King Kong (1933) on Netflix
NR19331h 40mAdventureFantasyHorror
Filmmaker Carl Denham charters Captain Englehorn's ship and hires struggling actress Ann Darrow for a project he will not explain. They sail for an uncharted island and a creature called Kong.
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Trailer
Plot summary
Carl Denham makes wildlife films in remote places, and he charters Captain Englehorn's ship, the Venture, for his next project. He still lacks an actress for a female role he will not describe, and in New York City he hires Ann Darrow, a struggling actress. At sea he tells the crew their destination is an uncharted island with a skull-shaped mountain and a being called Kong said to live there. Anchored offshore, they find a village walled off by stone and a wooden gate, where the islanders prepare a young woman as the bride of Kong.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about King Kong (1933)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Sound-effects man Spivak created Kong's roar by playing recordings of lions and tigers backward, supplied the ape's "love grunts" himself through a megaphone, and got footsteps and chest beats by stomping a gravel box with plungers on his feet and striking an assistant's chest with a drumstick.
- A scene showing giant insects, spiders and a tentacled creature devouring crewmen shaken off the log by Kong was cut by RKO before the film's release as too gruesome even by pre-Code standards; preview audiences left early and the footage is considered lost.
- For the scene in which Kong fights a Tyrannosaurus while Ann watches, the stop-motion animation was filmed first and Fay Wray then sat in a fake tree for 22 hours reacting to footage projected behind her, leaving her sore for days.
- Max Steiner's King Kong score was recorded by a 46-member orchestra, and Steiner said Merian C. Cooper paid him $50,000 of his own money to pay for the orchestra.
- King Kong was banned in Nazi Germany, whose censors called it an "attack against the nerves of the German people" and a "violation of German race feeling", and was also banned in Finland for violence until 1939.
- Kong's closeups were shot with a full-size mechanical model of his head and shoulders, designed by Delgado and scaled to a fifty-foot creature, that was covered with forty bearskins and worked by six operators handling the eyes and mouth.
- The 1984 Criterion Collection LaserDisc release of King Kong was the first movie to have an audio commentary track, a discussion by film historian Ron Haver.
- Willis H. O'Brien's stop-motion effects inspired later monster films including Mighty Joe Young, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Mothra and Jurassic Park, and Godzilla producer Tomoyuki Tanaka said he was influenced by King Kong.
