King Kong (1933) Movie Review
Charles Cassady Jr
Violent but beloved old-school monster movie. Read Common Sense Media's King Kong (1933) review, age rating, and parents guide.
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Common Sense Media
Though it was remade in 2005 by director Peter Jackson with all the modern talent and special effects of the 21st century, this classic monster movie moves at a lightning pace. While the stop-motion animation seems primitive, the 1933 version of King Kong still very watchable. The savage Kong has a primal fury about him that makes him a real threat, even if his lovelorn looks to Anne turn him into a slightly more sympathetic monster.

The human characters are fairly one-dimensional by comparison. Anne screams a lot, famously so, faints, and that's about it for her womanly survival skills. Denham doesn't seem to have learned any lessons in the end. Modern black activists have denounced the old-school portrayal of face-painted, bone-wearing tribesmen, though Skull Island natives fight back against the rampaging gorilla-god, and a black baby is one of the few characters of any color snatched safely from beneath the primate's trampling feet.