Son of Kong (1933)

What does a movie studio do when they have a giant hit that makes a lot of money on their hands? Make a sequel right away, or course, to bank on making more money. What happens if the major draw of the original movie was killed off? Create a new character that is somewhat like the original and perhaps say he/she is related to the character. And so in the matter of nine months from the monumental success of RKO’s monster picture King Kong the studio would spit out a quick sequel bringing Carl Denham back to skull island for yet another adventure and a run in with a new, and this time friendlier Kong, in Son of Kong. It would in no way be near the picture its predecessor was, but it was only produced to ride the coattails of the original’s success and help RKO’s bankroll grow for future ventures in cinema. The reason audiences go to sequels is to try to relive the magic they once saw in the original motion picture, hoping to rekindle relationships with old characters and meet new ones to fill those characters left behind. Therefore we get to see Son of Kong, RKO’s cheap cash-grab picture of 1933.

Son of Kong is a monster, adventure movie that continues the story of Carl Denham, the man who captured the original Kong, and his return to the mysterious Skull Island attempting to find a fabled hidden treasure and his run in with a new large gorilla he believes is the son of King Kong. We catch up with Carl Denham (Robert Armstrong) one month after the rampage of Kong, “The Eighth Wonder of the World,” on Manhattan. A broken man being sued and pursued by the press at every turn for the horrors he brought to the city that fateful night. Denham runs away with Captain Englehorn (Frank Reicher) of the U.S.S. Venture, the ship that brought them to Skull Island, to live as shippers in the Orient and avoid the lives that now shadow over them. The men return to Skull Island after being misled of a legendary treasure that is on the prehistoric isle. A beautiful stowaway Hilda (Helen Mack) becomes our replacement of the Fay Wray character as the ship finds its way to the treacherous piece of land. On it Denham encounters new beasts, created by legendary stop motion animator Willis O’Brien, which includes a smaller giant albino gorilla who actually helps Denham discover a hidden treasure and save the former filmmaker and his new love, Hilda, as the island is destroyed, consumed by the ocean, during a climactic storm, taking the life of the friendly beast.

Let’s get this out in the open: The movie is cheap and a huge let down on the surface. The premise of RKO was to get characters we know to go back to the island and meet a new Kong. Armstrong would return as Denham as the protagonist, and to help in a small way connect the new film to the classic original, the small side character, Captain Englehorn, played by original actor Frank Reicher returns with him. To fill in for the “scream queen” Fay Wray character was Helen Mack as Wray was a hot commodity for the studio, working on many pictures using her ear piercing vocals. There is a weak love story between Denham and Hilda, but the main draw, of course would be Kong, or in this case his son. Well, there is actually no proof it is Kong’s son (this gorilla is white too, so this fact can be very confusing). By Denham’s statement that it must be his baby, or “little Kong,” is enough glue for these screenwriters to pull a story out of their back sides and run with it. The twist is that the Kong character is riendly and helpful this time, aiding the humans instead of sacking revenge for ruining his world. This character has far less attractive characteristics from the original beast, lacking motivation and the audience’s compassion for the misunderstood creature in the original King Kong. The picture’s premise has little to stand on, but the movie had little to start from originally as it was a forced endeavor for the studio. It did what it set out to do, in recreate aspects of the original and making some money.

Not much else can be said positively other than that and the fact Willis O’Brien must have worked some serious magic as he turned out all the effects in less than nine months from the original film. O’Brien was the man that created for audiences the magic of seeing real life dinosaurs on the on the big screen in the classic picture The Lost World, and brought us the wonder of the original 30 foot tall King Kong. Here he was asked, along with fellow special effects artist Buzz Gibson, to quickly produce the same kind of realistic imagery in a yet another movie released within a year of the before mentioned phenomena. This would be the most impressive part of the production. Despite the major advances in special effects since these films, and how crude it may look today, these special effects were masterful wonders of its day. Nothing had been seen like this before.

Along with Willis, the returning members of this film were director Ernest B. Schoedsack, star Robert Armstrong, and character actor Frank Reicher. Schoedsack co-directed King Kong with Merian C. Cooper, the brain child of the film, but Schoedsack did most of the actual directing to create the fast paced energy of the picture. No doubt he was brought back for his quick work ethic to get the sequel in theaters as soon as possible. Armstrong, though the story’s major driving character of the original film was not the main character or the romantic lead, playing second fiddle to both Wray and Kong. Now he got to expand the Denham character, something Armstrong loved, but actually sours the picture a bit for my taste. Reicher would be brought back too, after all his character owned the boat that originally got us to the island, but that would be the high point for this character actor’s career. Helen Mack would round out the small core cast to be the screaming female character that falls in love with Denham and is saved by little Kong, but Mack was no star, nor would she become one.

You can’t really call this movie a flop as it was never meant to be a real masterpiece anyways. Son of Kong would do its job for RKO. The film would quickly fade into the background of celluloid history as just another weak monster movie, being packaged in special double features with the original film or another large gorilla film to be seen years later, Mighty Joe Young. Now Son of Kong is usually seen as almost a special feature on home releases of King Kong sets. It was a good year for RKO thanks to the giant monster gorilla, and despite how poor this film actually is (minus the magical turn over time of O’Brien’s work) it is great to see that it has not hurt the original classic film by making it too campy. Even though both Kong and his “son” dies in these two features the original monster that is King Kong still lives strong in movie lore.