'King Kong' (Merican C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, 1933)

Title: 'King Kong'

Release Year: 1933

Director: Merican C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack

Cast: Bruce Cabot, Robert Amstrong, Fay Wray.

Plot: After casting Ann Darrow as the lead actress in his next movie, Carl Denham and his team make their way to a mysterious island full of dangers, an experience that leads to a monstrous discovery.

Review: It's quite curious to see how films that now become blockbusters thanks to their big budgets are remakes of movies made many years ago, even with a much lower technology. That's the case of 'King Kong': we may have heard of Peter Jackson's 2005 film, but would we believe the same story was told more than 70 years ago?

Back in 1933, the wild primate became a huge hit and the movie he led, an outstanding piece of technical innovation. Of course if you see it now it's horribly fake. Some of the scenes are even funny but, somehow they still manage to scare you to death. I think that's the greatness of Kong's; even mixing dinosaurs and giant gorillas on an island with variable success, its entertaining power never goes away.

The well-known scene of a cinema classic

Add to that a well-chosen cast (specially Robert Amstrong's cool character and performance) and the joy of watching such iconic scenes like Ann screaming at the vision of Kong or him climbing the Empire State Building, and you will have a solid, terrifying, amusing piece of work, which even has time for a little bit of romance. Yes, I had thought that eventually, Ann would stop just shouting and would understand the beast's feelings for her, but the film ending with Amstrong's terrific quote 'It was beauty killed the beast' makes up por previous flaws.