Fantasy #4 - King Kong (1933)

You guys, King Kong is everything that King Kong should be. It's like a fake movie from the 30's. This movie is like the film at the beginning of Up. If (No, when) I owned a drive-in movie theater, I will show King Kong once a month, because that is the way it should be seen. There's this romance that comes out of nowhere, an old fashioned movie director, stop motion animation, giant snakes and dinosaurs that don't act the way they should at all. Fay Wray can't climb down a ladder herself until a man guides her to it, and the island has a bunch of natives. King Kong fights a Tyrannosaurus Rex. It's awesome.

Obviously, this movie has to rely a lot on being charmingly cheesy. The acting is only okay, and I think that a lot of that can be blamed on the awkward dialogue, and the special effects obviously don't look at all real, but it still kind of works. This was just a really entertaining movie. Most of the characters are pretty fun - The director is more interesting than the love interest, and Fay Wray is mostly really pretty, but they still all work. I liked watching this movie. It actually looks and sounds really great for 1933, especially when I think of All Quiet on the Western Front, which was made only three years earlier.

I can totally see why there would be a remake of this. Someone would definitely look at this and say "This movie is awesome - wouldn't it be great if Kong Kong could look less silly?" Because he does. I realize that the effects are really impressive for the time, but now they don't look anything close to good. King Kong looks like the Abominable Snowman in Rudolph. It is really good stop motion though - There are still scenes in this movie that animators don't really know how to replicate. It looks great as far as stop motion goes. And that is the best giant gorilla/T-Rex fight I've ever seen.

King Kong is old, and it's cheesy, but it works. It's a really entertaining movie - More entertaining than The Thief of Bagdad. I would totally actually watch this movie again. I liked it.