It simply didn't feel right to make an entire blog (and year) devoted to giant monster movies without including a King Kong movie. And rather than slog through the 3 hour epic that is Peter Jackson's rendition, which I've seen before and didn't care about at all, I figured why not start with the first. Having never seen it before, it's completing yet another piece of the "movie history" puzzle while allowing me to indulge in the true spirit of 2022: Kaiju.
If You Haven't Seen it Before
- Director Carl Denham needs a leading lady for his new, mysterious film. Finding young Ann Darrow, he casts her and they head off to his shooting location on a boat across the world.
- Eventually revealed to be headed toward Skull Island, the home of the legend Kong, nobody truly understands what awaits them there.
- Upon arrival, the crew finds the natives of the island conducting a ritual to deliver one of the women as the bride of Kong. This is interrupted by the leader wishing to trade several of the island's women for the "golden" Ann.
- Upon being refused, the native people of Skull Island kidnap Ann from the ship and allow Kong to take her as his apparent bride.
- Hoping to recover Ann, the entire crew of the ship outside of Carl and her love interest Jack die while being attacked by the giant creatures of Skull Island.
- Beating several more creatures which want Ann for themselves, Kong protects Ann until Jack manages to finally abscond with her.
- Carl decides to capture Kong with a gas bomb, taking him to exhibit in New York City.
- You know this story. It goes very poorly.
Kaiju Notes
- King Kong is an interesting example of a kaiju looking both really good and really bad. He is, clearly, an effect of some kind. But it's actually a pretty good, expressive effect. Significantly better than Toho's King Kong, and 25 years before they used their suit in one of their own movies.
- The other beasts of Skull Island, including badass dinosaurs, giant arachnids, and angry lizard creatures, suffer from the same problem as Kong. They look pretty good in some shots while being terrible in others, but it's also 1933 so I'm not sure what one can expect. The deaths of several men while in the grasp of horrible creatures is good enough for me to confirm the effects work is not 21st century standard but hella good nonetheless.
- Kong absolutely destroys the jaw of a T-Rex when it attacks Ann. While a bit less mobile than suitmation, the fight is pretty brutal and effective, really showing off the pretty advanced effects at play here.
Kong is perhaps the most explicitly ferocious beast we've yet come across on this journey. Besides literally smashing the jaw of a dinosaur and other kills, Kong also specifically targets humans when they get in his way. After Ann escapes, he rampages through the Skull Island village while literally grabbing humans and eating them and/or tearing them in half alongside smashing their puny bodies. At one point he steps on someone in an attempt to kill them and when they keep moving he steps on them again but this time focused on their head. Kong is a real fucking monster. Even Godzilla, who has previously targeted unarmed humans on purpose, has never looked at any particular one and tried to kill them twice. His lack of ripping them in half may be due to his short arms, however.
The portrayal of the natives of Skull Island is horrendously racist, which isn't terribly surprising for a movies from the 1930's. But I was pleasantly surprised that the actors were not in brown and/or blackface to portray them. There is also an Asian man on the ship who is played by an Asian actor, which was immediately a big relief for me. This is obviously a tremendously low standard and we're not giving it bonus points for being slightly less racist than other films of its time, but it's at least worth acknowledging.
The ending, where Kong escapes, grabs Ann, and climbs to the top of the Empire State Building is surprisingly brief. They steal Kong from Skull Island at about the 80% mark of the movie, and it's a quick 15 minutes from landing in New York City to Kong falling from the skyscraper. This is primarily a good thing, despite being the most well-known part of the movie, because the time on Skull Island is the best part of the movie and it's not close. Not necessarily watching Kong rip apart the native people, though yes that too, but the encounters with dinosaurs and other pissed off giant animals is pretty rad. In a movie about giant monsters doing giant monster things, the movie spends a significant portion of its runtime focused on the giant monsters. Weird concept for some of the movies we've seen, but turns out it pays off.
One would think this movie is really about something, but that's part of the joy: it's really not. Commonly listed as a horror movie, King Kong holds up relatively well as both a horror movie and the effects required, despite being nearly a hundred years old at this point. It is a testament to the appeal of practical effects. Some of the fight sequences with the still motion effects took literal weeks to complete, but it looks infinitely better than "more advanced" effects from the late 90's or early 2000's because it's a real object interacting with other real objects. Even Kong's often goofy expressions are more appealing because of the undeniable substance of the model used.
The transition from here to Gojira seems a bit obvious to me. King Kong is not particularly large, comparatively, but the idea of a giant beast rampaging in (and out of) a city who is eventually brought down isn't a hard line to draw. While Toho added quite a bit more metaphor to their first kaiju film, it's important to note that Gojira was also one of the first tokusatsu movies as well as kaiju. Meaning "special effects," Gojira essentially created two entire genres after being inspired by King Kong. While the subject of a giant monster is clear, the focus on special effects is also a line which can be drawn directly from King Kong, but also unique because the Japanese method of bringing the effects to life was equally innovative and substantial. While the suits they use are not always stellar (looking at you, Toho King Kong), they also create a sense of actual weight that King Kong couldn't fully replicate: the swings and punches being models hitting models rather than people in suits smashing into other people in suits.
Essentially, King Kong is the grandparent of every movie this blog is about so it seemed only fitting to include it on the list. I can see the argument that it is not actually a Kaiju movie, but I'm unconvinced. More on that subject later. Regardless of whether it is or is not a kaiju flick, it's undeniable that the genre essentially started here, and I can see why: it's pretty damn good. I prefer the original Gojira, for my tastes, but King Kong is definitely a movie worth seeing for yourself if for no other reason than the historic place it holds in cinema history.
Next: Daimajin!
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