Journal #3

King Kong (1933) - King Kong is a story that almost everyone knows these days because of this movie and the many remakes and re releases that have followed since. The story is about a giant ape basically. The movie starts with a director offering a job to a young actress named Ann Darrow(Fay Wray). The crew for the movie then heads on a trip by boat to find an island that is not on any map. The crew finds the island and they figure out that the island is inhabited by a tribe and prehistoric creatures such as dinosaurs and snakes and this 50 foot tall gorilla. The natives of the tribe take Ann hostage while they are on the island and present her to King Kong in a ceremony. King Kong fights with dinosaurs who are trying to capture Ann and she is rescued by the crew while King Kong is fighting dinosaurs. The crew is fascinated by the beast and they subdue him and take him to New York City with them. When King Kong arrives in New York City he goes on a rampage in the city.

King Kong was well received by both the public movie goes and by the critics. Today this movie is listed as #41 on the American Film Institute’s list 100 years…100 movies and is listed as one of the greatest movies of all time on Time Magazine’s list of the 100 greatest movies and critic Roger Ebert calls King Kong one of the top movies of all time. Since the movie was first released in 1933 it is hard to know what the people during the 1930s thought about the move but based of off box office numbers and what critics say you can tell people enjoyed it. The movie was the highest grossing movie of 1933 and one of the top 5 of the 1930s. You can tell people liked the movie based off of these numbers since it was released during the Great Depression and during that time people did not have the extra money to go see many movies. As for what critics have to say they believe it is still the best monster film ever made. “Kong is still King” says critic James Berardinelli when compared to the other monster movies such as Jurassic Park. Critic Ephraim Katz sums up everything about King Kong when he says “King Kong proved an immediate hit at the box office, returning $5 million in North American rentals on a $650,000 investment. The film went on to become a classic of its genre and part of American culture and folklore.” Shows the public interest with the box office hit and shows how it is still so well known 75 years after the original release. One of the original reviews from 1933 says “after the audience becomes used to the machinelike movements and other mechanical flaws in the gigantic animals on view, and become accustomed to the phony atmosphere, they may commence to feel the power.” The audiences did enjoy the movie and felt scared by it once they got used to the animals. The movie was so well received that it has been re released or been the basis for a new movie many times. King Kong was re released in 1952 and Time Magazine called it the “Movie of the Year” 20 years after the original release. In 1976 and 2005 recreations of King Kong were released.

I feel that the movie was widely accepted because it was so different for the time period. Sure nowadays the special effects of that movie are almost comical but for that period of time the special effects were incredible. The movie also scared audiences and was the first of its genre so people were curios to it and ended up enjoying it. This movie is still considered a great movie because it was the first of its kind and people will always enjoy a scary movie. What surprised me though was that the movie was not nominated for any Academy Awards after being so well received by the public and such a different style of movie for its time. There was no special effects category at the time though.