Film maker Carl Denham is out to make a film like no one has ever seen before. He obtains a map to a mysterious, hidden, "Skull Island" and sets sail with cast and crew in tow. His entourage includes a down and out starlet by the name of Ann Darrow, and adventurer Jack Driscoll, both of whom fall for each other quickly and just in time for the most horrifying experience of their lives.
When they land on the island they find themselves assailed by everything from dinosaurs to angry locals and, of course, a giant ape by the name of Kong. After an extensive adventure, Kong is captured and whisked off to New York where Denham hopes to exploit him for his own profit. This leads to one of the most iconic moments in cinema history when Kong escapes, rampages through the streets of New York, and climbs the Empire State Building, taking Ann Darrow, with whom he has fallen in love, with him. The rest is movie history.
King Kong definitely carries with it some of the stamps of its time. The film came out during the Great Depression and the theme of being down and out is ever present. The characters have one thing in common when they get on the boat to Skull Island; they all all looking for a way to get ahead and for an adventure to take them away from their troubled lives. Putting aside the obvious racist depiction of the the Island natives and of the ships Asian cook, the film does carry some progressive undertones as well. Arguably, an environmentalist message could be extrapolated about the perils of humanities unbridled exploitation of nature and animals. This theme was played up significantly in the first King Kong remake in 1976.
Regardless, King Kong is a classic, and rightfully so. It's a great movie which was way ahead of its times. The fantastic stop motion work of Willis O'Brien may look rickety and clunky to those who are today accustomed to high tech computer generated graphics, but for its time it was advanced and one of the first times audiences had seen such spectacles as dinosaurs and giant monsters on the big screen. The biggest shame about this movie is that some scenes were cut by the censors and ultimately lost, possibly forever, because they considered them too "disturbing". Among these is the insect pit scene which is present in the 2005 remake of King Kong by Peter Jackson. But even with the limitations of its time, and the having survived at the ignorant hands of the puritanical censors, King Kong remains one of the greatest monster movies of all time.
5 giant apes out of 5
Rated PG/not rated. Contains mild violence.
Watch the King Kong trailer.
Share
No comments:
Post a Comment