Fay Wray later said that after making this film, she always felt sad whenever she passed by the Empire State Building, because, as she put it: “A good friend of mine died up there.”
Really...? This shows once again the Americans' unspeakable fixation on America. In fact, Fritz Lang's "Metropolis" was filmed years earlier in Germany. There are a lot of special effects! And that's why this film was the first film ever to be included in the UNESCO World Heritage List...
My 10 year old son just asked me to watch this movie with him a couple of weeks ago. I was SO amazed at how much he loved a film from 33. If you tell a story well, it will work forever. Greetings from México.
"If you tell a story well, it will work forever.” You’re so right! Though dated, these special effects are presented in support of a compelling story. In the absence of a compelling story, special effects, no matter how cutting-edge, are a waste of effort.
King Kong was actually filmed pre-Hays Code, so a lot of stuff from the film ended up getting censored in rereleases in the 1940s and 1950s. The original footage wasn't put back into the movie until the 1980s.
All the inserts of people getting chewed and stomped on were cut out, post Hays Code, and most of the TV versions shown from the 50s to the 80s were the censored version. I remember being quite shocked when I finally got to see the restored version.
Some of the Code's limits were kind of strange. Like when she pointed out the kiss. Yes, it was allowed, but only three seconds. Most people don't know it was only a code, nothing in official law to stop anyone from filming whatever they wanted. The agreement stuck around until the late 1960's for movies, longer on TV.
@@christopherconard2831 One of the very first silent films was called "The Kiss" (1896) . It's around 20 seconds long and recreates a romantic scene from a play that it included a few short kisses and one long one. It was denounced as obscene and condemned by the Catholic Church.
This movie inspired a Los Angeles teenager named Ray Harryhausen who began working with models and later met Wills O'Brien who helped guide him to become even bigger. Ray's name is synonymous with stop motion animation in the movies from the 50s to the 70s before computers changed everything. Some of his highlights include "It Came from Beneath the Sea", "The 7th Voyage of Sinbad", "Mysterious Island", "Jason and the Argonauts", "One Million Years B.C.", "The Valley of Gwangi", "Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger", and "Clash of the Titans".
Ray was my hero starting at age 7 when I did my first clay dinosaur animation and eventually we hit if off and I was pleased and honored to be personal friends with him during the last 15 years of his life. A wonderful human being and loved this movie, his inspiration, until the end. Kong's theme was actually played among other pieces, at his funeral.
According to legend, Fay Wray was such a screaming meemie in the movie, that when they were sound-editing her scenes with Kong, the sound rattled Katherine Hepburn taking an early RKO screen test next door: “What are they DOING to that poor girl??”
@ericjanssen394 Fay Wray screams are the stuff of legends , good to see this classic so iconic ! it set the Blue Print for monster movies to come ! and i do feel how it is a tragic story keep classic movies alive CHEERS .
I hated it when she kept screaming in Kong's presence. I preferred the Peter Jackson version because she felt attached to Kong instead of screaming at him and it was much sadder when he died in that version. 😢
Supposedly O'Brien used "catch" wrestlers as animation reference, which is why you see kong shoot a pretty crisp single-leg takedown on the rex. By a similar token, I’m told several of the people who portrayed kaiju in the godzilla movies were judo black belts. You can kinda see Godzilla pummeling for underhooks in Godzilla Raids Again.
You have to realise, this movie came out a mere 5 - 7 years after talking movies were invented. It would be decades before its effects were improved upon. It was staggeringly ambitious for 1933, especially since it was made during the great depression.
I was going to point out the EXACT same thing. "Talkies" were barely even a thing, and they put THIS together?! Absolutely a STAGGERING achievement for the time.
The stop-motion miniature animation pioneered in King Kong was how most movie monsters were filmed all the way into the 1980s. The chess game in "Star Wars" (1977) and the ED-209 robot in "Robocop" (1987) used the technique. Only when computers were invented in the late 1980s did movie special effects really start to change
@@charlize1253 All good points, but computers existed long before the late 1980's. I remember Tron in 1982 (They used a Cray supercomputer to create all the CGI), and the home computer boom of the 80's. I had an Acorn Electron in 1984 followed by a Commodore 128 (although as I mainly gamed it was used more in Commodore 64 mode) which I bought after I started working, Independence Day in 1996 and Jurassic park in 1997 is probably the film that pushed more of the film companies towards CGI (along with the Star Wars prequels), but the mid 2000's is when it really seemed to take off in mainstream films unfortunately with many of the attempts being really bad. Transporter 2 in 2005 was a notorious example of bad CGI.
I was thinking about it and realized the same thing! I looked up when talking pictures started and yea, just 6 years or so before. This was about talking. The promoter guy was talking it up making the comparison to Beauty and the Beast. They tell the story through a lot of dialogue. Freakin' awesome...! Back when talkin' was a thing 🙂
Talking pictures came out in 1929 first movie called The Jazz Singer. Since Kong was made in 32 before it release in 33 Sound was only around for 3 years. Plus a music score as well. Truly a film a head of the curve.
You gotta watch the later version with, Jeff Bridges and Jessica Lange. It was her film debut. It's basically a remarkable copy of this movie, with 70's technology. One of my favorites.
The Kong stop-motion puppet was built with a metal skeleton and had rubber "muscles" under the fur. I forgot what sound was used as his roar, something like a lion roar played backwards at a slower speed or something like that.
Fun fact! The pilot and machine gunner in the air plane that killed Kong, were the two directors of the film, Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Shoedsack. Another fun fact! Carl Denham is heavily inspired by one of the film's directors, Merian C. Cooper. Yet another fun fact! This film was significantly longer originally, with an entire sequence down in the pit where the men who fell off the log, survived the fall and are eaten by spiders. There was another sequence, after the swamp sequence and before the log sequence, of a giant styracosaur chasing the SS Venture's crew through the jungle, goring some to death as it chased them onto the log. Those two scenes were cut because the film was thought to be too violent. Ironically, while this shortened the film, it came out to 13 reels of film, bad luck. Because of this, they shot the sequence with the elevated train, to get the film to 14 reels, which is where it stayed.
In 1933, they [audiences] didn't understand stop motion. Kong was covered with bunny fur to complete the look. And every frame they'd pose Kong, the fur would shift. When run back through the projector, it created an effect that caused the film critics [of the time] to comment, "Kong is so realistic, his hair bristles in the wind." Also, Jack is a nickname for John.
That always confused me too as a kid. I was born a couple years after JFK was killed and listening to people calling him both John and Jack threw me until I was told how common a nickname it was. Sort of like Chuck for Charles even though Charlie makes more sense.
@@bradparnell614the various unusual nicknames for certain names come primarily from a long time ago, like 18th and 19th century, when the world was far less populated and a lot of people had both the same first and last name, so you'd sometimes need to differentiate, particularly in military units. You could have, for example, four Charles Browns, so you'd get Charles, Charlie, Chaz, and Chuck
When I was little I watched this with my grandparents one night and it blew my mind. It’s a treasured memory and since neither of them are here anymore, I’m happy to watch along here with you.
When Peter Jackson was making his Kong remake about 20 years ago, he wanted Fay Wray to make a cameo, but she died before filming started. Fay Wray died in 2004 at age 96.
He was going to give her the last line, “It was beauty killed the beast.” She did get to meet with Naomi Watts and told Peter Jackson, “Ann Darrow is in safe hands.” She also visited the set of JURASSIC PARK.
Universal actually tried to remake *"KING KONG"* way back in the 1970s (right around the same time as Paramount were working on their own remake, which is set in modern times). Universal's remake was called *"The Legend of KING KONG"* (set in the year 1932) and among the proposed cast which includes Peter Falk, Susan Blakely, Robert Redford, & Richard Harris; the original Ann Darrow herself, Fay Wray was to star in the film as a "Female Reporter", who later said the famous "Beauty killed the Beast" quote at the end.
@@JOSH-lw2jv There actually was a King Kong remake in the 70's. It starred Jeff Bridges, Jessica Lange and Charles Grodin (and ST:DS9's Rene Auberjonois in a supporting role) and involved a ship accidentally discovering Skull Island while searching for new places to drill for oil. Instead of the Empire State Building, Kong climbed the World Trade Center and was killed by helicopters firing missiles.
@@GrinderCB Yes I know that. I was just saying that Paramount wasn't the only production company that wanted to do a big Kong remake in the 1970s. Plus, the choppers were actually armed with M134 miniguns (which interestingly had the sound that would be used for John Rambo's M60 in *"First Blood").* In the 3 hour TV Cut of the '76 remake, there was a deleted scene where they planned to use jet fighters armed with missiles, but the idea was aborted (due to the blackout) in favor of a squadron of choppers.
@@JOSH-lw2jv It's interesting what you say about the choppers. When I went to see this movie as a kid back in 1976, the posters showed fighter jets shooting Kong down, and I was disappointed that they ended up using just choppers.
A massive hit when it came out and saved the RKO studio from bankruptcy. Without Kong, there would have been no Citizen Kane. This movie established all sorts of visual effects techniques and refined those that existed that would last right up until CGI, and some continue to be used today.
King Kong was filmed at RKO studios. 5 years later Gone with the Wind would be filmed at the same studio, by then owned by David O Selznick. In order to clear the backlot to make way for the construction of sets for Gone with the Wind, they burned down all of the old sets, including the wall built for Kong. This inferno was filmed, and used in Gone with the Wind as the burning of Atlanta.
This film was absolutely ground breaking in many ways. First the musical score by Max Steiner was the first score ever written to sync with the action on the screen. The stop action effects were incredibly painstaking. For every second of film action 12 still shots were taken as they incrementally moved the figures. The 5 minute battle with the T-Rex took them about 8 weeks to film. Some of the scenes had 6-7 layers, rear projection, foundation of Mat painting, injection like Picture in Picture, live people….. it had never been done before. The word “BlockBuster” was a result of this film with lines of people going around the Block in New York City creating huge traffic jams. There’s much more, none of the other Kong films come close. With all the advantages in technology of course the picture quality and special effects were better. Kong changed the way movies were made. Max Steiner who wrote and composed the musical score became the “guy” in Hollywood for doing the film musical score. He did “Gone With the Wind “, “Casablanca “ and so many more. Kong gave him his break but his talent was incredible. Thank you for reacting to it, it’s considered one of the most impactful films in film history. 🙏🏻✝️❤️
Fun Fact. There is a scene in Jurassic Park where they are starting the motorized tour. They drive through a big wooden gate. The very same gate from this movie. Jeff Goldblum's character even says "what are they keeping behind that gate, King Kong?"
Glad to finally see the original Kong get the spotlight here. Enjoy the ride, Cassie. When you look at the stop-motion, try to put yourself in the shoes of someone seeing this for the first time in 1933. People had never seen anything like it before.
Well done. You've just experienced a milestone of cinema. And I'm glad you were able to appreciate the effects work for its time. If it wasn't for Kong, there'd be no Godzilla, Jason and the Argonauts, Jaws, Star Wars, E.T., Ghostbusters, or Jurassic Park. The reason it looks so gruesome for 1933 is that this was the Pre-Code age, the early '30s before the Hays Code censored films for a few decades. You'll find a lot of the classic horror films pre-1935 have gruesome moments and strong themes for the time. What this film essentially shows, despite some stereotypes at play here, is how modernity destroys the wonder of the natural world. Kong himself is at his best here because he's a wild animal and king of the island, but as we see more of him, we realize how tragic he is as a character. Later versions try too hard to make him a bit cute. There's a sequel, Son of Kong, that I wouldn't really recommend because it's such a rush job. The 1976 remake is a solid '70s blockbuster that updates the story for its setting, but keeping the same basic plot structure. I actually enjoy it more than the Peter Jackson remake, but I seem to be in the minority on that. This also has a sequel, King Kong Lives. Avoid that one at all costs. The Peter Jackson remake has incredible motion-capture for Kong by Andy Serkis before he was Caesar. The cast is mostly very good, but there's way too many characters and some are removed from the film quite clumsily. Outside of Kong, some of the CGI for the creatures has aged poorly. It's also three-hours long and when you see how well-paced the 1933 original is, there's a lot in Jackson's version that could have been cut out.
FYI, the island set for King Kong was used again in GONE WITH THE WIND. In GWTW the scene where Clark Gable and Viven Leigh escape a burning Atlanta is really the King Kong gates and Islanders' village going up in flames. They were going to destroy that set anyway so they decided to use it for GWTW.😊
This was the original, unedited (uncensored) version. For many years the heavily edited version was the only one available. You got to see what the audiences of 1933 saw. Imagined how shocked they were.
@@allengator1914 It's during the scene where they pop out of the water, for like a few frames. The '33 uncensored version is the one shown originally in theatres. If something's not in there, then it doesn't exist.
Kong was never originally the size of Godzilla, but he was enlarged for their first meeting in the Japanese King Kong vs Godzilla in 1962, and then later in the series of Legendary movies. It was really the only way to get the two iconic giant monsters to meet, east meets west style, since shrinking Godzilla to Kong's size would essentially remove all danger from him and defeat his purpose.
My parents were 9 and 10 years old when this movie came out and saw it in the theater. They both said they were stunned into an almost permanent mouths-wide-open position throughout the movie once Kong made his first appearance.
My Nana saw this movie with her siblings when it first played in the movies. She was only 7 years old. She said they had never seen anything like it. She said they all thought King Kong and the dinosaurs were real, and nearly scared them to death.
After I'd seen the original Kong on TV as a kid, I developed an obsession with Kong and has a crush on Fay Wray. She did an adaptation of The Most Dangerous Game shortly after Kong. They even used some of the same jungle sets.
After I'd seen the original Kong on TV as a kid, I developed an obsession with Kong and has a crush on Fay Wray. She did an adaptation of The Most Dangerous Game shortly after Kong. They even used some of the same jungle sets.
It's a shame she never got to see Peter Jackson's King Kong in 2005. I understand she gave Naomi Watts her personal blessing to play Ann in that movie.
The Empire State Building was the tallest building in the world when it was completed. Kong climbed it 2 years later. The King Kong remake movie in 1976 had Kong climb the newly completed World Trade Center Towers, which was also the tallest building at the time. Sweet!
When I scrolled through youtube and saw that you had uploaded this I heard myself gasp pretty loud! I'm so glad you watched this!!! A movie that influenced me deeply when I was young, among a few other golden era actresses I've got (canadian born) Fay Wray tattooed on my arm. And yeah, for it's time this movie is pretty graphic with all the lifeless bodies bouncing off rocks and whatnot. A reminder to not mess with nature, and don't be greedy. And also, planes won't kill you. Beauty will. Thanks for uploading! Greetings from Sweden
The Denham and Driscoll characters are heavily based on directors Cooper and Schoedsack who were real life adventurers and explorers. Schoedsack's wife Ruth Rose, who wrote much of the script, accompanied them on adventures and knew what it was like to be a lone woman on a ship.
Cooper and Schoedsack show up as the pilot and gunner at the film's climax. It's like they were telling the audience, "We're created the ape. It went out of control. Let's kill the damn thing!" For an 1930s adventure film, it has layers that involve exploitation for entertainment, racism, sexuality, colonization, war, religion and environmentalism. Quentin Tarantino noted those things were absent from the 2005 remake.
This takes me back to being a kid during the 1970s - re-runs on BBC 2 during school holidays. Even then, this was an old movie, but I think my generation of kids had no problems watching old, black and white movies and TV shows. They were just part of the TV landscape.
This was a huge hit in 1933. There were literally lines around the block. Keep in mind this was at the height of the Great Depression. They rushed out a sequel called Son of Kong which is OK. The more worthy follow up was in 1949 with a film called Mighty Joe Young. It was a more light-hearted story about a pet gorilla that is brought to the US as a nightclub act. Same producers/directors as Kong and the same special effects supervisor. It's very entertaining. They remade it in the 90s with Charlize Theron and Bill Paxton.
Yes, it was during the Great Depression, but while other forms of live entertainment fizzled (vaudeville definitively died in the '30s after declining in the '20s), movies boomed: every WEEK, 2 out of 3 Americans went to the movies. Nothing close to that happens today, even with the biggest of blockbusters. But "going to the movies" included a feature film (like Kong), a lower-budget "B-movie," a newsreel (of the week's national and international news), and a few cartoons (Disney, Warner Brothers, etc.). A good deal for about a quarter, even then!
@@richardcanedo1614 A great deal given that that quarter adjusted for inflation today would be worth $5 or $6. That still wouldn't get you in to see a first run movie now.
I actually like this version of Kong because even though he's not very smart or shows signs that he is smart, That's what makes him more supportive because he acts like a actual animal who is confused with things and doesn't understand where he was when he was captured, My old art teacher is a huge fan of this movie and he said to me that this Kong made him feel sorry for him because Kong doesn't know what's happening most of the time, He's only familiar with Skull Island and the creatures that calls it home so his demise in the end really is unsettling because he was taken away from his home and only got killed on the empire state building.
The stop-motion animation looks obvious today, but audiences in 1933 were astonished. A silent movie called "The Lost World" had done stop-motion dinosaurs before (and unless I am mistaken, those effects were also done by Willis O'Brian, who did the effects for King Kong), but hadn't been able to composite them with live actors. Kong's first appearance, with Anne in the foreground, was something no one had ever seen before.
@@Koviklay Oh, it did? It's been a while since I saw it, I didn't remember that. Perhaps my memory was misled by all the emphasis in film histories on how blown-away audiences were with King Kong.
The Empire State building was two years old when this movie was released. In April of 1983, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the release of King Kong, an 84 foot inflatable replica of Kong was positioned at the top of the building.
@@kwebb121765 The Empire State Building was the tallest building in the world when it was completed. The King Kong remake movie in 1976 had Kong climb the newly completed The World Trade Center, which was also the tallest building at the time.
When director James Cameron was casting his little low budget indy film called Titanic his first choice to play Old Rose was none other than Fay Wray, but she politely turned him down. He instead went with another 30's scream queen named Gloria Stewart. She starred in the 1932 Universal film The Invisible Man, another classic that hopefully you'll get around to someday! Also, Marilyn Monroe was born in 1926, making her 7 years old when this movie was made. So we certainly hope Kong was not having an affair with her!
I know people will say this about a lot of groundbreaking effects work, even when it's really dated by today's standards - but imo the effects from The Invisible Man ACTUALLY still hold up!
Willis O’Brien did the stop motion and various other effects for this movie. He is the grandfather of special effects in movies. He pioneered most of the techniques used in this, and movies to this day. Even though things are done with computers now, HOW they are done, the methods and the structure, are ALL exactly the same as O’Brien made for this and his earlier works. I could do a multi hour seminar showing and explaining how O’Brien’s techniques can still be seen in every effects sequence in movies to this day
There was no serious attempts at movie censorship until 1934. The original "Tarzan and His Mate", 1934, had to cut some minor nude scenes, to get the movie approved.
A landmark of special effects. Not claymation, but skeletal metal armatures covered with rubberized material, fur for Kong and scales sculpted on the dinosaurs. Each model could be repositioned one frame at a time. Phenomenal amount of work. Willis O’Brien was the man who developed these techniques. Kong was also a milestone in film music. No one had heard anything like this score by Max Steiner. A beautiful jungle created with matte paintings and table top miniatures. It changed movies forever. Watch the 1976 version and the 2005 version for comparison.
Consider also that this movie was made in 1933, and was not only groundbreaking in special effects, it was one of the first major commercial successes of the sound era.
Ten years ago my grandmother passed away, I took her to see the Peter Jackson remake of King Kong, at the local theatre, and how she enjoyed speaking with the staff there how see saw the original movie as a teenager, it was a lovely evening for a lovely lady,. Miss her, with lots love ❤
Anyone else grow up in the NY/NJ area? WPIX, WWOR, WNEW all featured these amazing black and white monster movies throughout the year (as I’m sure many other stations across the US did as well). There was something special about finding yourself awake at 2am, flicking on the TV and catching KING KONG from the beginning.
They only showed King Kong once a year.....on Thanksgiving. Channel 9 (WOR). They'd show Kong, Son Of Kong and Mighty Joe Young, and that was your only chance to see it until the following year. To this day, I associate King Kong with Thanksgiving!
@@samuelfarro4759 That's where I first saw it in '82 , '83 or so along with the other two mentioned by @TTM9691. Also, my dad took me downtown to 5th Avenue and 34th St. and showed me the huge deflated Kong balloon that was way up high and had failed when something pierced it (looked like a huge hefty bag flapping in the wind). It was put there to commemorate the then 50th anniversary of the film.
The first movie with synchronized sound, known as a "talkie" at the time, was The Jazz Singer (1927). In only six years classics like this film were hitting the theaters. Amazing progress!
@@MackmichealsI would debate that. It affected the whole country. For a studio to back making an effects heavy scifi type film at that time is a big sell.
@@Mackmichealsit didn’t effect the people that would pay money to see it, or any movie theatre to stay open? That’s amazing if it somehow had zero effect on it all on
@@BIGD-cc7ru the industry was essentially the only form of escapism. People were poor but they had enough to scrape together for a film, it didn’t have as high as an opportunity cost as it does today. So movies stayed packed all through the depression.
@@robertjames-life4768 they knew they would make it back because of escapism. Another industry that was not affected was alcohol. People drank more actually even though they had less money.
My dad was born in 1958 so he would have watched this on tv, I was five when i first saw this (I was born 1994) my dad called me downstairs to the living room and he asked me if I wanted to watch a movie I said yes and he turned on TCM (Turner Classic Movies) and I have been hooked on classic movies ever since. Thank you dad miss you so much (2015 RIP)
An exceptional movie for it's time. It was a big budget special effects movie that was the Jurassic Park of it's time. I was always more of a Godzilla fan but I totally appreciate what this movie did to open the eyes of people for what the cinema can do. Thanks for all you do.
The cool thing about what is popularly called “pre-code” movies is that certain prohibitions of what and what could not be shown had not been standardized, established or, at least, enforced. Therefore, movies made in the early 30s had considerably more creative freedom than films made just a few short years afterward.
"Oh, no, it wasn't the airplanes. It was Beauty killed the Beast." One of the best final lines of any movie ever written. Also, just imagine how impressive these special fx must have looked back in 1933, which to me, the original "King Kong" will always be the best version.
My Dad hid under the seats in the movie theater because he was so scared! Lol. He loved telling me that story. And bragging that it only cost ten cents! And fifteen cents for a coke and popcorn! Wow! 😂
It was the Star Wars or Jurassic Park of its time. Willis O'Brien did the effects for the silent version of The Lost World in 1925, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who wrote the book, screened footage of the film at a gentlemen's club he was a member of. They thought they were seeing real dinosaurs.
@@Prayers4allhere And for the dime he saw a newsreel, a cartoon, and an episode of a serial before the feature movie. And it was the only place with air conditioning.
32:40 Mark! That's a mast for airships to dock at! In the movie whose title I can't recall now, we the airship "Hindenburg III" docking there! It was converted to a big antenna eventually, though. 🤔
This was the first movie that had a soundtrack written specifically for the film, written by composer Max Steiner. My uncle had to sneak my mother into the theater to see it. She was 8 years old. When the natives are dragging Fay Wray to the pedestal, my mother confessed that she wet her pants she was so frightened. He was looking for a girl on the street because this was in the middle of the depression. That's why she was stealing from the fruit vendor.
I'm in my 70s. I have seen all of the many King Kong films made over the years. Some better than others. But the amazing thing is...(in my opinion of course) the Kong in this 1933 film is the most believable of any of the cgi Kongs made in recent years. This 1933 film is very dated in the dialog and acting, but the effects are truly amazing for it's time.
Also.....it's just plausible enough that he could beat a T-Rex....using realistic fight moves. As opposed to fighting THREE T-Rex's. The 1933 version doesn't have humans running in a Brontosaurus herd. All of Kong's many fight scenes are all as realistic as you can get so that the only suspension of disbelief we have to do is the idea of a giant monkey on an island of dinosaurs! The '33 version will always be the best and most important because it actually means something.
Everything gets dated, so that's never been a strike against a movie -- I just accept its time period. If anything, it brings historic value which adds to my enjoyment of a film. As for stop-motion, it was around since film began. Willis O'Brien became its main practitioner with his dinosaur epic THE LOST WORLD predating KING KONG by eight years. But it was KONG that utilized stop-motion in a more ambitious way, becoming the first film to feature an animated puppet as its 'star'. I prefer stop-motion over CGI because it looks more solid and magical, whereas CGI looks flat and weightless.
Fay Wray was the original scream queen. This movie followed her the rest of her long life. She worked steadily for a long time but this was always the one she was remembered for. This movie frightened audiences so much back in 1933 that some ran from the theater. It always amazed me how they managed to make me feel so much sympathy for what is basically a wire model with fur on it.
My father-in-law saw this in the theater when it first came out in 1933. The graphics and monsters seem a little goofy to us now but he said it was terrifying back then
In the 1939 Gone With The Wind production, lacking CGI, they had to set fire to real things, so the studio pulled together every old set still around. Right in the middle of this spectacular blazing scene, the King Kong gate can be discerned.
There was an almost immediate sequel to this movie, "Son of Kong", with several actors reprising their roles: Robert Armstrong as Denham, Frank Reicher as Captain Englehorn, Victor Wong as Charlie, and Noble Johnson as the Skull Island chief. As other commenters have said, "King King" slipped in just before strict enforcement of Hollywood's self-imposed Production Code. If you are interested in how the US film industry censored itself in the the 1930s through the 1950s, a good book is "Hollywood's Censor: Joseph I. Breen and the Production Code Administration" by Thomas Doherty.
I am so excited to see this video! My family used to watch this movie every thanksgiving morning! The 1976 version is my personal favorite. But this movie is epic!
The Empire State Building was the tallest building in the world when it was completed. Kong climbs it. The King Kong remake movie in 1976 had Kong climb the newly completed The World Trade Center, which was also the tallest building at the time. Sweet!
When I was in my early twenties, I drove into New York City to visit the set where they were filming yet another version of King Kong in 1976. This time they had Kong climb the World Trade Center, which was only 5 years old at the time. They were preparing to film the scene where Kong has just fallen from the tower. Unfortunately, there was a chance of rain that evening, so they suspended shooting for the night. There used to be a plaza between the 2 towers and they had the giant Kong laid out on his back in the middle of that area. He was covered by a massive tarp, but you could see large styrafoam blocks made to look like broken up concrete all around him. All we could see of Kong was the fur sticking out from under the tarp. Didn't get to see any filming, but it was still pretty cool.
I first saw the 1933 King Kong when I was 6 years old in 1976. When Kong crashed through the trees to grab Fay Wray, I bolted from the room in terror but stood by the door to the living room to see what happened. I became an instant fan. I even wrote a handwritten letter to Fay Wray (my dad found her agent info somehow) with my dad assisting with some of the spelling LOL. We mailed it with a newspaper clipping enclosed w my letter, but I never heard anything. Around that same time, I had (still have) a rare King Kong doll with a mini-transistor radio in its back. Some old guy saw me with it one day and said to me and my mom; "I saw King Kong in NYC in the '30's at the movies and it scared me and everybody in the audience!" Nobody had EVER seen anything like it back then.
This is what inspired the great stop-motion animator Ray Harryhausen I believe. He then did special effects for a film called "Might Joe Young" (1949) which was also about a gorilla if I remember correctly...
Fay Wray had the best scream Hollywood has ever known. Kong was a moveable model about a foot tall . Small move , take a picture over and over and over again. That is stop motion animation. Pain steaking process. Just the fight between Kong and the T Rex took 7 weeks to shoot.
The average price per ticket was probably around . 25 cents and it made over 5 million . Wow and with half the population and the worst year of the Depression. This had to blow the audience away.
@@williambowman2326 I've heard certain genres of movies actually did better during the depression because of their escapism value. Absolutely insane how budgets have ballooned since. $500 million for movie and marketing is pretty nuts.
@@ct6852 My Mother was born in 1922 and lived in Oklahoma. She told me that one reason movies were so popular was that the theatres were air conditioned and very very few people had any air conditioning. She also told me that movies did not have start times. You just went to the theater and bought a ticket. There would usually be 2 movies( an A & B film) a short( informative, a musical with a big band, or comedy like The 3 Stooges) a newsreel, a specialty like a travelogue, 2 cartoons in between , and a lot of coming attractions. If there was a specific movie you wanted to see, you would ask the ticket taker outside what time the main feature was supposed to start and they would give an approximate time. Also the studios owned the theaters so you could only go to the theater owned or in a smaller market one that had an independent theater that showed more than one. My Mother would have to go to another town 25 miles away to see some big movies. A group would gather and make a trip to see a spectacular like , she told me, San Francisco . It was a different time .
@@williambowman2326Google had ticket prices at .15 cents but either way that was a lot of money back then. This was when movies were made for people to go watch movies and escape for a little while with what was going on in their lives but the idiots today want to ruin that.
Kong is supposed to be a monster with a hankering for blondes. Jackson's version makes him a big softy like a giant Mighty Joe Young. The '76 version at least keeps him a monster and still horny, and it's shot like an epic.
In Gone With the Wind there is a scene of the burning of Atlanta. The huge wall of the city burning was the actual gate wall for Kin Kong. They filmed it and also got the set space back at the same time. I saw this in a film documentary. What an effective idea really.
KING KONG was one of the first movies I saw as a kid back in the 50s. It played at the old Tivoli Theater in Miami as part of their Saturday matinee movies. I cried when they killed Kong.
So glad You watch these classic masterpieces that are important parts in the development of our culture. Let me suggest that You should absolutely watch "Tarzan the Ape Man" from 1932 starring Johnny Weissmuller. Tarzan is arguably the earliest popular superhero in "modern fiction/popular culture" i.e. stories distributed to mass audience in forms of books/comic strips/films etc... (as opposed to the stories of heroes in Greek mythology, for example). Out of all actors that have played the role of Tarzan, Johnny Weissmuller is the iconic one, and "Tarzan the Ape Man" was the first and most famous film of the series of Tarzan films which he made together with the just as iconic Jane - Maureen O'Sullivan. As it appeared a year earlier, than King Kong, "Tarzan the Ape Man" may actually have influenced the filming of King Kong, as there are certain similarities in the story line. The major difference of course is that Tarzan is not really a beast and his infatuation to the woman he "kidnapped" is not one-sided.
From Wikipedia: "The King Kong character was conceived and created by American filmmaker Merian C. Cooper." Merian Cooper was one of the writers, and one of the directors, of the 1933 movie.
Merian C. Cooper was toying with the idea of a giant ape on the loose when he saw footage of a film that groundbreaking stop-motion animator Willis O'Brien was working on called CREATION. O'Brien's 1925 silent classic THE LOST WORLD, with its giant dinosaurs doing battle, also helped convince Cooper that the Kong story could be brought to the screen. As for me, I find these meticulously hand-rendered special effects to be infinitely more impressive and fun than much of what is tossed off with CGI. Other great examples of stop-motion include, MIGHTY JOE YOUNG, THE BLACK SCORPION, and the films of Willis O'Brien's successor, Ray Harryhausen.
@@porflepopnecker4376 Good post. All I can say, as a biologist, is that I wish they would have taken a small amount of time to study the actual dentition of the great apes (like gorillas).
@@porflepopnecker4376 King Kong ushered in a new era in filmmaking. We got Mighty Joe Young, Godzilla, Jason and the Argonauts, Star Wars, all the way to Jurassic Park. King Kong was Jurassic Park before Jurassic Park.
You asked about kissing regulations. When this film came out, the Hays codes had been formulated but weren't being fully enforced. According to the code, an onscreen kiss that was visible to the camera couldn't last longer than two seconds. To get around that, it was common to turn actors' heads to the side, come up for air every few seconds, whatever worked. There's a bunch of other stuff in this film that wasn't code-compliant, depending on which edit you're watching. Remakes: There's the 1976 Dino DeLaurentis version, where the storyline is somewhat different. And then there's the 2005 Peter Jackson version you mentioned, which is set in the Thirties and is pretty much a direct remake of the original but ramped up on steroids. Yeah, that's worth a watch.
imagine you are just sleeping and a giant monke grabs you through the window and you only have just enough time to freak out before it drops you to your death
Although 'King Kong' looks old-fashioned, it was actually one of the most groundbreaking movies for its time, and all-time. It was groundbreaking in special effects, editing, sound, story, photography, music, and atmosphere. And this movie has inspired many famous filmmakers. A classic movie that still is remembered to this day. Other fun facts: -People would literally save 10 cents ($2.40 today) to buy a ticket to see this movie (it was during the Great Depression, and people had very little money) -It was reported that Adolf Hitler loved this movie -The movie did have some backlash in 1933 for its use of 'extreme' violence -The biplane pilots were paid $10 ($240 today) each for their role in the movie. -The two pilots that shoot down Kong were the movie's directors
The actor playing Jack, Bruce Cabot, was also in a few John Wayne movies; McLintock!, Chisum and Big Jake, I believe, to name just a couple. I recognized his voice immediately.
I'll never forget my first introduction to the legendary movie monster 'KING KONG' was watching Peter Jackson 2005 epic remake from my childhood until I've saw the 1933 black/white classic and then on I've always stated that King Kong is one of my favorite cinema character of all time.
4:40 it's important to remember when this movie was made and released. The 1930s was the Great Depression. If you ever wanted to find somebody who was desperate for a job you went to their shelter or Hooverville (New York Park area filled with homeless tents).
![[Full] 4 ต่อ 4 Celebrity EP.920 | 3 พ.ย. 67 | one31](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/KwiW2M_kAg4/mqdefault.jpg)
Fay Wray later said that after making this film, she always felt sad whenever she passed by the Empire State Building, because, as she put it: “A good friend of mine died up there.”
Kong is the beginning of “movie magic” and special effects. To someone in 1933, this was jaw dropping.
Really...? This shows once again the Americans' unspeakable fixation on America. In fact, Fritz Lang's "Metropolis" was filmed years earlier in Germany. There are a lot of special effects! And that's why this film was the first film ever to be included in the UNESCO World Heritage List...
@@melchiorvonsternberg844 Yes - Metropolis is a masterpiece. But he's correct - this film WAS jaw-dropping in 1933. Love it.
This was jaw dropping to me as a kid in the 70s and 80s
When Fay Wray died in 2004, the Empire State Building dimmed the lights on the spire for 15 minutes in memory to her.
i remember that like it was yesterday!
i was 8,
now i'm almost 30 & a doctor now lol
she was born in Aberta, same as my mom
True!
@@Gravydog316Same as CASSIE as well our lovely reactor here . 😃 🍿 Happy to be part of the PIB club !
The line "It was beauty that killed the beast" was supposed to be spoken by Fay Wray in the remake. She passed before they got the chance to film it.
Nice!! VERY NICE!!!! Fay lived a long time!! 💖
He went to the shelter soup kitchen because it was 1933. During the great depression. People were homeless, out of work and hungry.
This was 4 years into the Great Depression. She was in a soup line to get food. A lot of people could not find work to be able to afford to eat.
My 10 year old son just asked me to watch this movie with him a couple of weeks ago. I was SO amazed at how much he loved a film from 33. If you tell a story well, it will work forever. Greetings from México.
"If you tell a story well, it will work forever.”
You’re so right! Though dated, these special effects are presented in support of a compelling story. In the absence of a compelling story, special effects, no matter how cutting-edge, are a waste of effort.
@@robertstallings7820 Ain't that the truth, just look at the "Rey" trilogy that was supposed to be SW.
King Kong was actually filmed pre-Hays Code, so a lot of stuff from the film ended up getting censored in rereleases in the 1940s and 1950s. The original footage wasn't put back into the movie until the 1980s.
The restored version was released in 1970. I saw it on the big screen that year.
Good to know.
All the inserts of people getting chewed and stomped on were cut out, post Hays Code, and most of the TV versions shown from the 50s to the 80s were the censored version. I remember being quite shocked when I finally got to see the restored version.
Some of the Code's limits were kind of strange. Like when she pointed out the kiss. Yes, it was allowed, but only three seconds.
Most people don't know it was only a code, nothing in official law to stop anyone from filming whatever they wanted. The agreement stuck around until the late 1960's for movies, longer on TV.
@@christopherconard2831 One of the very first silent films was called "The Kiss" (1896) . It's around 20 seconds long and recreates a romantic scene from a play that it included a few short kisses and one long one. It was denounced as obscene and condemned by the Catholic Church.
This movie inspired a Los Angeles teenager named Ray Harryhausen who began working with models and later met Wills O'Brien who helped guide him to become even bigger. Ray's name is synonymous with stop motion animation in the movies from the 50s to the 70s before computers changed everything. Some of his highlights include "It Came from Beneath the Sea", "The 7th Voyage of Sinbad", "Mysterious Island", "Jason and the Argonauts", "One Million Years B.C.", "The Valley of Gwangi", "Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger", and "Clash of the Titans".
Some of the finest films in history.
I think Cassie should watch Clash of the Titans sometime. I remember being so into that as a kid.
I absolutely loved those movies as a kid!🤩
Ray was my hero starting at age 7 when I did my first clay dinosaur animation and eventually we hit if off and I was pleased and honored to be personal friends with him during the last 15 years of his life. A wonderful human being and loved this movie, his inspiration, until the end. Kong's theme was actually played among other pieces, at his funeral.
@@bradparnell614 Ray Harryhausen inspired Peter Jackson. The Watcher in the Water in The Fellowship of the Ring is Jackson’s tribute to Harryhausen.
According to legend, Fay Wray was such a screaming meemie in the movie, that when they were sound-editing her scenes with Kong, the sound rattled Katherine Hepburn taking an early RKO screen test next door: “What are they DOING to that poor girl??”
Fay Wray's screams from this movie are still used in films today
She's STILL the best 😊
@ericjanssen394 Fay Wray screams are the stuff of legends , good to see this classic so iconic !
it set the Blue Print for monster movies to come ! and i do feel how it is a tragic story
keep classic movies alive
CHEERS .
I hated it when she kept screaming in Kong's presence. I preferred the Peter Jackson version because she felt attached to Kong instead of screaming at him and it was much sadder when he died in that version. 😢
@@BillyButcher90 I love that version. My headcanon is that's the story and this one is the movie they made based on it.
7:41 "You gonna tell us what happens when we get there?"
"How can I? I'm not a fortune teller!"
Bones McCoy himself would be proud of that line.
For a movie that came out in 1933 and is now 91 years old, the special effects by Willis O Brien still holds up to this very day. It's unreal.
They are charming.
and it inspired a young man named Ray Harryhausen who dedicated his life to become the greatest stop motion animator...Try...the 7th voyage of sindad
...sinbad
This is all your fault because you stop stealing my life
That's not what the watcher in the video said. No, she remarked that they looked "incredibly fake" (which I thought was a flagrant overstatement).
To this day, that T-Rex battle is still amazing.
...and tenfold more realistic than Kong's battle with the snake in the needless 1976 remake.
Supposedly O'Brien used "catch" wrestlers as animation reference, which is why you see kong shoot a pretty crisp single-leg takedown on the rex.
By a similar token, I’m told several of the people who portrayed kaiju in the godzilla movies were judo black belts. You can kinda see Godzilla pummeling for underhooks in Godzilla Raids Again.
@@FischerFanThe 1976 movie was infinitely better than that Peter Jackson monstrosity!
@@Enthymene Don't forget the crab ride/back pack, headlock and run the pipe finish of the single! Also, a lot of unsportsmanlike conduct!
You have to realise, this movie came out a mere 5 - 7 years after talking movies were invented. It would be decades before its effects were improved upon. It was staggeringly ambitious for 1933, especially since it was made during the great depression.
I was going to point out the EXACT same thing. "Talkies" were barely even a thing, and they put THIS together?! Absolutely a STAGGERING achievement for the time.
The stop-motion miniature animation pioneered in King Kong was how most movie monsters were filmed all the way into the 1980s. The chess game in "Star Wars" (1977) and the ED-209 robot in "Robocop" (1987) used the technique. Only when computers were invented in the late 1980s did movie special effects really start to change
@@charlize1253 All good points, but computers existed long before the late 1980's. I remember Tron in 1982 (They used a Cray supercomputer to create all the CGI), and the home computer boom of the 80's. I had an Acorn Electron in 1984 followed by a Commodore 128 (although as I mainly gamed it was used more in Commodore 64 mode) which I bought after I started working,
Independence Day in 1996 and Jurassic park in 1997 is probably the film that pushed more of the film companies towards CGI (along with the Star Wars prequels), but the mid 2000's is when it really seemed to take off in mainstream films unfortunately with many of the attempts being really bad. Transporter 2 in 2005 was a notorious example of bad CGI.
I was thinking about it and realized the same thing! I looked up when talking pictures started and yea, just 6 years or so before. This was about talking. The promoter guy was talking it up making the comparison to Beauty and the Beast. They tell the story through a lot of dialogue. Freakin' awesome...! Back when talkin' was a thing 🙂
Talking pictures came out in 1929 first movie called The Jazz Singer.
Since Kong was made in 32 before it release in 33 Sound was only around for 3 years.
Plus a music score as well.
Truly a film a head of the curve.
You gotta watch the later version with, Jeff Bridges and Jessica Lange. It was her film debut. It's basically a remarkable copy of this movie, with 70's technology. One of my favorites.
It's an interesting 1970s take (i e. Environmental movement, etc.) with the girl being more sympathetic to Kong.
No you absolutely DO NOT "gotta" to watch that piece of crap "copy".
Almost 100 years old and this film is still a technical marvel.
Facts! And just flat-out entertaining
The Kong stop-motion puppet was built with a metal skeleton and had rubber "muscles" under the fur. I forgot what sound was used as his roar, something like a lion roar played backwards at a slower speed or something like that.
@@dr.burtgummerfan439 his roar was a combination of a lion and bear iirc
Fun fact! The pilot and machine gunner in the air plane that killed Kong, were the two directors of the film, Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Shoedsack.
Another fun fact! Carl Denham is heavily inspired by one of the film's directors, Merian C. Cooper.
Yet another fun fact! This film was significantly longer originally, with an entire sequence down in the pit where the men who fell off the log, survived the fall and are eaten by spiders. There was another sequence, after the swamp sequence and before the log sequence, of a giant styracosaur chasing the SS Venture's crew through the jungle, goring some to death as it chased them onto the log. Those two scenes were cut because the film was thought to be too violent. Ironically, while this shortened the film, it came out to 13 reels of film, bad luck. Because of this, they shot the sequence with the elevated train, to get the film to 14 reels, which is where it stayed.
I love how Cooper came up with the idea of being the pilots by saying...
"We made em, we should kill the Son of a B***h ourselves!"
In 1933, they [audiences] didn't understand stop motion. Kong was covered with bunny fur to complete the look. And every frame they'd pose Kong, the fur would shift. When run back through the projector, it created an effect that caused the film critics [of the time] to comment, "Kong is so realistic, his hair bristles in the wind."
Also, Jack is a nickname for John.
I've always noticed that about Kong's fur too. I didn't know that others had.
That always confused me too as a kid. I was born a couple years after JFK was killed and listening to people calling him both John and Jack threw me until I was told how common a nickname it was. Sort of like Chuck for Charles even though Charlie makes more sense.
@@bradparnell614the various unusual nicknames for certain names come primarily from a long time ago, like 18th and 19th century, when the world was far less populated and a lot of people had both the same first and last name, so you'd sometimes need to differentiate, particularly in military units.
You could have, for example, four Charles Browns, so you'd get Charles, Charlie, Chaz, and Chuck
lol they did too understand stop motion, if they didn’t, this movie wouldn’t have been made
@@peytone5387 I made some edits to help clarify.
When I was little I watched this with my grandparents one night and it blew my mind. It’s a treasured memory and since neither of them are here anymore, I’m happy to watch along here with you.
When Peter Jackson was making his Kong remake about 20 years ago, he wanted Fay Wray to make a cameo, but she died before filming started. Fay Wray died in 2004 at age 96.
He was going to give her the last line, “It was beauty killed the beast.” She did get to meet with Naomi Watts and told Peter Jackson, “Ann Darrow is in safe hands.” She also visited the set of JURASSIC PARK.
Universal actually tried to remake *"KING KONG"* way back in the 1970s (right around the same time as Paramount were working on their own remake, which is set in modern times).
Universal's remake was called
*"The Legend of KING KONG"*
(set in the year 1932) and among the proposed cast which includes Peter Falk, Susan Blakely,
Robert Redford, & Richard Harris;
the original Ann Darrow herself,
Fay Wray was to star in the film
as a "Female Reporter", who later
said the famous "Beauty killed the Beast" quote at the end.
@@JOSH-lw2jv There actually was a King Kong remake in the 70's. It starred Jeff Bridges, Jessica Lange and Charles Grodin (and ST:DS9's Rene Auberjonois in a supporting role) and involved a ship accidentally discovering Skull Island while searching for new places to drill for oil. Instead of the Empire State Building, Kong climbed the World Trade Center and was killed by helicopters firing missiles.
@@GrinderCB
Yes I know that. I was just saying that Paramount wasn't the only production company that wanted to do a big Kong remake in the 1970s.
Plus, the choppers were actually armed with M134 miniguns (which interestingly had the sound that would be used for John Rambo's
M60 in *"First Blood").*
In the 3 hour TV Cut of the '76 remake, there was a deleted scene where they planned to use jet fighters armed with missiles, but the idea was aborted (due to the blackout) in favor of a squadron of choppers.
@@JOSH-lw2jv It's interesting what you say about the choppers. When I went to see this movie as a kid back in 1976, the posters showed fighter jets shooting Kong down, and I was disappointed that they ended up using just choppers.
A massive hit when it came out and saved the RKO studio from bankruptcy. Without Kong, there would have been no Citizen Kane.
This movie established all sorts of visual effects techniques and refined those that existed that would last right up until CGI, and some continue to be used today.
This is one of the best movies of all time. After almost 90 years the special effecrs still hold up today.
@@batmanforpresident9655 🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️
@@jbwade5676 not all of the effects, but some were still pretty good.
@@jbwade5676 asshole 🙄
King Kong was filmed at RKO studios. 5 years later Gone with the Wind would be filmed at the same studio, by then owned by David O Selznick. In order to clear the backlot to make way for the construction of sets for Gone with the Wind, they burned down all of the old sets, including the wall built for Kong. This inferno was filmed, and used in Gone with the Wind as the burning of Atlanta.
This film was absolutely ground breaking in many ways. First the musical score by Max Steiner was the first score ever written to sync with the action on the screen. The stop action effects were incredibly painstaking. For every second of film action 12 still shots were taken as they incrementally moved the figures. The 5 minute battle with the T-Rex took them about 8 weeks to film. Some of the scenes had 6-7 layers, rear projection, foundation of Mat painting, injection like Picture in Picture, live people….. it had never been done before. The word “BlockBuster” was a result of this film with lines of people going around the Block in New York City creating huge traffic jams. There’s much more, none of the other Kong films come close. With all the advantages in technology of course the picture quality and special effects were better. Kong changed the way movies were made. Max Steiner who wrote and composed the musical score became the “guy” in Hollywood for doing the film musical score. He did “Gone With the Wind “, “Casablanca “ and so many more. Kong gave him his break but his talent was incredible. Thank you for reacting to it, it’s considered one of the most impactful films in film history. 🙏🏻✝️❤️
It still is one of the greatest films ever made. My favorite film and character all in one.
@@shadowwarrior5984 absolutely agree with you !! 🙏🏻✝️❤️
wow, amazing !
And movies were still pretty new at this time. Sound films had only been around for a few years prior to this.
Fun Fact. There is a scene in Jurassic Park where they are starting the motorized tour. They drive through a big wooden gate. The very same gate from this movie. Jeff Goldblum's character even says "what are they keeping behind that gate, King Kong?"
Glad to finally see the original Kong get the spotlight here. Enjoy the ride, Cassie. When you look at the stop-motion, try to put yourself in the shoes of someone seeing this for the first time in 1933. People had never seen anything like it before.
Well done. You've just experienced a milestone of cinema. And I'm glad you were able to appreciate the effects work for its time. If it wasn't for Kong, there'd be no Godzilla, Jason and the Argonauts, Jaws, Star Wars, E.T., Ghostbusters, or Jurassic Park.
The reason it looks so gruesome for 1933 is that this was the Pre-Code age, the early '30s before the Hays Code censored films for a few decades. You'll find a lot of the classic horror films pre-1935 have gruesome moments and strong themes for the time.
What this film essentially shows, despite some stereotypes at play here, is how modernity destroys the wonder of the natural world. Kong himself is at his best here because he's a wild animal and king of the island, but as we see more of him, we realize how tragic he is as a character. Later versions try too hard to make him a bit cute.
There's a sequel, Son of Kong, that I wouldn't really recommend because it's such a rush job.
The 1976 remake is a solid '70s blockbuster that updates the story for its setting, but keeping the same basic plot structure. I actually enjoy it more than the Peter Jackson remake, but I seem to be in the minority on that. This also has a sequel, King Kong Lives. Avoid that one at all costs.
The Peter Jackson remake has incredible motion-capture for Kong by Andy Serkis before he was Caesar. The cast is mostly very good, but there's way too many characters and some are removed from the film quite clumsily. Outside of Kong, some of the CGI for the creatures has aged poorly. It's also three-hours long and when you see how well-paced the 1933 original is, there's a lot in Jackson's version that could have been cut out.
They did if they regularly went to the movies. 1925's 'The Lost World' for one but yeah, not as often as after Kong.
Jack the Giant Killer (1963) blew my mind as a young child, lol.
@jorluo Nobody's seen Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublev 205 minute Criterion cut. I recall getting baked to that one and, man, made an impact on me.
In a sense, you could say many people still haven't, if this is their first stop motion movie.
Stop motion animation was used to bring Kong alive. Close ups of his head was a full scale puppet.
FYI, the island set for King Kong was used again in GONE WITH THE WIND. In GWTW the scene where Clark Gable and Viven Leigh escape a burning Atlanta is really the King Kong gates and Islanders' village going up in flames. They were going to destroy that set anyway so they decided to use it for GWTW.😊
Very sad to see it burnt into nothingness.
I've also read that they burned sets used for Ben-Hur (the silent version, of course) with Ramon Navarro.
The thought of King Kong picking up Marilyn Monroe with flowers and chocolate is hilarious!
This was the original, unedited (uncensored) version. For many years the heavily edited version was the only one available. You got to see what the audiences of 1933 saw. Imagined how shocked they were.
Then she must have edited it out because in the original uncensored version Fay Wray's right breast was completely exposed for a brief moment.
@@allengator1914 It's during the scene where they pop out of the water, for like a few frames. The '33 uncensored version is the one shown originally in theatres. If something's not in there, then it doesn't exist.
Not only was the film edited upon re-release to adhere to the Code, but also darkened to disguise the blood.
Kong was never originally the size of Godzilla, but he was enlarged for their first meeting in the Japanese King Kong vs Godzilla in 1962, and then later in the series of Legendary movies.
It was really the only way to get the two iconic giant monsters to meet, east meets west style, since shrinking Godzilla to Kong's size would essentially remove all danger from him and defeat his purpose.
My parents were 9 and 10 years old when this movie came out and saw it in the theater. They both said they were stunned into an almost permanent mouths-wide-open position throughout the movie once Kong made his first appearance.
Your parents watched this together when they were 9 and 10 years old ? 💞 That's adorable!
My Nana saw this movie with her siblings when it first played in the movies. She was only 7 years old. She said they had never seen anything like it. She said they all thought King Kong and the dinosaurs were real, and nearly scared them to death.
And Fay was beautiful. She sign autographs all the way up to her death in 2004 . She was 96 years old. We miss her dearly. R.I.P. Fay .
After I'd seen the original Kong on TV as a kid, I developed an obsession with Kong and has a crush on Fay Wray. She did an adaptation of The Most Dangerous Game shortly after Kong. They even used some of the same jungle sets.
After I'd seen the original Kong on TV as a kid, I developed an obsession with Kong and has a crush on Fay Wray. She did an adaptation of The Most Dangerous Game shortly after Kong. They even used some of the same jungle sets.
It's a shame she never got to see Peter Jackson's King Kong in 2005. I understand she gave Naomi Watts her personal blessing to play Ann in that movie.
It's my understanding she was still even driving her car very coherently until her passing.
@@richardb6260 Actually, 'The Most Dangerous Game' was released in 1932, the year before Kong hit the theatres.
The Empire State Building was the tallest building in the world when it was completed. Kong climbed it 2 years later.
The King Kong remake movie in 1976 had Kong climb the newly completed World Trade Center Towers, which was also the tallest building at the time.
Sweet!
"It was beauty that killed the beast" was also the last line in the 2005 remake with Jack Black. I love how they kept that line.
When I scrolled through youtube and saw that you had uploaded this I heard myself gasp pretty loud! I'm so glad you watched this!!! A movie that influenced me deeply when I was young, among a few other golden era actresses I've got (canadian born) Fay Wray tattooed on my arm. And yeah, for it's time this movie is pretty graphic with all the lifeless bodies bouncing off rocks and whatnot. A reminder to not mess with nature, and don't be greedy. And also, planes won't kill you. Beauty will.
Thanks for uploading! Greetings from Sweden
I have lost count how many times I have seen this movie. I cry every damn time Kong dies.
One of my favorite lines has always been, “Say . . . I guess I love you”. Thank you for doing this reaction, Cassie. I’ve been waiting for it.
The Denham and Driscoll characters are heavily based on directors Cooper and Schoedsack who were real life adventurers and explorers. Schoedsack's wife Ruth Rose, who wrote much of the script, accompanied them on adventures and knew what it was like to be a lone woman on a ship.
This is all lost on modern viewers who gush over the pointless '05 remake but don't have a clue as to what the original KING KONG is all about.😊
Cooper and Schoedsack show up as the pilot and gunner at the film's climax. It's like they were telling the audience, "We're created the ape. It went out of control. Let's kill the damn thing!"
For an 1930s adventure film, it has layers that involve exploitation for entertainment, racism, sexuality, colonization, war, religion and environmentalism. Quentin Tarantino noted those things were absent from the 2005 remake.
This takes me back to being a kid during the 1970s - re-runs on BBC 2 during school holidays. Even then, this was an old movie, but I think my generation of kids had no problems watching old, black and white movies and TV shows. They were just part of the TV landscape.
This was a huge hit in 1933. There were literally lines around the block. Keep in mind this was at the height of the Great Depression. They rushed out a sequel called Son of Kong which is OK. The more worthy follow up was in 1949 with a film called Mighty Joe Young. It was a more light-hearted story about a pet gorilla that is brought to the US as a nightclub act. Same producers/directors as Kong and the same special effects supervisor. It's very entertaining. They remade it in the 90s with Charlize Theron and Bill Paxton.
Yes, it was during the Great Depression, but while other forms of live entertainment fizzled (vaudeville definitively died in the '30s after declining in the '20s), movies boomed: every WEEK, 2 out of 3 Americans went to the movies. Nothing close to that happens today, even with the biggest of blockbusters. But "going to the movies" included a feature film (like Kong), a lower-budget "B-movie," a newsreel (of the week's national and international news), and a few cartoons (Disney, Warner Brothers, etc.). A good deal for about a quarter, even then!
@@richardcanedo1614 A great deal given that that quarter adjusted for inflation today would be worth $5 or $6. That still wouldn't get you in to see a first run movie now.
I actually like this version of Kong because even though he's not very smart or shows signs that he is smart, That's what makes him more supportive because he acts like a actual animal who is confused with things and doesn't understand where he was when he was captured, My old art teacher is a huge fan of this movie and he said to me that this Kong made him feel sorry for him because Kong doesn't know what's happening most of the time, He's only familiar with Skull Island and the creatures that calls it home so his demise in the end really is unsettling because he was taken away from his home and only got killed on the empire state building.
The stop-motion animation looks obvious today, but audiences in 1933 were astonished. A silent movie called "The Lost World" had done stop-motion dinosaurs before (and unless I am mistaken, those effects were also done by Willis O'Brian, who did the effects for King Kong), but hadn't been able to composite them with live actors. Kong's first appearance, with Anne in the foreground, was something no one had ever seen before.
Yes, it was Willis O’Brien on The Lost World (1925).
Actually, THE LOST WORLD did combine live actors with stop-motion puppets, albeit not as ambitiously as KONG would.
@@Koviklay Oh, it did? It's been a while since I saw it, I didn't remember that. Perhaps my memory was misled by all the emphasis in film histories on how blown-away audiences were with King Kong.
LOST WORLD used split screen to combine live actors with the animated puppets. This film should be given more attention than it gets.
th-cam.com/video/loPZFVju8Nw/w-d-xo.htmlsi=viRYqD8r7GcEy6yP
The Empire State building was two years old when this movie was released. In April of 1983, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the release of King Kong, an 84 foot inflatable replica of Kong was positioned at the top of the building.
Yes... I remember it. Unfortunately, it sprung a leak and deflated. It was sad to see the deflated Kong hanging on the Empire State Building.
@@paulfrombrooklyn5409He met a doomed fate just like the movie lol
This movie put that building on the cultural map in a way that it wasn't before.
I remember that Kong on the.😮empire state building in '83
@@kwebb121765 The Empire State Building was the tallest building in the world when it was completed.
The King Kong remake movie in 1976 had Kong climb the newly completed The World Trade Center, which was also the tallest building at the time.
When director James Cameron was casting his little low budget indy film called Titanic his first choice to play Old Rose was none other than Fay Wray, but she politely turned him down. He instead went with another 30's scream queen named Gloria Stewart. She starred in the 1932 Universal film The Invisible Man, another classic that hopefully you'll get around to someday!
Also, Marilyn Monroe was born in 1926, making her 7 years old when this movie was made. So we certainly hope Kong was not having an affair with her!
I know people will say this about a lot of groundbreaking effects work, even when it's really dated by today's standards - but imo the effects from The Invisible Man ACTUALLY still hold up!
Willis O’Brien did the stop motion and various other effects for this movie. He is the grandfather of special effects in movies. He pioneered most of the techniques used in this, and movies to this day.
Even though things are done with computers now, HOW they are done, the methods and the structure, are ALL exactly the same as O’Brien made for this and his earlier works. I could do a multi hour seminar showing and explaining how O’Brien’s techniques can still be seen in every effects sequence in movies to this day
There was no serious attempts at movie censorship until 1934. The original "Tarzan and His Mate", 1934, had to cut some minor nude scenes, to get the movie approved.
A landmark of special effects. Not claymation, but skeletal metal armatures covered with rubberized material, fur for Kong and scales sculpted on the dinosaurs. Each model could be repositioned one frame at a time. Phenomenal amount of work. Willis O’Brien was the man who developed these techniques. Kong was also a milestone in film music. No one had heard anything like this score by Max Steiner. A beautiful jungle created with matte paintings and table top miniatures. It changed movies forever. Watch the 1976 version and the 2005 version for comparison.
Consider also that this movie was made in 1933, and was not only groundbreaking in special effects, it was one of the first major commercial successes of the sound era.
Ten years ago my grandmother passed away, I took her to see the Peter Jackson remake of King Kong, at the local theatre, and how she enjoyed speaking with the staff there how see saw the original movie as a teenager, it was a lovely evening for a lovely lady,. Miss her, with lots love ❤
Peter Jackson (The guy who did The Lord of the Rings Trilogy) did a fantastic remake of this movie.
Yeah, I went to see it back in '05, and they're reaching the island right about.... now...
'76 version was much better.
@@nrrorkha ha...
I've seen this movie... dozens of times. When I saw it as a kid, I always cried when Kong was killed.
Anyone else grow up in the NY/NJ area? WPIX, WWOR, WNEW all featured these amazing black and white monster movies throughout the year (as I’m sure many other stations across the US did as well).
There was something special about finding yourself awake at 2am, flicking on the TV and catching KING KONG from the beginning.
King Kong on WWOR was a Thanksgiving tradition for many, many years.
They only showed King Kong once a year.....on Thanksgiving. Channel 9 (WOR). They'd show Kong, Son Of Kong and Mighty Joe Young, and that was your only chance to see it until the following year. To this day, I associate King Kong with Thanksgiving!
@@samuelfarro4759 That's where I first saw it in '82 , '83 or so along with the other two mentioned by @TTM9691. Also, my dad took me downtown to 5th Avenue and 34th St. and showed me the huge deflated Kong balloon that was way up high and had failed when something pierced it (looked like a huge hefty bag flapping in the wind). It was put there to commemorate the then 50th anniversary of the film.
Same with March of the Wooden Soldiers on WPIX at Christmas ☺️
Yes, fond memories and life changing. I've been a fan of "Horror" movies ever since. I'm 72.
The first movie with synchronized sound, known as a "talkie" at the time, was The Jazz Singer (1927). In only six years classics like this film were hitting the theaters. Amazing progress!
You should watch the Peter Jackson remake. He does a good job of "humanizing" Kong. Fay Wray, the original 'scream queen'.
KING KONG (1933) is a classic!.
Don’t forget the period this was made in the middle of the depression. It’s a miracle this movie was ever made in those days.
Actually it’s not. The depression did not have an effect on the film industry. Source: a University Film Professor
@@MackmichealsI would debate that. It affected the whole country. For a studio to back making an effects heavy scifi type film at that time is a big sell.
@@Mackmichealsit didn’t effect the people that would pay money to see it, or any movie theatre to stay open? That’s amazing if it somehow had zero effect on it all on
@@BIGD-cc7ru the industry was essentially the only form of escapism. People were poor but they had enough to scrape together for a film, it didn’t have as high as an opportunity cost as it does today. So movies stayed packed all through the depression.
@@robertjames-life4768 they knew they would make it back because of escapism. Another industry that was not affected was alcohol. People drank more actually even though they had less money.
My father watched this in the theater! Watching it now, Kong moves like one of those Rankin/Bass holiday special puppets.
My dad was born in 1958 so he would have watched this on tv, I was five when i first saw this (I was born 1994) my dad called me downstairs to the living room and he asked me if I wanted to watch a movie I said yes and he turned on TCM (Turner Classic Movies) and I have been hooked on classic movies ever since. Thank you dad miss you so much (2015 RIP)
An exceptional movie for it's time. It was a big budget special effects movie that was the Jurassic Park of it's time. I was always more of a Godzilla fan but I totally appreciate what this movie did to open the eyes of people for what the cinema can do.
Thanks for all you do.
Like Casablanca, the 1933 King Kong is a go to CLASSIC!!!
My dad was 6 in '33, and was screaming at the top of his lungs when Kong entered the picture. LOL
I grew up watching the 1976 King Kong with Jessica Lange and Jeff Bridges, and Jessica stole my heart.
I have my own interrelated head canon with another Jeff Bridges movie...
And Jessica Lange? Ohhh....
That's the best Kong film in my opinion. I love the mysterious foggy atmosphere of the island and, as you, note the great beauty of Jessica Lange.
This movie is the pinnacle of special effects for its time. I love this classic.
The cool thing about what is popularly called “pre-code” movies is that certain prohibitions of what and what could not be shown had not been standardized, established or, at least, enforced. Therefore, movies made in the early 30s had considerably more creative freedom than films made just a few short years afterward.
Jack Driscoll - "Women, women, can't help being a bother."" (Cassie's reaction! 😄).
Movies were a lot less inhibited back then. Fact is, a lot of men still say things like that, we're just not allowed to put it in a movie. 😊
"Oh, no, it wasn't the airplanes. It was Beauty killed the Beast." One of the best final lines of any movie ever written.
Also, just imagine how impressive these special fx must have looked back in 1933, which to me, the original "King Kong" will always be the best version.
Agreed
But also, the bullets and gravity helped 😅
My Dad hid under the seats in the movie theater because he was so scared! Lol. He loved telling me that story. And bragging that it only cost ten cents! And fifteen cents for a coke and popcorn! Wow! 😂
It was the Star Wars or Jurassic Park of its time.
Willis O'Brien did the effects for the silent version of The Lost World in 1925, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who wrote the book, screened footage of the film at a gentlemen's club he was a member of. They thought they were seeing real dinosaurs.
@@Prayers4allhere And for the dime he saw a newsreel, a cartoon, and an episode of a serial before the feature movie. And it was the only place with air conditioning.
32:40 Mark! That's a mast for airships to dock at! In the movie whose title I can't recall now, we the airship "Hindenburg III" docking there!
It was converted to a big antenna eventually, though. 🤔
This was the first movie that had a soundtrack written specifically for the film, written by composer Max Steiner. My uncle had to sneak my mother into the theater to see it. She was 8 years old. When the natives are dragging Fay Wray to the pedestal, my mother confessed that she wet her pants she was so frightened.
He was looking for a girl on the street because this was in the middle of the depression. That's why she was stealing from the fruit vendor.
Yes, I was noticing the music was in time with the action!
One of many innovations this movie created.
The stop-frame animation blows me away EVERY time. In 1936! Groundbreaking stuff. I love this film.
I'm in my 70s. I have seen all of the many King Kong films made over the years. Some better than others. But the amazing thing is...(in my opinion of course) the Kong in this 1933 film is the most believable of any of the cgi Kongs made in recent years. This 1933 film is very dated in the dialog and acting, but the effects are truly amazing for it's time.
Good point. When he puts her down and falls, I cried due to the expression on his face.
Also.....it's just plausible enough that he could beat a T-Rex....using realistic fight moves. As opposed to fighting THREE T-Rex's. The 1933 version doesn't have humans running in a Brontosaurus herd. All of Kong's many fight scenes are all as realistic as you can get so that the only suspension of disbelief we have to do is the idea of a giant monkey on an island of dinosaurs! The '33 version will always be the best and most important because it actually means something.
Everything gets dated, so that's never been a strike against a movie -- I just accept its time period. If anything, it brings historic value which adds to my enjoyment of a film.
As for stop-motion, it was around since film began. Willis O'Brien became its main practitioner with his dinosaur epic THE LOST WORLD predating KING KONG by eight years. But it was KONG that utilized stop-motion in a more ambitious way, becoming the first film to feature an animated puppet as its 'star'.
I prefer stop-motion over CGI because it looks more solid and magical, whereas CGI looks flat and weightless.
I love this version and it’s my favorite one but I really like Peter Jackson’s version too. Andy Serkis is great as Kong.
Fay Wray was the original scream queen. This movie followed her the rest of her long life. She worked steadily for a long time but this was always the one she was remembered for. This movie frightened audiences so much back in 1933 that some ran from the theater. It always amazed me how they managed to make me feel so much sympathy for what is basically a wire model with fur on it.
In 1951 my parents bought their first TV set. I was 3 years old. This movie is the first thing that we watched on that tv on the evening it came home.
True classic's never get old. Fay Wray was one of my Grandma's favorite people.
My father-in-law saw this in the theater when it first came out in 1933. The graphics and monsters seem a little goofy to us now but he said it was terrifying back then
This movie is a classic! Thank you for watching it!
In the 1939 Gone With The Wind production, lacking CGI, they had to set fire to real things, so the studio pulled together every old set still around. Right in the middle of this spectacular blazing scene, the King Kong gate can be discerned.
Cool fact/ trivia.
I swear that the cameraman lingers on the gates as they fall down.
There was an almost immediate sequel to this movie, "Son of Kong", with several actors reprising their roles: Robert Armstrong as Denham, Frank Reicher as Captain Englehorn, Victor Wong as Charlie, and Noble Johnson as the Skull Island chief.
As other commenters have said, "King King" slipped in just before strict enforcement of Hollywood's self-imposed Production Code. If you are interested in how the US film industry censored itself in the the 1930s through the 1950s, a good book is "Hollywood's Censor: Joseph I. Breen and the Production Code Administration" by Thomas Doherty.
I am so excited to see this video! My family used to watch this movie every thanksgiving morning! The 1976 version is my personal favorite. But this movie is epic!
YES THE 76 VERSION WITH JEFF BRIDGES IS THE BEST!!
The Empire State Building was the tallest building in the world when it was completed. Kong climbs it.
The King Kong remake movie in 1976 had Kong climb the newly completed The World Trade Center, which was also the tallest building at the time.
Sweet!
When I was in my early twenties, I drove into New York City to visit the set where they were filming yet another version of King Kong in 1976. This time they had Kong climb the World Trade Center, which was only 5 years old at the time. They were preparing to film the scene where Kong has just fallen from the tower. Unfortunately, there was a chance of rain that evening, so they suspended shooting for the night.
There used to be a plaza between the 2 towers and they had the giant Kong laid out on his back in the middle of that area. He was covered by a massive tarp, but you could see large styrafoam blocks made to look like broken up concrete all around him. All we could see of Kong was the fur sticking out from under the tarp. Didn't get to see any filming, but it was still pretty cool.
I first saw the 1933 King Kong when I was 6 years old in 1976. When Kong crashed through the trees to grab Fay Wray, I bolted from the room in terror but stood by the door to the living room to see what happened. I became an instant fan. I even wrote a handwritten letter to Fay Wray (my dad found her agent info somehow) with my dad assisting with some of the spelling LOL. We mailed it with a newspaper clipping enclosed w my letter, but I never heard anything.
Around that same time, I had (still have) a rare King Kong doll with a mini-transistor radio in its back. Some old guy saw me with it one day and said to me and my mom; "I saw King Kong in NYC in the '30's at the movies and it scared me and everybody in the audience!" Nobody had EVER seen anything like it back then.
This is what inspired the great stop-motion animator Ray Harryhausen I believe. He then did special effects for a film called "Might Joe Young" (1949) which was also about a gorilla if I remember correctly...
Fay Wray had the best scream Hollywood has ever known. Kong was a moveable model about a foot tall . Small move , take a picture over and over and over again. That is stop motion animation. Pain steaking process. Just the fight between Kong and the T Rex took 7 weeks to shoot.
It's always a good time when people watch these old classics.
Fun Fact: Just looked it up and this movie made $5.3 million at the box office on a $672,000 budget.
The average price per ticket was probably around . 25 cents and it made over 5 million . Wow and with half the population and the worst year of the Depression. This had to blow the audience away.
@@williambowman2326 I've heard certain genres of movies actually did better during the depression because of their escapism value. Absolutely insane how budgets have ballooned since. $500 million for movie and marketing is pretty nuts.
@@ct6852 My Mother was born in 1922 and lived in Oklahoma. She told me that one reason movies were so popular was that the theatres were air conditioned and very very few people had any air conditioning. She also told me that movies did not have start times. You just went to the theater and bought a ticket. There would usually be 2 movies( an A & B film) a short( informative, a musical with a big band, or comedy like The 3 Stooges) a newsreel, a specialty like a travelogue, 2 cartoons in between , and a lot of coming attractions. If there was a specific movie you wanted to see, you would ask the ticket taker outside what time the main feature was supposed to start and they would give an approximate time. Also the studios owned the theaters so you could only go to the theater owned or in a smaller market one that had an independent theater that showed more than one. My Mother would have to go to another town 25 miles away to see some big movies. A group would gather and make a trip to see a spectacular like , she told me, San Francisco . It was a different time .
@@ct6852inflation, movies back then costed more and made more money proportionaly
@@williambowman2326Google had ticket prices at .15 cents but either way that was a lot of money back then. This was when movies were made for people to go watch movies and escape for a little while with what was going on in their lives but the idiots today want to ruin that.
When I saw this as a kid in the late 1950s, I cried like a baby when Kong died. It destroyed me. I never forgot that feeling….
I L.O.V.E this movie! Second favourite movie ever. There's hundreds of movies that exist today because of King Kong.
Agreed. The apps are ridiculously out of control. No more apps, time for us to go back to basics.
Peter Jackson's remake captures more emotions in Kong, and is well worth a look.
Kong is supposed to be a monster with a hankering for blondes. Jackson's version makes him a big softy like a giant Mighty Joe Young. The '76 version at least keeps him a monster and still horny, and it's shot like an epic.
@@dan_hitchman007it’s good thing there are several movies in which Kong is that monster. Jackson’s film is still great.
In Gone With the Wind there is a scene of the burning of Atlanta. The huge wall of the city burning was the actual gate wall for Kin Kong. They filmed it and also got the set space back at the same time. I saw this in a film documentary. What an effective idea really.
KING KONG was one of the first movies I saw as a kid back in the 50s. It played at the old Tivoli Theater in Miami as part of their Saturday matinee movies. I cried when they killed Kong.
So glad You watch these classic masterpieces that are important parts in the development of our culture. Let me suggest that You should absolutely watch "Tarzan the Ape Man" from 1932 starring Johnny Weissmuller. Tarzan is arguably the earliest popular superhero in "modern fiction/popular culture" i.e. stories distributed to mass audience in forms of books/comic strips/films etc... (as opposed to the stories of heroes in Greek mythology, for example).
Out of all actors that have played the role of Tarzan, Johnny Weissmuller is the iconic one, and "Tarzan the Ape Man" was the first and most famous film of the series of Tarzan films which he made together with the just as iconic Jane - Maureen O'Sullivan.
As it appeared a year earlier, than King Kong, "Tarzan the Ape Man" may actually have influenced the filming of King Kong, as there are certain similarities in the story line. The major difference of course is that Tarzan is not really a beast and his infatuation to the woman he "kidnapped" is not one-sided.
From Wikipedia: "The King Kong character was conceived and created by American filmmaker Merian C. Cooper." Merian Cooper was one of the writers, and one of the directors, of the 1933 movie.
ernest b.shoedsack and cooper co -directed this film,they are both in the film as the two pilots at the end ,in the airplane.
wikipedia rarely gets anything right.
Merian C. Cooper was toying with the idea of a giant ape on the loose when he saw footage of a film that groundbreaking stop-motion animator Willis O'Brien was working on called CREATION. O'Brien's 1925 silent classic THE LOST WORLD, with its giant dinosaurs doing battle, also helped convince Cooper that the Kong story could be brought to the screen. As for me, I find these meticulously hand-rendered special effects to be infinitely more impressive and fun than much of what is tossed off with CGI. Other great examples of stop-motion include, MIGHTY JOE YOUNG, THE BLACK SCORPION, and the films of Willis O'Brien's successor, Ray Harryhausen.
@@porflepopnecker4376 Good post. All I can say, as a biologist, is that I wish they would have taken a small amount of time to study the actual dentition of the great apes (like gorillas).
@@porflepopnecker4376 King Kong ushered in a new era in filmmaking. We got Mighty Joe Young, Godzilla, Jason and the Argonauts, Star Wars, all the way to Jurassic Park. King Kong was Jurassic Park before Jurassic Park.
Fun fact: The plantation house burning in "Gone With The Wind" is actually the remnants of the wall from King Kong.
You asked about kissing regulations. When this film came out, the Hays codes had been formulated but weren't being fully enforced. According to the code, an onscreen kiss that was visible to the camera couldn't last longer than two seconds. To get around that, it was common to turn actors' heads to the side, come up for air every few seconds, whatever worked.
There's a bunch of other stuff in this film that wasn't code-compliant, depending on which edit you're watching.
Remakes:
There's the 1976 Dino DeLaurentis version, where the storyline is somewhat different.
And then there's the 2005 Peter Jackson version you mentioned, which is set in the Thirties and is pretty much a direct remake of the original but ramped up on steroids. Yeah, that's worth a watch.
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imagine you are just sleeping and a giant monke grabs you through the window and you only have just enough time to freak out before it drops you to your death
Although 'King Kong' looks old-fashioned, it was actually one of the most groundbreaking movies for its time, and all-time. It was groundbreaking in special effects, editing, sound, story, photography, music, and atmosphere. And this movie has inspired many famous filmmakers. A classic movie that still is remembered to this day.
Other fun facts:
-People would literally save 10 cents ($2.40 today) to buy a ticket to see this movie (it was during the Great Depression, and people had very little money)
-It was reported that Adolf Hitler loved this movie
-The movie did have some backlash in 1933 for its use of 'extreme' violence
-The biplane pilots were paid $10 ($240 today) each for their role in the movie.
-The two pilots that shoot down Kong were the movie's directors
The actor playing Jack, Bruce Cabot, was also in a few John Wayne movies; McLintock!, Chisum and Big Jake, I believe, to name just a couple. I recognized his voice immediately.
I'll never forget my first introduction to the legendary movie monster 'KING KONG' was watching Peter Jackson 2005 epic remake from my childhood until I've saw the 1933 black/white classic and then on I've always stated that King Kong is one of my favorite cinema character of all time.
Definitely watch Peter Jackson's version. You will enjoy it.
FIRST , WATCH THE 1977 VERSION WITH JEFF BRIDGES AND JESSICA LANGE , BETTER THAN THE 2005 VERSION !!
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@@jbwade5676 YES !!!
4:40 it's important to remember when this movie was made and released. The 1930s was the Great Depression. If you ever wanted to find somebody who was desperate for a job you went to their shelter or Hooverville (New York Park area filled with homeless tents).