The ape has escaped. On the eve of King Kong straddling the Empire State Building all over again, SAM KELLY and SHAHIR DAUD chart the history of the beast – via the classic thirties original, and the much-maligned seventies remake – before offering a firsthand review of Peter Jackson's new $200-million version.


King Kong (1933)

MERIAN C. COOPER insisted that King Kong was a dream he had of a giant ape rampaging through New York. Since he was working through dream narratives, it seems entirely appropriate to invoke Freud and his notion of the raging pleasure driven id. And since the film depicts Skull Island natives as a primitive tribe who are all too willing to dispense with six of their women in exchange for the ‘golden’ Ann Darrow (Fay Wray), it’s not so much of a stretch to recontextualize the original King Kong as a slightly skewed view of Anglo-Saxon insecurity.

It’s still laughable to hear Carl Denham’s (Robert Armstrong) famous last line of ‘It was beauty that killed the beast’ exemplifying the epitome of displaced Freudian anxiety. It was of course, Denham himself who killed the beast, along with Ann, Jack (Bruce Cabot) and all of New York, who rallied together and brought the caged primate to his untimely death off the Empire State Building, (and just when he was dangerously close to getting past first base with Ann).

As far as New York narratives go, this is one of the first in a long line of ‘city camaraderie’ films (the last notable was Sam Raimi’s Spiderman 2), which depicts the big apple as a community of likable gruffs, who, when called for would stand up for his fellow neighbor, and form a kind of familial bond with anyone from the burrows to uptown. Coming through the depression however, there was an understandable need to find a common enemy. As Franklin D. Roosevelt so famously put it just a month prior to King Kong’s release, ‘The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself – nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror’.

Many years later, King Kong energized Peter Jackson to become a filmmaker, and it’s easy to see why. Whatever dubious politics and racial inferences the film may have made, it was a stunningly conceived fantasy-adventure, with jaw dropping special effects which still amaze today for their complexity and creativity.

There was also a subtle poignancy to the tale of beauty and the beast, which managed to transcend its crass depictions of the opportunistic filmmaking industry and certainly withstood the test of time.

Rating: 5 Stars
Bonus points for timelessness: +1 Star
Minus points for racial depictions: -2 Stars
Overall rating:

Followed by The Son of Kong


King Kong (1976)

NOW FAMOUSLY condemned as that awful remake which took the magic out of the original and replaced with a needlessly modern take on the monkey versus New York. In fact, John Guillermin’s re-imagining of Kong is surprisingly upbeat and humorous, melding the original's sense of tragedy with an up-to-date evocation of greed (no longer seen as envy outside of the 1930’s setting).

Carl Denham shifts from renegade filmmaker to Fred Prescott (Charles Grodin), oil baron in employ by a large petroleum conglomerate, out in search of a new oil supply to undercut the market. His crew is joined by Jack Prescott (Jeff Bridges), who stows away out of concern for the resources Prescott plans to exploit (people, land and giant primates). Ann Darrow becomes Dwan (Jessica Lange) a slightly vapid party girl in search of fame, and which ever man gave her the most attention – making Kong her ultimate mate – devoted, famous, and ruthlessly powerful. Kong manages to subdue Dwan quickly with a guided tour of his innermost sanctum, bathing and cleaning her and showing her the majesty of his homeland. One wonders what he was doing with the native women who were offered to him for sacrifice.

The romance is thwarted when Prescott comes to the brilliant idea of taking Kong back in lieu of oil. There is, of course, no business like show-business, but you have to wonder how Prescott was planning to make money with his hairy star.

There is that slightly distracting fact that Kong now climbs the Twin Towers rather than the Empire State building, which only adds to the use-by date of the film, but the tragedy of Kong’s demise is played out with far more emotional resonance than its predecessor.

Rating: 3 Stars
Bonus points for Charles Grodin: +2 Stars
Minus points for impermanence: -2 Stars
Overall rating:

Followed by King Kong Lives


King Kong (2005)

WHICH BRINGS us full circle to Peter Jackson’s 2005 extravaganza. Is it unpatriotic to not simply bask in the glory of Jackson and his achievements? It may be an indication of the credence that Jackson commands, that I must preface my review with some unmitigated praise for this epic behemoth about that famous giant monkey. To set matters straight, King Kong is a superb action film and the three major set pieces on Skull Island are unrelenting in their execution and worth the price of admission alone. Jackson proves to be one of the finest action directors of our time even though King Kong is certainly no masterpiece.

As we’d expect from the team that made The Lord of The Rings a worldwide phenomenon, screenwriters Jackson, Fran Walsh, and Phillipa Boyens flesh out many of the briskly covered plot points and the core relationship between Kong and Ann (Naomi Watts). This in itself is very well handled, with few dry eyes at the inevitable conclusion. The problem is the overloaded characters that ultimately provide fodder for Skull Islands many CGI creatures.

Minor characters are given convoluted back stories, which not only add to the Kong-sized running time, but ultimately detract from the central story. Coupled with the hammy score and odd choice of slow-shuttered cameras every time Skull Island is mentioned makes for yawn inducing, roll-your-eyes melodrama, which despite the period setting seems forced.

Of course, this is all forgotten when the crew finally arrives at Skull Island and Jackson turns this somewhat unsuccessful character drama into an incredible action adventure, with some of the most ferocious wrestling scenes ever conceived outside of the WWF (imagine Hulk Hogan reincarnated as an 800 pound gorilla fighting three T-Rex’s at once).

But ultimately while King Kong will blast your senses, and even force you to shed some tears, it’s not a film that will challenge or revolutionize the narrative from which it came. What Jackson’s remake does so brilliantly, is foreground the classic tragedy of beauty and the beast, with real emotional depth. This may be undermined by the peripheral characters and plot lines, but makes for perhaps the most heartfelt fall from a large building to date.

When you think about it, King Kong, in all its incarnations, has always been an adventure movie with boys, guns and scary dinosaurs. Jackson’s recreation of his favorite film is lovingly crafted, but never transcends its roots. It may just be the immense weight of expectations from The Lord Of The Rings that made the 800-pound gorilla seem a little light, or the fact that King Kong may have just been a silly little dream that Merian C. Cooper decided to make into a movie.

Rating: 5 Stars
Bonus points for WWF-style Kong vs. Dinosaurs: +1 Star
Minus points for unnecessary characters: -1 Star
Overall rating:

No sequels... Yet.

—Kong films reviewed by Sam Kelly and Shahir Daud