The Son of Kong (1933)

"You'll never catch a monkey that way.", 25 November 2005

In this quickly produced sequel to the iconic King Kong, Carl Denham (Robert Armstrong) and company head back to Skull Island in search of treasure. Once there, they run into the expected larger than life monsters. Fortunately for our group of explorers, they also run into Kong's offspring who proves to be more agreeable than his old man.

Son of Kong was put together in a hurry and it shows. Willis O"Brien's stop-motion work is not as convincing as it was in King Kong. Creature movements are even more jerky and unnatural than in the original. And the screen time given to O'Brien's creatures has been reduced to a fraction of that in King Kong. Instead, the characters spend the majority of the movie on another island with not much to do other than bore the audience. It's a real shame that more time and care wasn't taken with this sequel. King Kong deserved better than this.

Several members of the original cast are back, but neither Robert Armstrong nor Frank Reicher appears to be as interested in the proceedings as they did in the original. Helen Mack is on hand to basically take the Fay Wray role. She's a poor substitute.

But the worst part of Son of Kong was the decision to allow baby Kong to mug for the cameras. There are a couple of scenes where the ape looks right at the camera and all but winks at the audience. The effect of these scenes is to completely destroy any suspense and credibility the movie might have had going for it. It just makes the whole movie seem silly.

4/10