Wednesday 8 October 2014

King Kong review (1933)


King Kong Review (1933)

A story about King Kong, The eighth wonder of the world.

This well-known story starts off with a filming crew setting sail to shoot a movie. The crew managed to find a mysterious island that contains a tribe that worships this giant gorilla “King Kong”. They took a hold of a female, Ann, which was on board with the crew and used her as a sacrifice for the almighty Kong. The King shows up and takes her away. At that point the crew sets off to find Ann and comes across many untold creatures that should have been long gone. The heroic crew member, John, finds the captive girl and saves her from the monstrous beast. The director was hyped about the opportunity that was in the palm off his hands and couldn’t help but capture and show off King Kong to the rest of the world so he could be rich and famous. During the show the photographers was using too much flash on their cameras, which naturally caused King Kong to go berserk and wreak havoc around the city to try and find his beloved. The battle was underway and planes and fire trucks was on the track to find and bring down King Kong. They succeeded with the final words “It wasn’t the planes that killed him. Tis beauty that killed the beast”.

The movie and the way it showed its visuals was very interesting and unique. They used stop-motion for all of the monster scenes and they combined it with the actors on the set by over lapping them by having the monsters in the background, despite how cheesy and tacky it looks today, I will give them credit that they doing something that looks impossible and they obviously show a great deal of determination and care for this movie. The music is this movie’s high point not only having the tone of the music match what was presented on the screen but also timing too, for example: when the chief of the tribe walks slowly down stairs to meet the film crew you can hear the drum beat timed perfectly with each step making him more fearful and it works as people in the tribe fears him and steps aside for him.

 
The only bad points is mainly the romance scenes in the movie, John just pops out of the blue saying to Ann that he loves her for some reason, which is a little rushed even by movie standards, which is chuckle worthy. However without that awkward love moment we wouldn’t have the motivation to rescue her. Another failed point of this movie is Ann herself, she doesn’t have her own identity and mainly exist to be saved or a reward for the hero. Other than being attractive and blonde she doesn’t have any appealing character traits however given the time it’s understandable why however the screaming is unbearable.


In this movie there is a lot of racism stereotypes and sexism remarks, which is interesting seeing how much that not only movies has evolved but humanity did too. The sexism remarks is  interesting since they have a lot of “women can’t do anything because they are women” moments, looking into it and considering it “normal” for those times It's almost similar to the “Batman can do anything because he is Batman” meme today; sooner or later we all will grow out it and look back only to see how silly and arrogant it was.  Women can do anything just as much as a men and Batman can’t do everything just because he's Batman.
 
Overall this movie is a 7/10. There is a lot of problems that could have been fixed however the effort of making the movie was clearly on the screen and It’s nice to have sound despite how muffled it was. This movie suffers the same problem as “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari” it takes itself too seriously that it seems cheesy for our point of view however this movie is a great deal of fun despite it was meant to be a horror film.
Which King Kong is better the 1933 or 2005? Nostalgia critic's review- (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DMDrczrSLc)
 
"It's unrivaled in its sheer cinematic quality, and one of a kind."-Felix Vasquez Jr (http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1011615-king_kong/)
 
"First, the 1933 version of KING KONG, is for me, the greatest fantasy film ever made. Sure, there are fantasy films with far better special effects (THE MATRIX, JURASSIC PARK) better acting (the acting here is of the period!) but KING KONG is a film of tremendous excitement". - Glenn Andreiev.  (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0024216/reviews)

 
 

1 comment:

Jackie said...

Hi Jacky,

I'm not sure if this a 'final version', or if you are just posting it as a work 'in progress', as you have talked about doing before. If that is the case, and it is not the final piece, I would encourage you to work on the draft copy in Word and then post it when it is completed. (Or you can do it on Blogger and just save it as a Draft, rather than posting it straight away.)

Look back at my very first comments for some hints on how to reference correctly, and how to use images to your advantage :)