King Kong was released in 1933 and co-directed by American aviator Merian C.

Cooper and Motion picture cinematographer Ernest B. Schoedsack. This film is an apt example of the monster movie classic as well as being one of the first to come out of America. Roger Ebert, reviewer for the Chicago Sun-Times, states that ...allowing for its slow start, wooden acting and wall-to-wall screaming, there is something ageless and primeval about "King Kong" that still somehow works. (Ebert, 2002) Despite the passing of many decades King Kong still fascinates audiences worldwide and its technical achievements give it enough originality and cinematographic prowess to stay in high regard within the motion picture industry.

Figure 1. 1933 movie poster

In the film, director Carl Denham (Robert Armstrong) leads his film crew on an expedition to a small uncharted island somewhere in the Pacific Ocean in an attempt to finish his new motion picture. They arrive at the mysterious Skull Island to do some location shooting but encounter a native tribe who are midway through performing a sacrificial ceremony to their God, Kong, an enormous creature that resembles a mountain gorilla. Disrupted by the film crews presence on the island, the Skull Islanders kidnap Ann Darrow (Fay Wray), the leading lady in Denhams film, and start the ceremony again with Ann as the sacrifice. The Hero, Jack Driscoll (Bruce Cabot) leads a

rescue mission in order to save Miss Darrow from the hands of her captors. But before they can get to her Kong appears and snatches her away. Denham and Driscoll head off into the jungle with an armed team to save Ann from Kong. Numerous encounters with Kong and a series of enormous prehistoric creatures manage to kill the group leaving only Jack and Carl alive but on separate sides of a huge canyon. At length, Driscoll sneaks Ann away from Kong and, when the beast chases them back to the natives village, Denham uses sleeping gas to capture him. Back in New York Carl Denham presents Kong in shackles to the public as The Eighth Wonder of the World where he manages to break free of his restraints, grab Ann and scale the Empire State Building. At length he his is finally brought down by a hail of bullets from a group of biplanes in one of the most iconic moments in film history. (see Figure 2.)

Figure 2. Kong and the biplanes

Keith Breese points out that it is at this moment that we realise Kong is the hero of the picture. He is more human than human (Breese, 2004) we who are supposed to be human are the animals, the villains, attacking this humble creature, capturing him, taking him half way round the world, shackling him and putting him on display as an attraction only to kill him as he escapes trying to protect Ann Darrow (see figure 3.)

Figure 3. Kong lies dead in New York The distinguished stop-motion animation skills of Willis OBrien really sold the believability of the gigantic ape to audiences worldwide and although technology has advanced since then the fluidity of the film is in no way hindered or interrupted by the appearance of the many prehistoric creatures that emerge from the dark forests on Skull Island. The original size for Kong was intended to be 40-50 feet tall and although Kongs size changes drastically throughout the film it goes, for the most part, unnoticed as the different camera angles lend him presence of just being huge and as an audience we just accept that fact without questioning it. In his first appearance on Skull Island OBrien and his team constructed the sets so that Kong would be only 18 feet tall, in New York however the sets were designed to scale him to 24 feet although through adjusting the scale of the miniatures and using some clever camera angles he was made to look sometimes as tall as 60 feet (see figure 4.) The bust of Kong made for the close ups of his face was built in scale with a 40 foot ape and the full sized hands were built to the scale of a 70 foot ape.

Figure 4. Kong and Ann at the sacrificial alter

The plot to King Kong is reasonably undemanding as would be expected from an early American film, but believable enough so that the visual effects could carry the simple storyline. "King Kong was created to grip and thrill like no movie before, (Haflidason, 2001) here BBC film critic Almar Haflidason reveals to us the secret to King Kongs worldwide success. It was simply made to entertain the masses and as a movie it didnt need to do anything more than that.

In 1992, the film was deemed culturally, historically and aesthetically significant by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. -http//www.loc.gov/index.html

List of illustrations Figure 1: http://www.dvdcollectorsonline.com/index.php/topic,6359.0.html Figure 2: http://kingkong.wikia.com/wiki/King_Kong_%281933_film%29 Figure 3: http://thepublici.blogspot.com/2009_12_27_archive.html Figure 4: http://ofowls.blogspot.com/2010/11/film-review-king-kong1933.html

Bibliography
Breese, Keith. (May 21 2004) http://www.filmcritic.com/reviews/1933/king-kong/ Ebert, Roger. (February 3, 2002) http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20020203/R EVIEWS08/202030301/1023 Haflidason, Almar. (30 January 2001) http://www.bbc.co.uk/films/2001/01/30/king_kong_1933_review.shtml