--- title: "King Kong (1933)" subtitle: "Eighth wonder of the world" author: Seth publish_date: 2025-08-08 08:08 date: 2025-08-08 08:08 hero_classes: text-light title-h1h2 overlay-dark-gradient hero-large parallax hero_image: film-1600x800.webp show_sidebar: true show_breadcrumbs: true show_pagination: true taxonomy: category: culture tag: [ movie, cinema, horror, review ] --- In an effort to keep better track of what movies I've seen, I'm taking notes on what I watch. This post contains some major spoilers about **King Kong** (1933). The short version of the post is this: It's a great adventure film combined with horror, featuring some stunning shots, exciting progress in special effects, and relentless pacing. ## Plot The plot is simple. Fictional movie director Carl Denham goes on an expedition to an unmarked island out in "the Indies" to film whatever he finds there. He's heard that the island's people have a story of a legendary jungle god called "Kong". It quickly becomes apparent that this mystical malevolent force is very real, and is in fact a giant ape. The ape grabs Ann Darrow, lead actress of the picture, and runs off with her. Much of the movie is split between the crew of the expedition attempting to track and rescue Ann, and Kong trying to get Ann to the "safety" of his own habitat. Along the way, both the rescue expedition and Kong encounter fierce dinosaurs, and natural obstacles. The crew manages to rescue Ann, and capture Kong in the process. They take Kong back to the mainland and try to put him on exhibition. However, Kong escapes and hunts for Ann again. He finds her, and scales the Empire State Building out of desperation. In one of the most iconic images from cinema, some military planes manage to shoot him down, and Ann is again rescued. ## The horror of it all I don't feel like it often gets labelled as horror, but **King Kong** is absolutely an effective horror film. It very cleverly changes the source of horror as the threat escalates. From the start of the movie, there's a sense of unease. Even the scene of the reporter approaching the ship is oddly confrontational. When Denham goes out to hire a leading lady off the streets, it feels creepy, and the movie knows it and leans into it as if to put you back at ease. But just as soon as you're happy that Denham isn't a predator, you're reminded that nobody on this expedition actually knows where they're headed or exactly why. In fact, Denham freely admits that whatever they find at their destination may be dangerous (and he seems to relish that). The threat escalates when the expedition encounters the island village. There's still that vague threat of the unknown, but maybe this encounter gives it form. The people of the island are superstitious, possibly practising human sacrifice. When Denham attempts to get footage of a ceremony, the congregation finally notices him and tell the expedition to leave. That is, until they notice Ann. Now there's yet a new threat. It seems that these people want Ann for their sacrifice, and it doesn't take a genius to realise, as an audience, that they aren't going to take "no" for an answer. Even after they do indeed kidnap her from the ship, the _actual_ threat of the story isn't revealed. As far as an uninitiated viewer can tell, the new threat is that Ann is about to be sacrificed for the sake of some silly superstition. It's not until all the vague threats have escalated to a clear and present danger on Ann's life that the audience is finally shown the true horror of the movie. Kong is the threat in this movie that makes everything else seem trivial. Not only is he big and scary and strong and totally untamed, he punches dinosaurs. This thing is the real danger. He's unpredictable, he's apathetic, he's a force of nature. The remarkable thing about the picture is that at a certain point, the story sort of beautifully collapses into one gigantic, arduous, harrowing, gory chase scene. It creeps up on you. One minute, Ann is falling in love with shipmate Jack Driscoll, and then the next she's struggling for her life as she's clutched in the palm of Kong. And then she's witnessing Kong fighting a Tyrannosaurus Rex (or Allosaurus, maybe?), and then she's being carried off by a Pterodactyl, and then she's descending a rope down a sheer cliff, and then swimming, and then running. It just doesn't let up. In fact, it gets worse. After Kong realises that Ann's been rescued, he goes on a rampage to find her, which takes him back to the island's central village. The island's population try to defend their home, and then run away, but Kong is an wild beast. He kills dispassionately and graphically. He picks people up as if they were dolls, stuffs them into his mouth for a quick and easy chomp, and then tosses them aside. In other shots, he picks people up, drops them to the ground, and smashes them under foot, and the [actual] filmmakers cut to a close-up (well, what counts as a close-up for a giant ape, which is more like a medium shot for a human) so we witness the person being crushed. It's 1933 so there's not gore and viscera or exploding heads or anything like that, but honestly it's pretty gruesome even today. I think the most horrific scene is during Kong's rampage through New York City. While scaling an apartment building, he pauses when he looks through a window and sees a woman, asleep in bed. To get a better look, he smashes a fist through the window and grabs the now terrified woman, and extracts her from her 5th or 6th floor room. He looks her over and, seeing that it isn't Ann, idly discards her. It's one of the most casually brutal things I've ever seen on film, partly because of the horror of being grabbed out of bed by a giant ape and then falling to your death, and partly because Kong just doesn't understand. To Kong, he's just looking for a very specific miniature, and the one he just took out of the box wasn't the one he thought it was, so it's not mimportant. Aside from specific life-or-death situations, part of the horror of **King Kong** is that it doesn't give you a chance to let your guard down, at least not after Ann is first kidnapped. That's the point of no return in this movie, and it works. It works because it's actually hard work. You feel yourself on the edge of your seat, or your hands clenching, and it's not until it's all over that you can breathe easy. It's truly an adventure movie that transitions to horror, and I think it's still one of the most successful pivots in cinema. ## Special effects **King Kong** is very much an iteration of the 1925 silent movie [Lost World](https://mixedsignals.ml/games/blog/culture_movie-lost-world-1925) in both plot and special effects. The animator for both films was Willis H. O'Brien, so the similarities in effects aren't superficial. I don't know who devised some of the iconic imagery in the movie. I assume it would have been a combination of the Production Designer and Cinematographer, but I imagine O'Brien would have also been involved for his knowledge of what his model work could reasonably be expected to achieve. But then again, maybe not. It wouldn't be the first time that a request for the "impossible" compelled an artist to invent new techniques. The stop motion animation is easy to notice and admire. Whether or not you've ever tried stop motion, you probably understand that it takes a lot of work today, so you can imagine how much work it would have been 90+ years ago. But that bridge was crossed in [Lost World](https://mixedsignals.ml/games/blog/culture_movie-lost-world-1925). It's old news. What's new in Kong is blocking and integration. In **Lost World**, all but one stop motion shot was a straight-on long shot of two dinosaurs doing a thing (usually trying to kill each other). In **King Kong**, the first shot of a dinosaur we see is a triceratops charging toward the camera. It's a static shot but it feels dynamic, with a dinosaur running toward both the expedition party and the audience. Lots of creature shots have a similar feel. There are angles on Kong, from long shots to medium shots and close-ups, and a mix of angles. It feels very much like Kong is just another character in the movie. He doesn't come across as just a stop motion model, he's an actor. What's even more amazing is how the sell the illusion that Kong is as much an actor as anyone else in the movie. They use all the tricks, and of course invent some new ones along the way. There's a lot of rear-projection to combine live action actors with footage of Kong. I assume **Lost World** used this trick a little (the print I saw was pretty poor quality, so it was hard to tell). **King Kong** uses rear-projection more boldly than anything attempted in **Lost World**, though. I think the first time we see it is in a shot of Ann, tied to two ceremonial pillars, in the foreground, while Kong is knocking over trees in the background. Ann and Kong are making eye contact. You absolutely feel that Kong and Ann are in the same space, probably just a few metres apart. That's also the first time you see the cleverest trick of **King Kong**: Object transference. In the shot of Kong and Ann, Kong reaches out and grabs Ann from the pillars and holds her in his hand. It feels like one fluid motion. I know logically that it wasn't, but in the moment and in your memory it looks like the giant ape (which you know is not real) has grabbed the live action actress right before your very eyes. It's a beautiful illusion not because it's technically advanced but because it is a literal illusion. Like a good magic trick, it doesn't hold up to careful study, but when it's performed it works because you want to believe it. There are some even better effects later in the movie. During Kong's rampage on the village, some warriors throw spears at him and somehow the spears leave the hands of the actors and appear in Kong's hide. It's all the same shot. You see everything. No sleight of hand. It just happens. During that same sequence, Kong charges toward a village building, smashes it, and then throws the scraps into the air. And then those same building fragments fall on top of fleeing villagers. Again, this all happens in the same frame, right in front of you. No tricks, except it's all tricks. It's amazing. ## Great movie **King Kong** (1933) is as good as its reputation, but not just because it's an old movie that put a little stop motion monkey on the Empire State Building. It's good because it's a simple but strong story, and it uses clever and innovative ways to bring some fantastic visions to life.

Lead photo by Anika De Klerk on Unsplash