King Kong & Son of Kong

King Kong (1933)

Runtime: 100 minutes

Directed by: Merian C. Cooper/Ernest B. Schoedsack

Starring: Robert Armstrong, Fay Wray, Bruce Cabot, Frank Reicher, Sam Hardy

From: RKO

Son of Kong (1933)

Runtime: 70 minutes

Directed by: Ernest B. Schoedsack

Starring: Robert Armstrong, Helen Mack, Frank Reicher, John Marston

From: RKO

Here's a double bill of the legendary King Kong (which I've seen a few times in my life) and the not so legendary sequel. The Letterboxd reviews of both are below, the original first:

This is a motion picture I've seen a handful of times in my life. Heck, one of the times was a colorized version on VHS. As TCM played this yesterday afternoon I decided to see this incredible film again.

I presume everyone is familiar with the plot so I won't spend much time there talking about it, except that it's a film crew going to a mysterious island and they find a giant gorilla... and the director makes the mistake of bringing the ape back to New York City, only for disaster to strike. The plot is pretty ridiculous and you can carp certain things if you want to... however, I say that even now this is a classic movie, and there are a few reasons why.

This is a classic adventure movie, where you have exotic locations, big setpieces, dramatic moments, a damsel in distress, laughs, etc. This is brought to life by...

The stop-motion special effects from the legendary Willis H. O'Brien. They are perfect and with such things as the composite effects they help make you believe in what you are seeing, from Kong and a T. Rex having an epic fight & a log being tossed about and sending many men on a fall to gruesome deaths to the title creature's legendary scaling of the Empire State Building and how it's always expressive throughout.

The performances are up and down but the ones I dig the most from the human beings in the film are Fay Wray as probably the first Scream Queen, Robert Armstrong as the huckster Carl Denham (& that character is more complex than it sounds from description; he's not always such a bad guy... just a foolhardy one), and I personally dig the Captain of the ship-Englehorn-played by Frank Reicher.

The movie's been officially remade twice-so far-and while they're not bad I'll always stick with the original as at least it's not goofy or burdened with overlength... and as cool as Rick Baker's acting in a gorilla suit is or Andy Serkis and his motion capture work, it's just not the same as what you saw here with the meticulous work of moving those models by hand. This is deservedly a classic that will never quite be duplicated.

Now, onto the sequel.

Earlier in the day I posted my review of King Kong, which I have seen a handful of times in my life. Immediately after the first film was played on TCM, they showed this, the rushed to production sequel, a movie I had never seen before, as I always heard it was not good and you could tell they threw this together so it could come out 9 months after King Kong did. Those critics were right and I can only rate this as about average.

The movie starts about a month after the ending of the first one. Carl Denham flees New York as he knows he'll be indicted for all the damage he ended up causing. He leaves on a ship with a few people, including the returning Captain Englehorn and the racial stereotype that is the Chinese cook. They end up in a far-away port, filled with people who had their dreams crushed and are stuck there for the time being. This includes the damsel in distress for this film, a brunette instead of a blonde. Via contrived reasons they end up back on Skull Island where they discover that Kong as a smaller albino son. This time they stay on the island when it comes to adventures for the rest of the movie.

The film isn't bad, especially considering they rushed it to release and this time the producers interfered with Willis H. O'Brien's work, meaning that an assistant finished most of that work as O'Brien understandably got mad at that. Hearing all that, it eerily sounds like some of the many headaches that come with modern blockbuster releases from corporations that are the film studios now. “The more things change...”, indeed.

Anyhow, this is just average all around. While the effects you see are cool they aren't as great as in the first, and you can just tell this was made fast rather than with care. There are several nice ideas in the movie and it was interesting to see the continuing adventures of Carl Denham and crew; however, this just feels slight, and this being 30 minutes shorter than King Kong doesn't help matters either.

Overall, this isn't a bad movie and I don't regret finally seeing it. It's just that there's no real need to see this unless you really enjoy the main character and/or you want to see some more good stop-motion effects.