King Kong Movies

King Kong

Everyone knows the story. A giant ape is found on a remote island, he falls in love with a woman, is captured and brought to New York City as a show attraction until he escapes. The movie is classic in every way, from the early fog shrouded scenes on the island teeming with dinosaurs, to the big ape's demise at the top of the Empire State Building.

Son of Kong, The

Carl Denham returns to Skull Island in the wake of Kong's rampage and finds more dinosaurs and Kong's albino son! Mini-Kong is friendlier than his Pa, but an earthquake sinks the whole island before anything truly interesting can happen. Son of Kong starts out well enough, with an inspired reason for Denham to head back to the last place he'd ever want to go again. Unfortunately, Kong's son is too cute and there are too few situations of any real danger for this movie to be considered a worthy sequel to King Kong.

King Kong Escapes

If you expect the plot of this one to make any sense at all, you're barking up the wrong gorilla. Super-secret government employee Madame X (Mie Hama) has hired Doctor Who (Eisei Amamamoto) -- no, not that Doctor Who -- to procure the rare Element X. Doctor Who's plan to do so involves a giant robot based on sketches of King Kong, a rumored giant ape on the island of Mondo. Unfortunately, the MechaniKong robot can't function under the intense radiation emitted by Element X, so there's another government grant down the tubes.

Like all good (or rather, evil) scientists, Doctor Who has a backup plan -- he'll just hypnotize the real Kong into mining the stuff for him! Of course, it's all going to come down to fisticuffs between Kong and MechaniKong. A mixed Japanese and American cast (the film was produced by Toho and Rankin-Bass) and an actual budget make this one well-funded international fever dream. Supremely entertaining without a shred of dignity.

Reviews: The Unknown Movies

King Kong

Updated version of the classic giant ape movie falls short in too many ways to count. Sure, Jessica Lange is a hottie, and some of the Kong effects are breathtaking, but the script is a mess, the acting is all over the place, and there aren't even any freaking dinosaurs! Instead Kong fights a very immobile giant snake.

The plot sticks pretty close to the original, except that the film crew is now an oil prospecting expedition and our hero is a monkey-lovin' primate paleontologist (Jeff Bridges). When the prospecting crew turns up Kong instead of crude, their fearless leader (Charles Grodin) decides to make lemonade from lemons and shackles the goliath up for a trip back to Manhattan. The usual monkey business ensues.

Reviews: Stomp Tokyo.

King Kong Lives

It turns out that when King Kong fell in King Kong (1976) he was only mostly dead. For ten years he's lain in a coma, as scientists perfected an artificial heart at his scale. Unfortunately they need someone to give the big guy a blood donation. Luckily an explorer (Kermin) has found a female Kong in Borneo, and brought her back to the States. Will love bloom between these two apes?

King Kong

Peter Jackson's upcoming movie will be a period piece set in the 1930's, and will likely have many dinosaurs.

On April 1st of 2005 Peter Jackson announced that he was going to make Son of Kong and King Kong: Into the Wolf's Lair, back-to-back sequels to King Kong where Kong's son is taken to Europe and fights Nazis. He was kidding.