Kong and My Dad

Kong-blogging, essay 15 of 15 blog entries on

Skull Island in King Kong (1933)

Kong and My Dad

Kong on his ledge from King Kong (1933).

King Kong (1933) was the first movie that my father ever saw.  He was six years old and he saw it at the Southampton Theater, located just seven blocks from their house on Southampton, Long Island.  (No, not that super-wealthy Southampton, playground to the rich and famous, that you see on television but the quiet middle-class village dating back nearly 400 years that continues to exist, comfortably invisible behind all the celebrity excess.)

The Southampton Theater in the 1930s. 

In some ways, King Kong seems a poor choice for a first movie.  After all, wouldn’t all subsequent movies be a disappointment after Kong?

And I’m struck by the fact that he was six years old.  I can’t imagine not seeing a first movie until the age of six!  But this was 1933, household televisions were still science fiction, and I guess my grandparents didn’t believe it was appropriate to take really little kids to the theater.

For the occasion to see King Kong, I imagine my grandparents sat beside my dad in the theater.  And I can imagine them shifting uneasily during the movie, wondering if they hadn’t made a mistake:  Would their son be scarred for life by the giant monsters, the undressing of Ann Darrow, the brutal fights, and the sight of Kong munching on people?

If he was scarred, it was by a life-time fondness for jungle movies.  Near the end of his life, I gave him a Johnny Weismuller Tarzan DVD collection for Christmas.  We watched them together during one of my last trips to see him in Florida—in fact, it was the last time that I spent with him at his home.  A series of strokes had token a harsh physical toll on his body but his mind was still reasonably clear.  He no longer enjoyed the effort of attempting to follow the plots of modern movies, but he could follow a Tarzan story with ease.  It was like comfort food for him.

Johnny Weismuller as Tarzan in
Tarzan the Ape Man (1932).

They were the last complete movies that my father and I ever watched together.  We’d position him in a semi-reclining position on his hospital bed and I’d pull up a chair.  Over the course of several days, we watched Tarzan the Ape Man (1932) with its introduction of the very young Johnny Weismuller and the very beautiful Maureen O’Sullivan, the juicy pre-code Tarzan and His Mate (1934) with its famous nude swim, and the lower-budget, more formulaic Tarzan Escapes (1936), Tarzan Finds a Son (1939), Tarzan’s Secret Adventure (1941), and Tarzan’s New York Adventure (1942).

Neither my father nor I were ever a bit like Tarzan or Kong’s theatrical producer Carl Denham or the heroic first mate Jack Driscoll.  For most of his working life, my father owned a small grocery store.  I’ve worked behind a desk for twenty years.  Neither of us ever explored a jungle, swung from vine, or tossed a gas bomb at a giant prehistoric beast.  But we both shared a fondness for the jungles that we explored in movies.

When you think about it, there’s no real difference between the African jungle in a Tarzan movie and the Sumatran jungle of Kong.  These are not jungles you can locate with a GPS.  They’re remote landscapes of imagination, kind of like the island that Max sails to in Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are.  My father and I liked movies that could transport us to the places where the wild things are.

It was really nice sharing that time watching the Tarzan movies with him for one last time.  I know we both enjoyed it.

It’s been two years now since my father died.  Last year, I tried blogging for the first time, entering the love letters that he exchanged with my mother during their courtship.  And here I am today, blogging madly away about my forty-plus year obsession with King Kong, dwelling on the past as usual but trying not to get too nostalgic or sentimental.

My teenage daughter watches videos on one computer while I capture images from my King Kong DVD on the other.  She hears Fay Wray screaming, and asks “Kong again?”  Mention Kong to her and she’ll probably always roll her eyes and think of Dad.  I figure it’s not the worst thing to be associated with.

My father preferred Tarzan to Kong.  That’s not my choice but I can respect it.  I understand how those old Weismuller movies could instantly transport him back to the days when he practiced his Tarzan yell in the woods and fields of old-time Southampton.  I’ll always be glad we had that chance to revisit Tarzan in those last days.

It wouldn’t be bad to watch Kong with my son or daughter someday, I’m thinking maybe about four decades from now (I hope it’s that long!).  I’d sit up in my hospital bed for a treat like that.  While I’m sure the old movie will be looking pretty antique to their eyes, I’m confident that Kong will remain fresh for me.  They can humor me about this.  Together we can watch Kong take his stand for the last time.

Kong on Skull Island.

Reference Sources

The Making of King Kong by Orville Goldner and George E. Turner

Living Dangerously: The Adventures of Merian C. Cooper by Mark Cotta Vaz

Willis O'Brien: Special Effects Genius by Steve Archer

Dinosaurs Past and Present, Volume 1, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County

Dinosaurs Past and Present, Volume 2, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County

Charles R. Knight: The Artist Who Saw Through Time by Richard Milner

All in the Bones: A Biography of Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins by Valerie Bramwell and Robert M. Peck
Special features on the two-disc special edition, King Kong (1933) by Warner Home Video Inc.

... and an occasional sneak glance at Wikipedia entries (but always double-checking everything!)

Watch King Kong...

Purchase a King Kong DVD or Blu-Ray set at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.
Rent King Kong at Netflix or other rental service.

© 2012 Lee Price

Ten Amazing Shots from King Kong

Kong-blogging, essay 14 of 15 blog entries on

Skull Island in King Kong (1933)

Ten Amazing Shots from King Kong

Amaze me.  Show me things I’ve never seen before.

Watching King Kong (1933), audiences were pummeled by image after image unlike anything they’d ever seen before.  Many of these images still appear startlingly original.

In order to achieve the following ten amazing shots, Willis O’Brien and his technicians, ably assisted by the set designers and cinematographers, used every trick known in the book.  These images include stop-motion animation, rear projection, matte paintings on glass, the Dunning process, traveling mattes, and various optical printer effects.  Often there are layers upon layers of visual effects combining to create the final composition.

1. Kong by the Stream

Kong quickly moves through this idyllic scene.  Willis O’Brien liked to incorporate water into his shots and so he matted a stream into the foreground.  It’s there simply to create a lovely composition.

2. The Dying Stegosaurus

As the ship’s crew walks past the dying Stegosaurus, the audience gets an opportunity to see Marcel Delgado’s awesome Stegosaurus model from close up.  Look at the wonderful textural details on the body!  For this shot, the crew is in the foreground (walking on a treadmill) and the dinosaur is rear-projected.  The easy way out for O’Brien would have been to track along the unmoving dead body of the Stegosaurus, but that’s not what he does.  O’Brien animates the final twinges of the dying animal, climaxing with the magnificent tail movements at the end.

3. Kong Approaches the Log

Here’s a wonderful choice for camera positioning, keeping the sailors fully visible as they panic at Kong’s approach. 

4. Kong Above, Lizard Below

Danger below and danger above, revealed through a tricky upward tilt of the camera.  Once again, Willis O’Brien sacrifices ease because he’s determined to go for the impressive effect.  Camera movements like this are exceedingly difficult to achieve when you’re essentially working with an animation sandwich—animated lizard below and animated Kong above with a live-action oval of film plugged in between.

5. Allosaurus in Close Proximity

Many monster movies since have shown dinosaur and human together, but this shot remains unrivaled.  The direction of the actors is fantastic in scenes like this, as their reactions maintain the conviction that humans and monsters are truly interacting.

6. The Fall

By this point, the viewer may subconsciously realize that the film employs these over-the-shoulder camera shots to draw us into the action.  But nobody could possibly expect that the camera would hold position as the tree falls, allowing us to share Ann Darrow’s dizzying vertiginous descent.

7. A Scavenger

Jack Driscoll walks by the dead Allosaurus and we’re treated to all sorts of bonus details.  Blood drips from the monster’s jaws and a giant bird perches vulture-like on his head, nervously flying off when Driscoll gets too close.  We assume he’ll be back.

8. Kong’s Lair

There’s movement going on all over the place in Kong’s lair, with lots of micro-images seamlessly pasted together to create the whole.  Ann Darrow is on the ledge on the left, Jack Driscoll is sneaking around a rock on the right, there’s bubbling lava in the foreground, steam rising from the lake in the middle, beautiful matte paintings on glass contributing to the illusion of depth, and, of course, Kong battling at the center of it all.

9. Skull Island Panorama

Our eyes are naturally focused on Ann and Driscoll making their getaway.  Who’s bothering to look at the background?  But check it out—in the distance, we can see the Great Wall of the native village, the peninsula where the natives live, the shore where the crew landed, and even the ship out in the water at far left.

10. Kong at the Gate

There’s an epic crowd scene in the foreground, panic everywhere, and then the magnificent reveal of Kong as he smashes the doors open.  I wonder if they switched to the 24-inch Kong at this point (the larger model that was built for use in the Manhattan scenes)?  Kong looks bigger, angrier, and more powerful than at any point before.  It’s a sight that must have made audiences gasp in 1933 and still remains powerful today.

Reference Sources

The Making of King Kong by Orville Goldner and George E. Turner

Living Dangerously: The Adventures of Merian C. Cooper by Mark Cotta Vaz

Willis O'Brien: Special Effects Genius by Steve Archer

Dinosaurs Past and Present, Volume 1, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County

Dinosaurs Past and Present, Volume 2, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County

Charles R. Knight: The Artist Who Saw Through Time by Richard Milner

All in the Bones: A Biography of Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins by Valerie Bramwell and Robert M. Peck
Special features on the two-disc special edition, King Kong (1933) by Warner Home Video Inc.

... and an occasional sneak glance at Wikipedia entries (but always double-checking everything!)

Watch King Kong...

Purchase a King Kong DVD or Blu-Ray set at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.
Rent King Kong at Netflix or other rental service.

© 2012 Lee Price

Horror and Light

Kong-blogging, essay 13 of 15 blog entries on

Skull Island in King Kong (1933)

Part One, Kong as Horror Movie

Fay Wray as Ann Darrow in King Kong (1933).

King Kong (1933) is sometimes categorized as a horror movie and I’m okay with that.  It’s certainly got plenty of horror components:  monsters, human sacrifice, death and destruction, and the pace and look of a strange nightmare.  I’d probably peg it as a fantasy or adventure-romance first, but there’s no denying that it has strong horror credentials.

On occasion, King Kong takes the leap into no-holds-barred horror.  Continuing to restrict myself to the Skull Island portion, key horror scenes include:

Kong’s introduction:  Ann Darrow is completely vulnerable, tied to the sacrificial altar.  The horror nature of the scene mounts with the closing of the massive doors of the great wall, leaving Ann alone in the dark.  Composer Max Steiner masterfully silences the orchestra to allow the audience to hear Kong’s furtive approach and our first experience of his mighty roar.  He comes into view at a fairly unthreatening distance but then the film cuts to an extreme close-up—a subjective shot from Ann’s point of view.  That’s when the real screaming begins.  This qualifies as horror.

Kong's first appearance.

Man in tree:  One of the sailors attempts to escape from a rampaging Brontosaurus by climbing a tree.  The dinosaur sees him and moves in for the kill.  The film cuts to a remarkable shot with the terrified man in full view and the Brontosaurus in close-up as the dinosaur maneuvers into position to pluck the man off the tree.  This qualifies as horror.

Death in the chasm.

The chasm:  In a losing confrontation with Kong, the sailors fall off a log that crosses a chasm.  Originally there were giant bugs and lizards on the chasm floor to finish off the few survivors but this scene was removed before release, perhaps because it was too horrific. But even as things stand, the shrieking of the sailors and the strange way the men bounce and crumple as they hit chasm bottom is still unnerving.  This qualifies as horror.

The Allosaurus battle:  This is my favorite Skull Island scene.  Throughout the Kong-Allosaurus battle scene, the filmmakers keep positioning the camera to keep Ann Darrow in the foreground, enabling us to share her perspective while emphasizing her proximity to the danger.  In modern movies, it’s usually assumed that the best way to show a first-person perspective is with a hand-held camera showing us exactly what the character sees.  I don’t agree.  For maximum identification, give me an over-the-shoulder shot that captures the subjective view while adding a real feeling of vulnerability.  The Allosaurus is introduced in the distance in just such a shot, as we watch over Ann Darrow’s shoulder as the monster enters the frame.  That’s horror.

Ann Darrow sees the Allosaurus in the distance.

Claustrophobic view for Ann as the monsters
fight above her. 

Then it gets even more intense when, midway through the fight, Kong and the Allosaurus crash into the tree where Ann Darrow has been placed.  Once again, we get the over-the-shoulder shot but this time we follow Ann down in rapid descent as the tree falls.  Perspective shifts after the fall to capture her new viewpoint, a hallucinatory vision of the monsters thrashing above her.  A nightmare world has become even more unstable.  This qualifies as horror of the very highest order.

Part Two, How to Wrestle an Elasmosaurus

The pesky elasmosaurus from the pool in Kong's lair
proves to be a tough opponent.  It quickly wraps
itself around Kong like a constrictor.

You've got a real problem if you allow the elasmosaurus
to wrap its coils around you.  It'll go for the choke hold.

Unwind the elasmosaurus, grab it by the tail,
and whack it hard against the rocks.
They hate that.

Part Three, How to Dispose of a Pteranodon

Unwelcome visitor:  A Pteranodon drops by unexpectedly.

If a Pteranodon pesters your guests,
simply grab it by the wing, pull it back to earth...

... and if you can't talk reason with it, break the Pteranodon's jaws,
and toss it off your balcony.

Reference Sources

The Making of King Kong by Orville Goldner and George E. Turner

Living Dangerously: The Adventures of Merian C. Cooper by Mark Cotta Vaz

Willis O'Brien: Special Effects Genius by Steve Archer

Dinosaurs Past and Present, Volume 1, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County

Dinosaurs Past and Present, Volume 2, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County

Charles R. Knight: The Artist Who Saw Through Time by Richard Milner

All in the Bones: A Biography of Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins by Valerie Bramwell and Robert M. Peck
Special features on the two-disc special edition, King Kong (1933) by Warner Home Video Inc.

... and an occasional sneak glance at Wikipedia entries (but always double-checking everything!)

Watch King Kong...

Purchase a King Kong DVD or Blu-Ray set at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.
Rent King Kong at Netflix or other rental service.

© 2012 Lee Price

The Meanest Brontosaurus of Them All

Kong-blogging, essay 12 of 15 blog entries on

Skull Island in King Kong (1933)

Part One, Beware of Brontosaurus

A Brontosaurus encounter in the fog in King Kong (1933).

The Brontosaurus wreaking havoc.

The Brontosaurus on land, chasing the surviving sailors.

The Brontosaurus nears a tree in which he will trap a sailor.

Part Two, Reversal of Expectations

He's one mean Brontosaurus.

First, a note on the dinosaur’s name:  Throughout these essays, I’ve been attempting to restrict myself to the terms familiar to the makers of King Kong in 1932 and 1933.  Back in 1932, Merian C. Cooper, Willis O’Brien, Marcel Delgado, and the rest of the film crew would have called this beast a Brontosaurus.  The scientific switch-over to Apatosaurus (a name that pre-dated Brontosaurus but never caught on with the public) came several decades later.

Anyway, what’s in a name?  That which we call a Brontosaurus would by any other name look as big.

Now let’s take a look at this bad boy.  Kong has crossed the river.  The ship’s crew follows in a makeshift raft but midway across the river they are attacked by a Brontosaurus.

And this is one mean dinosaur.  Who would have ever expected a mean Brontosaurus?

Friendly-looking Brontosaurs in an 1897 painting by
Charles R. Knight.
Source: Wikimedia Commons

This is a Brontosaurus that brazenly breaks the stereotype, running full-tilt against popular sentiment.  From the late days of the 19th century when Brontosaurus first seized the public imagination, they have generally been regarded as among the most cuddly of dinosaurs.  As one famous example, the title character Brontosaurus in Winsor McCay’s Gertie the Dinosaur (1914) had a typically sweet and endearing personality, like an overgrown puppy who just happens to be the size of a house.

The Brontosaurus brought back by Professor Challenger’s expedition in The Lost World (1925) was a born victim (terrorized by a bully Allosaurus) and only dangerous in London because of his huge size and strength.  The Brontosaurus is quite happy to peacefully swim off towards South America at the movie’s close.

The Brontosaurus moves in
for the kill.

But the Brontosaurus in King Kong is nothing like its relatively harmless predecessors.  He sadistically tosses the men about in the water, chases them onto land, and maliciously toys with one of the crew members before savagely mauling him.

Basically, he behaves like a hippopotamus (one of the most dangerous man-killers in nature AND a committed herbivore).  And why shouldn’t a Brontosaurus be surly and vicious?  There’s nothing that says herbivores have to have nice dispositions.  The Brontosaurus doesn’t appear to go against his natural inclinations by eating the men—he simply kills them and moves on.  It’s actually a healthy reminder for all of us: be respectful to wild animals.  Regardless of how cuddly they may look, they can be dangerous.

And I love the way his lips curl into a snarl—like a 1930s gangster, James Cagney style—as he goes in for the kill.

Part Three, Classic Snarls

James Cagney snarls in
The Public Enemy (1931).

Boris Karloff snarls in Frankenstein (1931).

The Brontosaurus snarls in King Kong (1933).

Reference Sources

The Making of King Kong by Orville Goldner and George E. Turner

Living Dangerously: The Adventures of Merian C. Cooper by Mark Cotta Vaz

Willis O'Brien: Special Effects Genius by Steve Archer

Dinosaurs Past and Present, Volume 1, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County

Dinosaurs Past and Present, Volume 2, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County

Charles R. Knight: The Artist Who Saw Through Time by Richard Milner

All in the Bones: A Biography of Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins by Valerie Bramwell and Robert M. Peck
Special features on the two-disc special edition, King Kong (1933) by Warner Home Video Inc.

... and an occasional sneak glance at Wikipedia entries (but always double-checking everything!)

Watch King Kong...

Purchase a King Kong DVD or Blu-Ray set at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.
Rent King Kong at Netflix or other rental service.

© 2012 Lee Price

A Stegosaurus in the Clearing

Kong-blogging, essay 11 of 15 blog entries on

Skull Island in King Kong (1933)

Part One, The First Dinosaur Encounter

The Stegosaurus in King Kong (1933).

Enter Stegosaurus, stage left.*

Our first look at the Stegosaurus is over the shoulders of the ship’s crew.  The dinosaur enters a clearing in the distance, oblivious to the men in the foreground.

Our first sight of the Stegosaurus in King Kong.

There are at least five planes of depth visible at this point.  In the foreground, the actors playing the crew are on a jungle-decorated studio set.  Then (rear-projected) there’s a fairly lengthy animation table, dressed with miniature trees, vines, and a log.  Behind that is a matte painting on glass with more jungle details.  Then another animation table behind which stands a painted canvas.  That’s five levels, and I may have missed two glass paintings, possibly one in front of the background canvas and another closer to the foreground.

You look for the genius of King Kong within the shots—that’s where the magic is.  It’s in the way birds fly across the screen, left to right, in the mid-ground, as that Stegosaurus placidly enters the screen in the distance.  The planes of depth are not static.  There’s movement taking place on three of them.

The Stegosaurus re-emerges nearer to us.

Action at one layer can even move to another.  That distant Stegosaurus on the furthest animation table wanders out of the frame (stage right) then emerges much nearer to us, now on the middle animation table.  The Stegosaurus lazily munches on some plants (a nice example of the gratuitous detail the movie loves to indulge in!) then sees the men.

“He’s going to charge,” shouts Carl Denham, the men’s leader.

The Stegosaurus charges.

The line between the set decoration in the foreground (where the actors are performing) and the rear-projected animation table is beautifully hidden.  The Stegosaurus barrels forward, rapidly getting larger, filling much of the frame with his bulk, before he’s finally brought down by a gas bomb tossed by Denham.

The dying Stegosaurus.

The death throes of the Stegosaurus are masterfully realized.  Co-directors Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack had watched many animals die during their adventures in various remote areas.  I can imagine them offering O’Brien advice on just how a large dying animal would act.

Even after the gas bomb explodes, the Stegosaurus still has life in him.  Denham shoots and the dinosaur sways back onto its feet, only to collapse again.  This time Denham shoots the Stegosaur in the brain causing its head to jerk upward, quivering.  As Denham and first mate Jack Driscoll walk alongside the dying body of the immense beast, its tail still undulates as its life ebbs.

Some books have reported that Kong’s Stegosaurus may have been an intentional cross between a traditional Stegosaurus and a Kentrosaurus because of its unusual eight-spiked tail.  Stegosaurus is now known to have a four-spiked tail while its smaller cousin Kentrosaurus has a whole series of spikes extending down its back to its tail.  But famous paleontologist Othniel C. Marsh, who described the first-discovered Stegosaurus in 1877, approved a drawing of a Stegosaurus skeleton for the1896 U.S. Geological Survey that gave the giant animal eight spikes on its tail.  The following year, acclaimed artist Charles R. Knight depicted Stegosaurus with eight spikes, perhaps following Marsh’s lead.  So there may have been some scientific basis for the choice of eight spikes on the Stegosaurus tail—and, artistically, they sure look impressive as the tail rises and falls with a serpentine grace.

* Using classic stage directions, stage left refers to our thespian Stegosaurus’ left—the audience sees the dinosaur enter from the right side of the screen.

Part Two, The Eight-Spiked Stegosaurus

The eight-spiked tail of the Stegosaurus undulates
as the dinosaur dies in King Kong.

Eight-spiked illustration of Stegosaurus unngulatus approved by
paleontologist Othniel C. Marsh for the 1896 U.S. Geological Survey.
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Charles R. Knight drawing of an eight-spiked Stegosaurus (1897).
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Charles R. Knight painting of an eight-spiked Stegosaurus (1912).
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Reference Sources

The Making of King Kong by Orville Goldner and George E. Turner

Living Dangerously: The Adventures of Merian C. Cooper by Mark Cotta Vaz

Willis O'Brien: Special Effects Genius by Steve Archer

Dinosaurs Past and Present, Volume 1, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County

Dinosaurs Past and Present, Volume 2, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County

Charles R. Knight: The Artist Who Saw Through Time by Richard Milner

All in the Bones: A Biography of Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins by Valerie Bramwell and Robert M. Peck
Special features on the two-disc special edition, King Kong (1933) by Warner Home Video Inc.

... and an occasional sneak glance at Wikipedia entries (but always double-checking everything!)

Watch King Kong...

Purchase a King Kong DVD or Blu-Ray set at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.
Rent King Kong at Netflix or other rental service.

© 2012 Lee Price

13 Things We Know About Kong

Kong-blogging, essay 10 of 15 blog entries on

Skull Island in King Kong (1933)

13 Things We Know About Kong

Extreme closeup of Kong from King Kong (1933).

In all honesty, we don’t know much about Kong.  King Kong (1933) is very sparing in its sharing of information about the nature of its title character, Kong.  Declining to speculate, I’m restricting the following 13 observations to the limited facts imparted about Kong during the Skull Island portion of King Kong.

Surprised Kong.

1. Kong is an ape with some gorilla-like features. His appearance does not entirely conform with that of any currently existing ape species.

2. Kong’s height:  It’s hard to get a bead on the size of the animal.  In far shots, he seems to be 18 to 20 feet high, but the closeups of Kong with people, as well as his closeup hand size, would scale to an animal much larger, possibly 40 or even 50 feet tall.

3. Kong has been alive long enough to give rise to legends and superstitions in the region and for the

Curious Kong.

native civilization to build a giant wall.  The possibility that Kong had ancestors who generated the legends and prompted the building of the wall is neither raised nor dismissed by the movie.

4. Based on the comments and actions of the natives, it is reasonable to infer that Kong is the only large ape of his kind currently alive on Skull Island.

5. Historically, the wall at the native village has been sufficient to keep Kong out.

Suspicious Kong.

6. Kong’s protective instincts toward Ann Darrow reveal a new facet of his personality.  There is no indication that he has ever acted in this almost maternal way in response to the villagers’ previous human sacrifices.

7. Kong’s aggressive behaviors include chest-beating and roaring, mainly used as tactics of intimidation.

8. Kong is very strong, even for a hypothetical ape of his size.

Protective Kong.

9. Kong is an unusually intelligent fighter capable of using fairly sophisticated boxing and wrestling moves.

10. Kong is innately curious.

11. Kong may maintain a permanent lair within the cave on Skull Mountain.  Kong’s use of this space remains ambiguous.

12. Kong bleeds when cut or bitten.

13. Kong can be rendered unconscious by gas bombs, suggesting that his respiratory and nervous systems are
those of a typical mammal.

Victorious Kong.

Reference Sources

The Making of King Kong by Orville Goldner and George E. Turner

Living Dangerously: The Adventures of Merian C. Cooper by Mark Cotta Vaz

Willis O'Brien: Special Effects Genius by Steve Archer

Dinosaurs Past and Present, Volume 1, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County

Dinosaurs Past and Present, Volume 2, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County

Charles R. Knight: The Artist Who Saw Through Time by Richard Milner

All in the Bones: A Biography of Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins by Valerie Bramwell and Robert M. Peck
Special features on the two-disc special edition, King Kong (1933) by Warner Home Video Inc.

... and an occasional sneak glance at Wikipedia entries (but always double-checking everything!)

Watch King Kong...

Purchase a King Kong DVD or Blu-Ray set at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.
Rent King Kong at Netflix or other rental service.

© 2012 Lee Price