King Kong

A deathless, special effects extravaganza that lulls its audience into a false sense of security by packing its first forty minutes with repetition, directionless exposition and a photography model that renders every environment, no matter how exciting, flat and false. Robert Armstrong plays Carl Denham, a fast-talking movie director who anticipates the post-modernism movement by talking directly to his viewers about the film they are about to watch. Denham sings like a canary, describing how his animal feature will likely have to crowbar in a romantic angle to allow for better box office (a genuine concern for King Kong's producer-directors Merian C Cooper and Ernest B Schoedsack in 1933) as well as detailed conceptual readings of the titular ape and his tragic arc. 

Once Denham and his crew of expendable bodies have settled on the uncharted Skull Island, the film transforms completely, scaling up to the level of the monarch monster. Human figures are insects here, vulnerable entities scurrying around beautifully appointed, bracken environments. They shrink into the corners of the frame, overwhelmed by Willis O'Brien's enormous stop-motion projections frothing and grappling above them. Action in King Kong is savage and pitiless; hardy sailors are chased through swamps by ancient herbivores before being chewed up or trampled underfoot. Kong himself is violent but curious, an ever-moving muscle constantly under attack. All challengers are vanquished on Skull Island, Kong ruling as an armature God whose presence is so mighty that he has stunted the humans who share his space into an awed, but fearful, compliance.