I’ve seen the original, the 1976 version, and Peter Jackson’s 2005 remake. The best special effects are in Jackson’s version, not surprisingly, but in most other ways the original King Kong is superior to its later imitators.
And in fact the original’s special effects are far better than what you should expect from 1933. Willis O’Brien not only made supposedly impossible shots possible, he turned a monster into a character.
The Premise
In all the versions I’ve seen, the King Kong story has at its center a preposterous notion: that a gigantic gorilla has any interest in a human woman except perhaps as something to chew and swallow.
One of the many remarkable things about the film is that it doesn’t simply ask you to believe that an ape is interested in a woman, it shows you that Kong cares about her, and you believe it.
And yet you can’t justify Kong’s interest in any natural way. Yes, for a moment or two maybe Kong would be curious about this odd creature, bleached white unlike all the other humans he’s seen, puzzled enough to pause and poke at her before deciding what to do—but the answer, reasonably, would have to be either “eat” or “throw away as too risky to eat.” But you don’t have much of a movie that way, so you simply have to go with the idea or give up.
Unless we invent a story nowhere hinted at in the film that as a baby, Kong was cared for by a human woman—it would not be a white woman, but an islander—after his own gorilla mother was killed (presumably by a dinosaur). If infant Kong was nurtured by a human woman, up to the point where he could fend for himself in the wild, or maybe when that woman was herself killed somehow, then he could indeed have some obsessive (completely non-sexual) desire to possess and be around a human woman. The fact that Ann is white would be little more than a temporary distraction—him thinking, Okay, she looks a little weird, but, all right, no, this is basically the same as the mother-creature. Carrying Ann back to his lair and setting her up on a ledge would then be the same thing he’s done with all the “sacrificed” women over the years. He brings them home and dimly expects that they will fill the niche his foster mother once did, satisfying a garbled psychological need.
(Just think—that kid at the orphanage in Cider House Rules might’ve been on to something.)
Each woman would last a while but eventually expire—maybe he fails to feed her properly or she accidentally falls off the ledge or he picks her up too roughly or she fails to meet his expectation somehow so he gets mad and smashes her. The only thing unique about Ann’s case is that this time people come after her, armed with guns, gas bombs, and little concern for consequences.
Racism
Viewers today ought to be prepared to face head-on the issue of racism in King Kong.
Most immediately evident are the islanders, presented in stereotypical ways with appearance, customs, and actions probably chosen to signal “primitive.”
But it’s fair to note that many of the condescending and bigoted things the movie tells us about the islanders (like the idea that they’ve been degraded and lost the civilization that the wall-builders possessed) come out of the mouths of white men thoroughly ignorant of their history and culture, and we can easily suppose that what we’re hearing is the result of these men’s own biases, arrogance, and sense of cultural superiority, not anything remotely like an accurate assessment of the islanders.
In other words, we can often pin the racism not on the movie itself but on the characters, and observe that they are being people of their time, idiotically spouting things they don’t know because it suits their hyper-inflated ideas about white culture. Instead of pointing at the islanders and saying, “Wow, they’re savage!” we can point to Denham and the sailors and say, “Wow, they’re clueless and prejudiced!” if we choose to.
Logically the people of the island ought to be Pacific Islanders, or conceivably Indigenous South Americans, and not Africans, but the movie seems to have relied largely on African American actors to play these parts (and maybe a few white men painted to look black). In some shots the filmmakers have apparently made a special effort to emphasize people’s hair and facial expressions in ways that are brief but cringeworthy.
On the other hand, note that the islanders are entirely ready to throw spears at Kong and fight him, hopeless or not. They are not trapped in any superstition about the sanctity of an “ape god” as we might expect to find in a movie of this era. They know very well Kong is a threat and that he is not so sacred they must be passive before him.
Also some of the shots of islanders facing Kong have clear parallels in the shots of New Yorkers facing him. Kong reaches into a two-story hut to pull out a nameless victim; Kong reaches into a hotel window to pull out a nameless victim. Kong throws a hut wall that lands on islanders in the foreground; Kong throws an awning that lands on New Yorkers in the foreground. Kong puts an islander in his mouth; Kong puts a businessman in his mouth. The island defenders hurl spears; the city defenders fire pistols. There’s no difference in bravery or panic or commotion, only a difference in technology.
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Charlie the Chinese cook speaks in stereotypical language, and his role on ship is subservient, but in his actions and behavior he’s never a caricature or a joke. In fact when he finds a pivotal clue he immediately knows what to do and correctly takes the initiative without hesitation or doubt, setting in motion the next portion of the plot. He’s a capable, intelligent individual, not just a servant to white people.
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In addition to all that is Kong himself. Yes, he’s a gorilla, not a human being, but the racist comparison of Africans and African Americans to apes has a long history, and this is an ape with an obsession for a white woman, and such obsession is another old racist trope. You can watch and enjoy the movie on its surface terms without getting the idea that Kong symbolizes black men or a black man, but when you’re aware of racist slurs and imagery it’s hard to believe the filmmakers weren’t playing with this notion on some level, though it would be more as a way to heighten white viewers’ anxiety than as any kind of direct allegory or analogy. (There’s no reactionary social message here like you can find in Pierre Boule’s Planet of the Apes novel or the movie[s] made from it.)
King Kong doesn’t try to tell us what the islanders are thinking when they go out of their way to sacrifice Ann. Viewers may assume—and may have been expected to assume—that it’s because her whiteness makes her a “superior” sacrifice, but this is hardly a necessary conclusion. It may simply be that since the outsiders ruined the first ceremony, one of the outsiders should become the replacement sacrifice. Maybe the islanders also thought that although this woman looked bizarre to them, Kong might like a little variety, and it meant no one from their own community needed to die.
On the other hand, we do not actually know that this is a human sacrifice meant to appease the giant ape; for all we know, the local woman who was nearly delivered to Kong was being punished for some terrible deed, and that gong they rang to summon him was sounded only when they happened to have a capital punishment to mete out.
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In any case we ought to marvel at and respect the resilience, ingenuity, and intelligence of the islanders and their ancestors for creating a viable human community in such an intensely inhospitable place.
Natural History
It is hard to imagine any natural history that would allow giant gorillas to develop on an island populated by dinosaurs, even if we accept giant gorillas as biologically possible. (There was, at least, gigantopithecus, apparently a massive prehistoric orangutan.) I would propose that the dinosaurs, reptiles, and insects are native to the island but gorillas are not. Giant gorillas, let us imagine, are native to some other island (or mainland) and were brought to Skull Island by the humans who journeyed there—possibly as a necessary condition for settlement. It may be that without giant gorillas protecting them they would not have been able to establish a community in this hostile place. Suppose that these humans had tamed giant gorillas in their previous home, and brought several along as breeding stock, but at some point in intervening history the gorillas became feral and mostly died out, leaving Kong as probably the last survivor.
Miscellaneous
You’d think the path to the captive sacrifice would already be clear of trees, unless it has been a LONG time since the last one.
Most of the time when you use a dummy for a human body it looks silly, as when the brontosaur-type lake creature grabs people in its mouth. But when Kong shakes the men off the log and the “bodies” land on the rocks below, the limp, flailing limbs kind of work, uncomfortably.
Kong has brute strength, but he doesn’t defeat a tyrannosaur with that. He wins by using intelligence and skill, able to outfight his deadly opponent with dodges and wrestling moves.
Ann screams too much (with provocation, yes), and you can see that some of this has been added to the soundtrack when Fay Wray is not mouthing any screams.
Kong’s scale is inconsistent. How big IS he compared to a human being? His size shifts around even on the island.
I’m pretty sure that instead of skirting around Kong and climbing down a cliffside on a vine, I would go back the way I came, on foot.
It’s not really clear how Kong locates Ann in the city. How does he know what building to look in? Was he able to track Driscoll-taking-Ann just as Driscoll tracked Kong-taking-Ann?
In 1933 I’m not sure I would expect a police chief to think of airplanes without prompting from a civilian.
Kong is tough. It takes repeated passes of those planes shooting him before he starts wobbling even a little.
Notice there is not the slightest hint in this film that Ann feels any sympathy for Kong or is sorry for him being killed. There are, though, displays of Kong’s tenderness towards her and maybe even a recognition—at the end when he picks her up the last time—that he should set her down so she won’t be harmed, regardless of what happens to him. And even if Ann is terrified or traumatized, we the audience sympathize with Kong. We have seen him as a feeling, living being with yearning and regrets and anger and posturing and curiosity, and we can be sorry that things turn out the way they do.