 
So even though we’re not sure how he got there, he ends up in New York City, where Denham plans to display him for $10 a ticket.  Man I don’t have $10 for a ticket now, that must have been a million dollars back then.  Then, King Kong totally escapes and starts rampaging the city.  Even though New York has the biggest cop force in the world, they must not have shown up today and King Kong manages to kidnap Anne again and climb up the Empire State Building.

As King Kong rampages the city (also earlier in the jungle), we see he likes to pick up people and put them in his mouth.  He doesn't eat them, but they die anyway.  Now we know what happened to his other brides.  As he climbs the Empire State Building with Anne, the police send out airplanes to shoot him down.  Even long before I watched the movie, I already knew how it ends, mainly because the image of King Kong swatting at the airplanes while high atop a skyscraper is so famous.  Here's what King Kong would have looked like when he saw the "weird birds" (cause he doesn't know what planes are) surrounding him and knowing there was no escape:


So, that's the end of King Kong. This movie has been re-released and remade since the 1950s.  So I'm sure we will see more installments.  I will give this film a 7/10.  Now, normally I don't post pictures of my family, but here we are at the King Kong ride at Universal Studios in the 1980s.  I'm the one in the pink:


2 comments:

  1. It is an okay movie, but the biggest downer is really the attitude towards the dinosaurs on the island. It reminds me of the early episodes of South Park: "It is coming right to us! Shoooot!"

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    1. Yeah I was really excited to see the dinosaurs until they killed them all. :\

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