The Son of Kong (1933) - film review

Carl Denham, the adventurer who brought King Kong to New York, faces ruin and imprisonment as a result of the damage caused by the giant ape when it ran amok.  Evading the authorities, he joins up with his old friend Captain Englehorn and the two set off to start a new life shipping cargo in the Far East.   On their arrival at the port of Dakang, Denham runs into Nils Helstrom, the man who sold him the map of the island where he discovered King Kong.  When Helstrom reveals that there is a fabulous lost treasure on the island, Denham makes a hasty return to the island, convinced he will make his fortune.  What he and his friends find is not treasure but something just as fantastic – the son of King Kong...

RKO wasted no time capitalising on the success of their 1933 hit King Kong and immediately rushed out this cut price sequel which, whilst inferior to the first Kong movie in virtually every respect, is still an entertaining romp.  This time, the production team went for laughs rather than thrills and chills, so the film had a potentially wider market than its predecessor, although it fared far less well at the box office.

As in the first Kong outing, what most impresses are Willis H. O’Brien’s stunning visual effects.  A combination of sophisticated model work, stop-motion photography and matte processing achieves some remarkable results and it is often impossible to see where the model shots end and the life action shots begin, so seamlessly are the two married together.  

Yes, the film has its flaws.  The dialogue is awful, the direction bland, and the performances so bad that you wonder how the cast were ever able to earn even a subsistence wage.  Yet all of this is forgiven when the cute albino Kong offspring enters the frame and starts fending off an array of prehistoric monsters to save his human chums.  Admittedly, the climax isn’t as smartly rendered or as exciting as that of the original King movie but it still makes an effective denouement to an acceptable sequel. RKO would have one final flirtation with ape-themed melodrama in their 1949 film Mighty Joe Young.

© filmsdefrance.com 2009

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