Product Description
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Merian C. Cooper directs this classic monster movie about a
magnificent beast who falls in love with a woman. Film-maker Carl
Denham (Robert Armstrong) and actress Ann Darrow (Fay Wray)
arrive on the prehistoric Skull Island to shoot a film. While
there, they encounter a giant ape known as King Kong, who is
worshipped as a god by the island's native inhabitants. The
mighty Kong shows his sensitive side by falling for Ann, and,
after being transported to New York to be displayed on Broadway,
rampages across the city in search of his new love with the
hot on his heels.
.co.uk Review
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"Now you see it. You're amazed. You can't believe it. Your eyes
open wider. It's horrible, but you can't look away. There's no
chance for you. No escape. You're helpless, helpless. There's
just one chance, if you can scream. Throw your arms across your
eyes and scream, scream for your life!" And scream Fay Wray does
most famously in this monster classic, one of the greatest
adventure films of all time, which even in an era of
computer-generated wizardry remains a marvel of stop-motion
animation. Robert Armstrong stars as famed adventurer Carl
Denham, who is leading a "crazy voyage" to a mysterious,
uncharted island to photograph "something monstrous ... neither
beast nor man". Also aboard is waif Ann Darrow (Fay Wray) and
Bruce Cabot as big lug John Driscoll, the ship's first mate. King
Kong's first half-hour is steady going, with engagingly corny
dialogue ("Some big, hard-boiled egg gets a look at a pretty face
and bang, he cracks up and goes sappy") and ominous portent that
sets the stage for the horror to come. Once our heroes reach
Skull Island, the movie comes to roaring, chest-thumping,
T-rex-slamming, snake-throttling, pterodactyl-tearing,
native-stomping life. King Kong was ranked by the American Film
Institute as among the 50 best films of the century. Kong making
his last stand atop the Empire State Building is one of the
film's most indelible and iconic images. --Donald Liebenson, .com
On the DVD: Although a little light on extras, this is happily
the Director's Cut, restoring scenes that were censored after the
film's original 1933 run, including Kong peeling off Fay Wray's
clothes like a banana, and our hirsute hero using unfortunate
natives as dental floss. The ratio of 4:3 is correct for a film
of this age; the picture and (mono) sound are perfectly
acceptable without being revelatory. The 25-minute "making of"
documentary from 1992 is a 60th anniversary tribute to the film,
which details all of Kong's many ground-breaking contributions to
cinema, from Willis O'Brien's use of stop-motion and rear
projection effects to Max Steiner's music score. There are
contributions from film historians, modern admirers of the film
including composer Jerry Goldsmith--who admits that Steiner
created a template that Hollywood composers are still
following--and a few surviving participants such as sound effects
man Murray Spivak. Apparently, director Merian C. Cooper's
original idea was to capture live gorillas, transport them to the
island of Komodo and film them fighting the giant lizards! Thanks
to Willis O'Brien's pioneering effects work good sense prevailed
and a cinema classic was born. --Mark Walker