Not the best clarity, but a fight at night adds to the terror.
In horror movies featuring exotic monsters, their cult followings are often built despite their failures at traditional story-telling, rather than because of. Most or all of the Godzilla movies fall into this category (cardboard cutouts running around frantically), as do those of genre classic The Blob (1958) (cardboard cutout teenagers running around aimlessly), Destination Inner Space (1966) (why is the Technicolor lizard from the stars killing everyone else indiscriminately?), the Gamera franchise (sometimes there’s almost a good plot about this rocket-ass giant turtle and its attachment to human children), and quite a number of other movies reviewed on this blog.
King Kong (1933), however, falls into the sparsely populated alternative category of Damn, that was good! where it finds one of its relatively few fellow high achievers is Pacific Rim (2013). The progenitor of the eponymous franchise, none of the King Kong remakes and sequels, at least that I’ve viewed, match the original for excellence in story-telling. In this original, each major character has an explanatory backstory, from the movie-maker out to make the best movie he can, to the village chief trying to safeguard his village from a monster that isn’t on the island to safeguard the village, but to eat it, and desperate Claire and her new-found seaman beau. This results in a story, lurid as it might be, that makes real sense and brings a sense of urgency to it, rather than the peals of laughter that so many of the genre tend to generate.
Becoming a late night snack.
Are there complaints? Certainly, the special effects can be criticized, as Kong was a big challenge for the special effects masters of the day. But they achieve a certain creepy sexual effect that makes for quite a result: it forces at least the lustful male portion of the audience to ask themselves if they are as repulsive as Kong. Or do they?
And the science has its cracks. Why is a sauropod, of which there have never been any carnivorous varieties found, eating that guy out of the tree? But it’s still a terrifying scene, if the audience will buy into that mistake. In general, the mistakes are minor and in service to the plot. Moreover, the acting and sets are more than adequate, and the pacing is not at all lackadaisical.
There are certainly moral questions being asked and, perhaps, answered, in Kong’s escape after the reporters have been assured he can’t escape, his kidnapping of his love interest, Claire, and the scaling of the Empire State Building, and his eventual extermination. But there’s no dwelling on them, no ballpeen hammers between the eyes to make the audience irritable, to lure them from their ephemeral, yet real, bond with the film into sordid reality. The questions are presented but don’t become fetid clumps of monkey dung.
Recommended.
One word of warning: Find a good print. We watched a version on Amazon Prime that was virtually spotless; no doubt it was restored. It improves the experience we each individually remember from years ago immeasurably.
