Movie #134: King Kong

Movie #: 134
Movie Title: King Kong
Year Released: 1933

Director: Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack
Notable Cast: Fay Wray, Bruce Cabot, Robert Armstrong, Frank Reicher

Short Description: A film crew goes to a tropical island for an exotic location shoot and discovers a colossal giant gorilla who takes a shine to their female blonde star. Then he's captured and brought back to New York City for public exhibition. (IMDB.com)


Rank on the Top 100 Lists (as of 1/7/2013)

AFI.com: #41
IMDB.com: N/A
Ranker.com: N/A
Lifed.com: N/A
Empire.com: N/A
FilmCrave.com: N/A
FlickChart.com: N/A



Date Watched: 4/24/2016

Grade: 2.5 out of 5 (Satisfactory)

Rationale: When you take into account that the movie was made in 1933, the revolutionary effects used in the film become very impressive. I don’t feel they hold up as well as they could, but I’m not going to knock it in this case. What I didn’t care for what the sheer amount of high pitched screaming from Fay Wray’s character Ann Darrow that overpowered the latter half of the movie. I also didn’t care for having to believe that Frank Reicher’s character Captain Englehorn, who had never been to or even seen the island Kong was on, knew the exact language of the natives and was communicating with ease. King Kong requires a suspension of believe in realism to a degree, but that’s a fairly notable flaw that I can’t buy.