The monster was killed by beauty
An eccentric film director in search of fame and a star recruits a team to a mysterious island, where, according to his information, the aborigines built an incredibly healthy wall, hiding from whom. Finding a blonde in dire need of money on the street, he begins his journey in the hope of shooting wildlife and finding something really impressive. “King Kong” by Merian Cooper and Ernest Shodsak is a great classic of world cinema. Continuation of the triumph of frame-by-frame animation by Willis O’Brien, already demonstrated in “The Lost World” in 1925. And in some ways even repeating the concept of that picture, given that there, too, at the end of the city streets walking monster.
Since Kong appears here only in the forty-third minute (in the restored version with an overture), the “human” part is also not of little importance. Characters develop quite rapidly, sometimes clumsy, but, in general, quite successfully. What is the character of the director, what is the romance of the main character with the first assistant captain. All played very decently (unlike the version of Jackson), and even the captain himself is remembered thanks to scenes of negotiations with the natives.
Of course, we are interested in giant monsters. In Kong, they are represented by a large abundance of dinosaurs preserved to our times, represented here by dangerous creatures (even a peaceful brontosaurus eats people in full). “Kong” is a film of the times when the genre of “giant monsters” personified the direction of horror films, not for nothing counting there for a number of rather cruel scenes, the best of which is a spider pit, generally because of the audience’s seizures was cut out of the picture.
Dinosaurs are performed with hurrah, stop-motion and skillful hands of O’Brien animate in them not only the movements of tails, paws and opening mouths, but even the smallest facial expressions of the muzzle, when they grin, lick, frown aggressively, and generally react in every possible way to external stimuli.
The culmination of all this is the duel of Kong with Allosaurus. A huge predatory lizard encroaches on Anne, a girl stolen by the natives to sacrifice Kong, only an overgrown gorilla falls in love with this “bride” and even protects from a bunch of predatory monsters. So, telling the dinosaur, they say, to fall to tear - blinkers will be cut out, he seriously tears the jaws of an ancient lizard, and the girl becomes not only a witness to the "Sunday fight of two yakozoons", but also a direct participant when Kong touches the sticking log on which she sat.
We must pay tribute to the ecstasy and childish delight of the giant gorilla in the chest at every murder committed. Anne is attacked by an allosaurus, a flying pteranodon, and a beast, more like a snake, but with limbs-fins, like a plesiosaur. The reliability of the lizards to their fossil species here is secondary and not important, in the end they could simply mutate everything on the island, and even the brontosaurus could become a predator from a good life.
The technique of execution itself is important, and it is simply colossal here, that for its years, that with modern viewing for lovers of old school and practical effects, when there are no cutting eyes of computer graphics in the frame. Not only models were made (and some migrated from the closed picture "Creation"), but also Kong's hand, head and paw in life size for large scenes of his muzzle and eating natives, holding the main character in his fingers, episodes of crushing people, and at the same time even the tenacious claws of the pteranodon were made for the scene of an attempt to kidnap a girl from a rock.
Almost all mash-ups – the effects of superimposing scenes of moving monsters and people in the frame are performed at a high level, especially well succeeded in the episode of throwing copies, perhaps the most believably made of all. The technical side of the picture is delighted with each effect, and especially successfully in this regard it is shown that no wall and a giant gate in the end the monster did not hold back (as well as metal shackles afterward). There is a lot of symbolism in his beastly fury that a person cannot restrain wildlife, and not only that.
The only thing that confuses - Kong was put to sleep with only one gas bomb, although with Stegosaurus this trick was not particularly played, but at the same time it was clarified that the bomb can "and drop an elephant" - the giant gorilla will still be larger, it would be nice if Kong was thrown at least three such bombs to knock out.
There is, by the way, a colored version of the picture, painted very well, except that the green of the tropics there is sometimes quite monotonous and not the “fresh” shade, and also censored the moment where the leading actress falls out of the bra when surfacing from the water (tits in Kaiju films, in general, a rarity). Thank you to Cong for our happy childhood!
Having spent time in the countryside, Kong goes to ravage New York City, being taken to the metropolis as the Eighth Wonder of the World. The urban scenes turned out to be even more violent than the scenes on the island (well, except for the Spider Pit, of course) - which is worth at least an episode when Kong pulls out a sleeping woman through the window, and then throws down from a huge height, realizing that it is not Anne and this does not suit him at all. And, of course, the scene with the electric train, later even almost repeated in Godzilla.
An abundance of bright and impressive moments quickly move the film forward. As soon as the action begins here, it does not stop for a second. In other words, only Kong will save his girlfriend from a dinosaur, as the hissing snake has already attempted, and as soon as she is dead, a winged lizard immediately arrives. And in the city, a series of such fascinating scenes only intensify.
There is no special explanation for why the gorilla, finding his princess, climbs on the Empire State Building (this mistake was corrected in the masterpiece version of 1976, however, replacing the building with the towers of the World Trade Center), but the ending with machine guns came out there very rich and dramatic, to the crown of the picture to declare meaningful and cult: “The monster was not killed by airplanes, the monster was ruined by beauty.”
10 out of 10
Original