IN 1933 TIME DESCRIBED KING KONG
as "a gigantic whatnot resembling an ape, 50 feet tall, equipped with large teeth and a thunderous snarl. He picks up Fay Wray in one hand as though she were a frog and shuffles off through the jungle, breaking trees and grunting." Seventy-two years later, naming the original King Kong one of the
All-TIME 100 best films, critic Richard Shickel wrote, "The heartbroken, heartbreaking look in his eyes as the planes shoot him off the Empire State building remains the greatest single special effects shot ever made." Peter Jackson's remake, starring Naomi Watts as Ann Darrow, stays close to the original love story and vastly improves the technology behind the movie. Some excerpts from our coverage of King Kong over the years:
It might seem that any creature answering the description of Kong would be despicable and terrifying. Such is not the case. Kong is an exaggeration ad absurdum, too vast to be plausible. This makes his actions wholly enjoyable. King Kong, 'conceived' by Merian Coldwell Cooper, was not made entirely by enlarging miniatures. Kong is actually 50 ft. tall, 36 ft. around the chest. His face is 6½ ft. wide with 10-in. teeth and ears 1 ft. long. He has a rubber nose, glass eyes as big as tennis balls. His furry outside is made of 30 bearskins. During his tantrums, there were six men in his interior running his 85 motors.
From The New Pictures
Mar. 13, 1933
After thriftily digging into its storehouse of possible reissues, RKO dusted off the 19-year-old King Kong, the adventures of a snarling, 50-ft. prehistoric monster who saved RKO from bankruptcy in the thirties and seems destined to gross at least $2,500,000 for his masters in 1952.
From Movie of the Year
Jul. 14, 1952
For the past two months, ads have been splashed throughout the press proclaiming that King Kong will love and die again—not once but twice. In early January both Universal and Paramount will start production on $12 million remakes of the 1933 classic. Universal believes that the film will gross somewhere between Jaws and Earthquake. Paramount's director Dino de Laurentiis declaims boldly that King Kong 'is still the most exciting original motion picture event of all time.'
From Monkey Business
Jan. 5, 1976
In the $13 million movie's seventh week of production, King Kong still lacks a star. In his race to beat rival Universal's King Kong project, De Laurentiis won a court battle but apparently neglected to get the ape off the drawing board. All of the 40-ft. mechanical Kong he has so far is a pair of mighty arms that cost $450,000 and have developed on-camera arteriosclerosis. The producer has rushed over so many Italian technicians to get the monkey off his back that pasta is outselling pastrami at the studio commissary.
From King Klunk
Apr. 5, 1976
After a troublesome nine-month gestation, King Kong is alive and well and going through toilet training in Hollywood. The 40-ft. star of Dino De Laurentiis' $22 million ape epic made his public debut at MGM's back lot and, considering that his innards are almost as complex as those of a Polaris missile, the king showed surprisingly few kinks. (The ape whose death was staged last June at Manhattan's World Trade Center for the film's final scene was a Styrofoam stand-in.)
From The King Leaks
Aug. 30, 1976
Like the first King Kong, produced 43 years ago, the new version plunges one quickly into the heart of that special critical darkness indigenous to the movies. On the face of it, nothing could be more preposterous than this story of the love affair between the oddest couple in popular culture: a blonde whose beauty is matched only by her dimness of mind (at least in the original) and an ape who is 40 ft. tall, fierce of mien and manner, yet at heart just a big adolescent, bumbling spectacularly through the throes of his first—often literally crushing—crush.
From Here Comes King Kong
Oct. 25, 1976
There was something darkly enigmatic about the original Kong. Fay Wray had stirred the softer side of his nature and forced him, as it were, to re-examine some of his premises. But no matter how tenderly he picked her up, one never knew whether he would lose control of his enormous strength and destroy what he seemed to love. The very blankness of his expression reinforced the anxiety. When the old Kong breaks loose in New York, he is angry—no question about it. He will have his vengeance on his captors and on those who come to gawk at his pain. The new Kong does accidentally mangle a few people, but there's no real rage in him.
From The Greening of Old Kong
By Richard Schickel
Dec. 27, 1976
Now that [Peter] Jackson has all this power, what will he do with it? Remake King Kong, a monster film he has loved since his youth. And Universal Pictures is happy to bankroll the third version of a story that most people thought was perfect the first time around (in 1933, when the big ape scaled the Empire State Building) and redundant the second time (in 1976, when Kong had a rendezvous with the World Trade Center).
From Peter Jackson: Lord of the Cinema
By Richard Corliss
Apr. 26, 2004
DIED. FAY WRAY, 96, shriektacular heroine of the original King Kong and other thrillers of the early talkie era; in New York City. Still in her teens when she started in silent films, she developed the scream she would make famous in later films.... But the great ape was her strangest, strongest suitor, in a horror film that was also a poignant love story.
From Milestones
Aug. 23, 2004
DIED. FAY WRAY, 96, shriektacular heroine of the original King Kong and other thrillers of the early talkie era; in New York City. Still in her teens when she started in silent films, she developed the scream she would make famous in later films.... But the great ape was her strangest, strongest suitor, in a horror film that was also a poignant love story.
From Milestones
Aug. 23, 2004
But Jackson's other improvements are ludicrous, most notably the fate of poor Ann Darrow, the actress who becomes Kong's victim/love object. In the original, Fay Wray came to sympathize with the beast. But Watts plays Ann as a seductress, consciously leading the big lug on. Suffice it to say that King Kong has lost its divine innocence.
From We Offer A Bird's-Eye View of the Big, the Bad and the Barest Movies of the Holidays
By Richard Corliss, Richard Schickel
Dec. 11, 2005
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