King Kong has returned to the big screen this Christmas. I probably won’t go to see him in his latest computer-generated incarnation - unless Storynory readers can recommend that I do. For me, the one and true King is the original 1933 version.

The plot takes its robust structure from a fairy tale - Beauty and the Beast - and like all tales that have lasted through the ages, it satisfies on an emotional level. King Kong is more than a three dimensional stop-motion model. His personality has at least two dimensions, which is one more than most horror-movie ghouls I know. The brute has fallen in love with the wriggling and screaming Fay Wray (the beauty). His ugly face looks tenderly on her as she writhes in his fat paw. He is a scary, tragic figure.

Kong was king of his jungle, but he is taken to New York in chains and stripped of his dignity. He is put on stage for the delectation of a Broadway audience. This part of the movie is only too close to the truth. The theatrical agents of the 1930s were always on the look out for “something big”, and tackiness was never far off. Broadway stages were tramped by the molls of diseased gangsters, including the wife of Jack “Legs” Diamond, by Princess White Wing, an alleged Cherokee Indian whose costume was principally made up of two feathers, and by John Dillinger Sr, the 70 year old father of the notorious gangster (see “Mrs. Astor’s Horse” by Stanley Walker).

New York is an unbilled star. Below the still new Empire State Building - completed in 1931 - you can see the distinctive art-deco roof of the Chrysler Building - finished in 1930. The early scenes give us life at street level in depression-hit America, as Fay Wray faints with hunger. Towards the end, we watch in horror as an overhead railway train is crushed by Kong. Vintage cars, bi-planes, and cops riding on running boards all give it enormous period interest.

You can’t help smiling at the political incorrectness of it all. When the expedition to find Kong arrives on a tropical island, populated by grass-skirted, spear-carrying men, and women with coconut shell bras, the witch doctor offers to swap six local girls for Fay Wray. “Well naturally, blondes are in short supply round here,” comes back the reply. In actual fact, Fay Wray’s blonde curls were a wig.

Sexual danger lurks throughout - and the beast, Kong, is not the only threat. Fay Wray is always “a girl”, and, like all girls, she is in danger in New York, “but that’s the kind of danger girls know about already.” Robert Armstrong (playing a movie director) travels the New York streets on the look-out for a pretty face for his film, and it’s understood that virtue is cheep in the Depression. When he revives Fay Wray from her fainting fit with coffee and food, he promises to make her a star, and adds the necessary reassurance that there will be “no funny business.”

When the movie was re-released in 1938 , morals had tightened. Some of the horror was toned down, and Kong no longer chewed people with their arms and legs waving out his mouth, or trampled them in the mud. The scene in which he tenderly removes Fay Wray’s dress was also chopped. I am glad to say that these details have all been restored for the DVD release.

As for the special effects, well the eighteen inch tall Kong, made of clay, rubber, cotton, and artciulated metal joints, is surprisingly realistic, at least to me. The stop-motion animated effects were projected onto a back screen so that the actors could respond to Kong. It’s all prehistoric by today’s standards, but I think you will be surprised how the 1933 King Kong has you on the edge of your seat.

Independent Movie Data Base, Wikipedia, Kong on Amazon.Com,Amazon UK