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In the original film, the character's name is Kong--a name given to him by the inhabitants of "Skull Island" in the Indian Ocean, where Kong lived along with other over-sized animals such as snakes, pterosaurs and dinosaurs. 'King' is an appellation added by an American film crew led by Carl Denham who captures Kong and takes him to New York City to be exhibited. Kong escapes and climbs the Empire State Building (the World Trade Center in the 1976 remake) where he is shot and killed by aircraft. However, "it was beauty killed the beast," as he only climbed the building in the first place in an attempt to protect actress Ann Darrow (Dwan in the 1976 remake).
A mockumentary about Skull Island on the DVD for the 2005 remake gives Kong's scientific name as Megaprimatus Kong, and states that his species may have evolved from Gigantopithecus.
Official filmography
King Kong (1933). The original, classic film, is remembered for its pioneering special effects using stop-motion models, animatronics and evocative story. Considered by some to be the greatest motion picture of all time.
Son of Kong (1933). A sequel released the same year, it concerns a return expedition to Skull Island that discovers Kong's son.
King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962). A film produced by Toho Studios in Japan. It brought the titular characters to life (the first time for both characters to be in a film in color) via the process of suitmation. The Toho Kong actually has no (or at least extremely little) relation to the original American monster. In the Toho version he is at least five times the size of the one in King Kong.
King Kong (1976) A remake by film producer Dino De Laurentiis, released by Paramount Pictures, and director John Guillermin. Jessica Lange and Jeff Bridges starred. The film was generally panned by critics at the time, but its reputation has improved with time, and it was eventually a commercial success. Even at the time of release, however, several prominent and well-respected critics such as Pauline Kael and Roger Ebert applauded the de Laurentiis version. It also won an Oscar for special effects.
Peter Jackson's King Kong (2005). A Universal Pictures remake of the original by Academy award-winning New Zealand director Peter Jackson, best known for directing the Lord of the Rings trilogy. The most recent incarnation of Kong is also the longest, running three hours and eight minutes. Winner of three Academy Awards for visual effects, sound mixing, and sound editing.
Late in 2005, the BBC and Hollywood trade papers reported that a 3-Dstereoscopic version of the 2005 film was being created from the animation files, and live actors digitally enhanced for 3D display. This may be just an elaborate 3D short for Universal Studios Theme Park, or a digital 3D version for general release in 2006.
Books
A novelization of the original film was published in December 1932, as part of the film's advance marketing. The novel was credited to Edgar Wallace and Merian C. Cooper, although it was in fact written by Delos W. Lovelace. Apparently Cooper was the key creative influence. In an interview, comic book author Joe DeVito explains:
"From what I know, Edgar Wallace, a famous writer of the time, died very early in the process. Little if anything of his ever appeared in the final story, but his name was retained for its saleability ... King Kong was Cooper’s creation, a fantasy manifestation of his real life adventures. As many have mentioned before, Cooper was Carl Denham. His actual exploits rival anything Indiana Jones ever did in the movies."
This conclusion about Wallace's contribution agrees with The Making of King Kong, by Orville Goldner and George E. Turner (1975). In a diary entry from 1932, Wallace wrote: "I am doing a super-horror story with Merian Cooper, but the truth is it is much more his story than mine ... I shall get much more credit out of the picture than I deserve if it is a success, but as I shall be blamed by the public if it's a failure, that seems fair" (p. 58). Wallace died of pneumonia complicated by diabetes on February 10, 1932, and Cooper later said, "Actually, Edgar Wallace didn't write any of Kong, not one bloody word... I'd promised him credit and so I gave it to him" (p. 59).
Several differences exist in the novel from the completed film, as it reflects an earlier draft of the script that became the final shooting script. The novelization includes scenes from the screenplay that were cut from the completed movie, or were never shot altogether. These include the spider pit sequence, as well as a Styracosaurus attack, and Kong battling three Triceratops.
The original publisher was Grosset & Dunlap. Paperback editions by Bantam (U.S.) and Corgi (UK) came out in the 1960s, and it has since been republished by Penguin and Random House.
In 1933, Mystery Magazine published a King Kongserial under the named of Walter F. Ripperger. This is unrelated to the 1932 novel.
Kong: King of Skull Island, an illustrated novel labeled as an authorized sequel to King Kong (1933), was published in 2004 by DH Press, a subsidiary of Dark Horse Comics. A large-paperback edition was released in 2005. Authorized by the family and estate of Merian C. Cooper, the book was created & illustrated by Joe DeVito, written by Brad Strickland with John Michlig, and includes an introduction by Ray Harryhausen. The novel's story ignores the existence of Son of Kong (1933) and continues the story of Skull Island with Carl Denham and Jack Driscoll in the late 1950's, through the novel's central character, Vincent Denham. (Ann Darrow is not included, but mentioned several times.) The novel also becomes a prequel that reveals the story of the early history of Kong, of Skull Island, and of the natives of the island.
Over the decades, there have been numerous comic book adaptations of the 1933 King Kong by various comic-book publishers, and a current one of the 2005-remake by Dark Horse Comics.
Television
The King Kong Show (1966). In this cartoon series, the famous giant ape befriends the Bond family, with whom he goes on various adventures, fighting monsters, robots, mad scientists and other threats. Produced by Rankin/Bass, the animation was provided in Japan by Toei Animation, making this the very first anime series to be commissioned right out of Japan by an American company. This was also the cartoon that resulted in the production of Toho's Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster (originally planned as a Kong film) and King Kong Escapes.
Kong: The Animated Series (2001). An unofficial animated production set many decades after the events of the original film. "Kong" is cloned by a female scientist.
A direct-to-DVD movie called Kong: King of Atlantis, based on the 2001 series, has been released to try and cash in on the 2005 movie. Both the series and movie were then included in Toon Disney's "Jetix" group for a time, also to take advantage of the 2005 movie's release.
Related Films
A rare photo of the lost film King Kong Appears in Edo.
The premise of a giant gorilla brought to the United States for entertainment purposes, and subsequently wreaking havoc, was recycled in Mighty Joe Young, (1949, remade in 1998).
King Kong bears some similarities with an earlier effort by special effects head Willis O'Brien, The Lost World (1925), in which dinosaurs are found living on an isolated plateau. Scenes from a failed O'Brien project, Creation, were cannibalized for the 1933Kong. Creation was also about a group of people stumbling into an environment where prehistoric creatures have survived extinction.
An obscure Japanese clone, Japanese King Kong (和製キングコング, Wasei Kingu Kongu), featuring an all-Japanese cast and produced by the Shochiku company, was also released in 1933. Detailed information outside of Japan about this film cannot be found.
King Kong Appears in Edo (江戸に現れたキングコング, Edo ni Arawareta Kingu Kongu). An unofficial and enigmatic Japanese-made monster/period piece by company Zensho Kinema in which King Kong attacks medieval Edo (modern Tokyo), and also Japan's first kaiju (giant monster) film. Although inaccurate to its historical setting, some Caligari-esque expressionistic buildings were added for Kong to climb. The film has been lost since its theatrical run in 1938, but rare photos available in books in Japan prove this film's existence. Fuminori Ohashi, who would go on to create the suit for the titular monster in Godzilla, created the special effects for this film.
Kongfrontation - A ride at Universal Orlando Resort, it opened in 1990 and closed in 2002, replaced by the Revenge of the Mummy attraction. The ride featured a queue which represented a New York City subway station. The ride itself took place in a Roosevelt Island cable car, where you and other civilians made an attempt to escape the wrath of Kong. Guests traveled through the streets of New York, had two encounters with the beast, and arrived safely at their destination.
King Kong continually attacks tram tours of the backlot at Universal Studios Hollywood.
Pop culture references
King Kong has been referenced and parodied many times in film, television and literature.
The lyrics of the Jim Croce song "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown" states the track's title character is "badder than ol' King Kong."
In the Little Shop of Horrors remake, the monstrous Audrey II sings, "Mean Green Mother From Outer Space", a line of which is: "Don't you talk to me about ol' King Kong / Y'think he's the worst / Well you're thinkin' wrong."
One well-known satire is by British author Terry Pratchett, whose book Moving Pictures climaxes with a giant woman carrying a screaming ape up a tall tower.
The television series DuckTales parodies King Kong in two episodes: In "Ducky Horror Picture Show" a group of scary movie monsters are spending the night in Scrooge's mansion. One of the monsters who shows up is a giant gorilla named Ping Pong who climbs up Scrooge's Money Bin after he arrives. Later, "Attack of the Fifty Foot Webby" had Webby in the role of King Kong climbing a building with an ironic moment of her holding the monkey in her own hand.
In one episode of the Disney Afternoon cartoon, Darkwing Duck, the protagonist contends with assorted movie characters that are conjured off from movie-theater screens, and a giant gorilla named Konjo is one of the monsters summoned. Konjo then grabs Gosalyn Mallard and scales up the huge building as she screams "I'm being kidnapped by a fictional character!".
The animated cartoon series Grape Ape, about the adventures of a 40-foot tall purple gorilla, is arguably inspired by King Kong.
Penelope Pitstop played damsel-in-distress on a movie set, with a giant wind-up robot gorilla. Pitstop also once deals with a Son of Kong-size gorilla called "King Klonk".
The Saturday morning cartoon series Garfield and Friends had two King Kong related moments. The first was an episode called "Nighty Nightmare" in which Garfield grows to huge size due to overeating in a nightmare he is having. Near the end of the episode, he cimbing up the tallest building in the city, hanging onto the top of it in the way King Kong was in the movies. He also swats towards a flying saucer that comes down towards him in the same way Kong did to the airplanes shooting at him. Later, in the fifth season's "Bad Neighbor Policy", Mr. Burnside (Jon's next-door neighbor) is going crazy, seeing Garfield everywhere he looks. Towards the end of the episode, one of the Garfields he sees is a Garfield spoofing a King Kong situation where he is large-sized and hanging on the side of a building climbing up it while holding a girl in his hand.
A popular television spoof was the segment 'King Homer' from The Simpsons episode "Treehouse of Horror III", in which the story was retold featuring Simpsons characters, with Homer as Kong, Marge as Ann Darrow and Mr. Burns as the Carl Denham analogues. The spoof follows the plot of the 1933 film closely; however, it ends with Marge marrying King Homer after he collapses in exhaustion, failing to climb beyond the second story of the Empire State Building. The film was referenced again on The Simpsons in the episode "Monty Can't Buy Me Love," where Mr. Burns captures the Loch Ness Monster and brings him back to America to entertain an audience; however, instead of the Monster going berserk during its debut, Burns himself is startled by the flash photography and causes the carnage.
"Kitten Kong" was a 1971 episode of the BBC comedy series The Goodies, in which a fluffy white kitten was enlarged to super-size. Some surprisingly good special effects enabled the kitten to destroy several famous landmarks, including St Paul's Cathedral and the Post-Office Tower, before reverting to normal. (see cover art picture to right)
Tiny Toon Adventures has an episode named "You asked for it", in which Plucky Duck asks to be the biggest star in Acme Acres. He suddenly is transformed into a huge 40-foot creature going by the name "Duck Kong". He winds up climbing a tall building at the end of the short with Shirley the Loon in his hand and meeting another giant gorilla named Chuckles who is already at the top of the building he was climbing and holding his own female captive as well.
A two-part Energizer Battery commercial had the 1933 Kong himself contracted by a rival battery corporation (SuperVolt) to get rid of the Energizer Bunny for them. The commercials were done in black-and-white, and used cleverly edited 1933 Kong sequences (possibly combined with new computer-generated Kong shots). The concluding second-part had Kong cornering the Bunny on the roof of a New York City building (complete with biplanes flying in the sky). His foot in an open window interrupts a couple (resembling Ann Darrow and Jack Driscoll) having a romantic moment. The woman, extremely annoyed, slams the window on Kong's toes, making him lose his balance and grip, sending him falling.
In the 1968 film Yellow Submarine, the characters look in a room where a monster ape smashes through a window to get at a screaming woman on a bed. ("Do you think we're interrupting something?" a character nonchalantly comments of it.)
In the 1974 film The Down and Dirty Duck, there is a brief animation sequence where one of the lead characters, Willard, transforms into a giant ape, grabs a girl from out of a bus, strips her clothes off, and climbs up the Empire State Building where he is shot at by cannons with change into the long noses of several onlookers, the State Building changes into a bus stop sign, and the ape turns back into normal-sized Willard.
In the 2005 film Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, the giant were-rabbit grabs Lady Tottington and leaps onto a tall building. And in a couple of scenes, he pounds his chest and howls.
Swedish pop group ABBA recorded a song titled "King Kong Song" as a track for their 1974 album Waterloo. The song relates to a songwriter who writes a song about dancing like a gorilla after having seen the original King Kong on television.
A Bob Newhart skit was entitled "King Kong", where a rookie security guard phones for help in dealing with an ape on the building.
Disney's Herbie Rides Again villain (Alonzo Hawk) has a nightmare, with himself a giant (in his pajamas) atop the Empire State Building and being attacked by flying VW Beetles squirting oil in his face.
The animation that presents the title and opening credits of The Pink Panther Strikes Again shows the Pink Panther performing in parodies of numerous famous movies, including Kong on the Empire State Building.
The third season of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers references Kong in the episode "A Chimp In Charge": As Finster tries to transform a chimpanzee into a monster, he remarks "Don't you want to be a big gorilla like King, uh... what's-his-name?"
The 2004 film Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow concludes on a tropical island of beasts that is similar to Skull Island, called "Totenkopf's Island". ("Totenkopf" is German for "Death's Head", which is a skull emblem.) Also at the island, there can be seen a sunken ship named "Venture", and then an action scene on a fallen tree that bridges a chasm.
The 2005 Disney movie, Chicken Little, depicts a short clip of the character "Fish Out Of Water" on a paper version of the Empire State Building swatting at paper airplanes and beating his chest. Fish is finally struck in the head and falls in slow motion to the ground. "Runt Of The Litter" picks up a paper figure and quotes Carl Denham by saying, "Twas beauty that killed the beast."
The 1990 film Gremlins 2: The New Batch has a brief shot of an evil Gremlin (while still in its furry incarnation) sitting atop a model of a tall building, swatting at a biplane mobile, which is hanging nearby.
Giant gorillas similar to Kong are part of a story in the anime TV-series "Speed Racer", which takes place on an African island that is the 007-villain-style secret base of an exiled army (who suspiciously resemble Nazis) and a "traditional" mad-scientist, who plan to unleash war on the entire world (again) with an "army of giants" (direct quote). Around a half-dozen Kong-size gorillas -- along with an unrevealed number of giant spiders -- are shown to have been successfully created, and the next stage in the experiments was to be experimenting on humans.
An episode of the post-apocalyptic cartoon Thundarr the Barbarian involved a race of monkey-people reconstructing a full-sized animatronic Kong that had been (fictitiously) built for the 1976 remake, and had been buried during the cataclysm.
Superman: The Animated Series featured an episode named "Monkey Fun" in which a chimpanzee astronaut named Titano gets mutated into a gigantic pseudo-gorilla. This was also a remake of an episode from a 1960's animated Superman titled "The Chimp Who Made it Big" and it followed the comic book origins of Titano more closely. In the 60's version of the cartoon episode the chimp was named Toto originally and renamed to Titano after he grew in size giving him a more Kong sounding name. Titano in the earlier version would grab Lois Lane and walk off with her much like Kong did in the movies but the newer Titano doesn't do so in the 90's version. The Titano character in the Superman comic books was originally inspired by King Kong.
A very obvious spoof is found in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles episode "Turtles of the Jungle", which dealt with a growth ray that accidentally changed the inventor of said growth ray's pet monkey, Jocko, into a 40-foot ape. Jocko winds up eventually grabbing April O'Neil and climbing up the tallest building in the city with her in his hand. April even goes on to say, "Either giant gorillas like to hold women and climb tall buildings, or he's seen the movie." Raphael, while fighting the large Jocko, also referred to him as "King Klutz".
Scenes from King Kong are referenced or mimicked in all three Jurassic Park films, and Kong is mentioned directly in the first one - as the tour group approaches the massive Jurassic Park gate, Jeff Goldblum's character asks, "What have they got in there, King Kong?".
Parts of the basic plotline or setting from King Kong has been adapted for several s, including the AD&D module WG6 Isle of the Ape.
Strength
Kong has always been strong throughout all of his movies. He has always been able to easily lift up T-rexes or V-rexes (even with one arm). Kong has also been able to throw around cars and he can even break out of chrome steel. It is unknown how strong Kong actually is although it's speculated that he may actually be able to lift about 60 tons.
Video games
The film character was the inspiration for the 1981 video gameDonkey Kong and subsequent spin-offs, in which the eponymous ape climbs a huge structure after kidnapping a woman, as in the film. Shigeru Miyamoto intended the name 'Donkey Kong' to mean "stubborn gorilla." MCA/Universal attempted to sue Nintendo for copyright infringement in Universal City Studios, Inc. v. Nintendo Co., Ltd.. However, they lost and ended up paying Nintendo $1.8 million in damages when it was discovered that King Kong was in fact in the public domain and that MCA knew it when they filed the lawsuit.
A King Kong game was produced by Tiger Games for the Atari 2600, sporting a blue casing. The game is somewhat rare.
The Rampage games by Atari/Midway also feature a King Kong spoof, named George, as well as a Godzilla spoof and other monsters.
King Kong 2: Ikari no Megaton Punch is a Famicom action/adventure games very loosely based on the 1986 movie King Kong Lives. This game was developed by Konami and it disregarded the human characters and other plot elements of the movie. King Kong was presented in a quest to save his female counterpart from the clutches of gigantic robots.
There is human counterpart game of Ikari no Megaton Punch for the MSX computer named King Kong 2, also by Konami.
King Kong makes a special appearance as a playable character in Konami Wai Wai World (also known as Konami World). Interestingly, King Kong does not appear in his usual giant size but rather as a 10 foot tall gorilla. The story of the game mentions King Kong being shrunk down in size after being captured by an army of robots, which directly relates to the game King Kong 2: Ikari no Megaton PunchFile:Kong Fight.jpgKong fighting a V-Rex in the 2005 video game.
War of the Monsters is a 3D fighting game developed by Incognito Entertainment for Sony PlayStation 2 where the characters are various giant monsters inspired by films. One of the monsters is a giant ape named Congar, an obvious King Kong homage. It also features a Godzilla homage called Togera. A bonus mode will all also unlock a secret character named Metal Congar, an obvious reference to Mechani-Kong.
In Capcom's 1989 arcade classic Strider, a 'giant robot ape' confronts the game's hero, Strider Hiryu as a mini-boss; an obvious reference to both Kong and Mechani-Kong. He appears during the Siberian Wilderness Stage (Level 2).
The ending to the video game Viewtiful Joe shows parodies of famous movie posters. One is a King Kong parody, which includes Hulk Davidson (one of the game's bosses) on top of the Empire State Building.
King Kong was the title character (a boxer) of a ground breaking 1950sSouth African musical which helped launch Miriam Makeba on the international stage.
