The original King Kong was one of the most ballyhooed of all motion pictures, and yet it’s quite the rarity: a film that lived up to all the hyperbole. It truly was – and remains – the Eighth Wonder of the World, moving the artistry and technology of filmmaking ahead in 60-foot strides. A monster hit in 1933 and subsequent re-re-releases, Kong has been remade and ripped off several times, which is no surprise. What IS surprising is most of the Sons of Kong have been so lousy. With the success of this summer’s Godzilla remake, it's an apt time to revisit the big lizard's inspiration and his descendants.

King Kong (1933)

It's funny how close we came to seeing a movie with a real-life gorilla wrestling a giant komodo dragon. That was the scenario producer/writer/director Merian C. Cooper came up with. No studio would bite (you should forgive the expression), but when Cooper was brought over to RKO Pictures by David O. Selznick, and chanced to see some special effects footage by Willis O'Brien featuring stop-motion animation of dinosaurs for a film then in pre-production called Creation Cooper hastily re-realized his ape picture, cancelled Creation, and put O'Brien (who had previously animated dinosaurs for The Lost World, 1925) to work on what would become King Kong.

Cooper co-directed with his partner Ernest B. Schoedsack; Robert Armstrong and Fay Wray, both veterans of earlier Cooper films (The Four Feathers and The Most Dangerous Game, respectively) were the leads, with newcomer Bruce Cabot as the sort-of-dashing hero.

Another not-to-be overlooked member of the crew was Max Steiner, who wrote one of the greatest scores in Hollywood history.

Despite anything you may have heard to the contrary, there was no human in a monkey suit involved in the film: Kong was a series of articulated models of varying sizes, with a full-size head made for close-ups and manipulated by hidden crewmembers. Kong's fur was bearskin.

King Kong premiered at Radio City Music Hall in March, 1933, and broke box office records wherever it played. Shockingly, the film wasn't nominated for a single Academy Award. It has since become recognized as one of the great success stories in cinema's history, meaning the vultures of future filmmaking generations were free to circle Kong's giant carcass and RKO stupidly ordered up a quickie sequel.

The Son of Kong (1933)

Most people dismiss this as not a patch on the original, but a likeable, goofy little thing in its way.

Carl Denham, who brought Kong to America in the first one, is hounded by guys foisting summonses on him for all of Kong's damage. So he hops the boat and returns again to Skull Island in search of treasure; he finds Kong, Jr., a white ape with a penchant for fighting bears. Sorry for what he'd done to his pop, Denham befriends Kid Kong, who proves to be as reliable and helpful as a giant simian Lassie. In the end, though, Skull Island is hit by an earthquake, preventing another sequel.

The special effects are fine (they don't show up until the last 25 min. of a film that's less seventy minutes long); Helen Mack replaces Miss Wray as the object of ape affection. It's not King Kong but what is?

Mighty Joe Young (1949)

Following four successful re-releases of King Kong, the team behind the film reunited more than 15 years later, including O'Brien and Armstrong, for another gorilla love story, this time with a smaller gorilla, a younger woman (Terry Moore) and a happier ending. Despite some impressive special effects (which won an Oscar and were handled by O'Brien and his new apprentice, Ray Harryhausen), the film wasn't a hit, and plans for a sequel were dropped. A 1952 re-release of King Kong proved so successful, however, that it not only created a wealth of work for young Mr. Harryhausen throughout the 1950s in such films as The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms and It Came from Beneath the Sea, but inspired Japanese studio Toho to make their own 'gorilla lizard' film, Godzilla.

Mighty Joe Young was remade in 1998 by Disney, but nobody remembers why.

Konga (1961)

Producer Herman Cohen paid RKO (which, by this time, only existed to handle old properties) 5,000 for the rights to use the 'King Kong' name to promote his own giant gorilla film; mad scientist Michael Gough sticks a needle into a chimp and turns it into a man in a giant gorilla suit. They should've called him something else and saved the money to buy some special effects that were actually special. This has the distinction of being the first Kong film in color. The Ken doll that plays Dr. Gough when he's carried around by the 'giant ape' is the best thing in the movie.

King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962)

While this film's often considered a joke, it's actually better and more entertaining than either of the 'official' remakes of King Kong. This is a good film, in its way. It certainly is the only King Kong film (or Godzilla picture) that opens with a quote from Hamlet.

Believe it or not, this thing started with Willis O'Brien coming up with a treatment called King Kong vs. Frankenstein, and the idea was shopped around until Toho, looking for a comeback picture for Godzilla, in widescreen and color yet, bought the concept (O'Brien didn't get a cent) and made this, which was a worldwide hit. The guy who made the U.S. version, with added scenes of an American reporter watching the action and making comments, paid 5,000 for the American rights and retakes and then sold it to Universal for 00,000; the movie grossed well over a million in the U.S. Apparently, RKO would lease the rights to the King Kong name to anybody. I'm surprised Sam Katzman didn't think to make Shake, Rattle & Kong, or that somebody didn't produce a cheap, terribly-animated King Kong TV cartoon show. I'm not good at math, but there's a profit in there somewhere, which shows why they keep making King Kong pictures. Kong is a guy in a gorilla suit again, in case you were wondering, and to make him more of a match for Godzilla, he gets super-strength when struck by lightning. One imagines a lot of kids putting mom's fur jacket over their shoulders and standing under a tree during a rainstorm. Kids are easily misled.

King Kong (1966-69)

A cheap, terribly animated TV cartoon show which means I watched it religiously as a child and can still sing the theme song: 'King Kong! You know the name of King Kong! You know the fame of King Kong! Ten times as big as a man!' And WAY bigger than his co-star on the show, an itty-bitty secret agent called Tom of T.H.U.M.B. The show S.T.U.N.K.; it was a joint U.S.-Japanese production from Rankin-Bass, the folks who gave us misfit toys and a snowman who wishes everybody a happy birthday. Thank heaven nobody adapted it as a live-action motion picture, right?

King Kong Escapes (1968) is a live-action motion picture adaptation of the King Kong cartoon show, and nominally a sequel to King Kong vs. Godzilla, although Godzilla sat it out in a contract dispute and instead Kong battles a giant robot gorilla named Mechani-Kong built by Dr. Who, but not the same Who you think it is. Anyhoo, future plans to bring Kong back in additional Japanese adventures were scuttled by the fact that moths (regular ones, not giant ones) ate the scurvy suit.

King Kong (1976) lacks the craftsmanship, artistic nuance and subtle power of the TV cartoon; Jessica Lange is the Girl, Jeff Bridges is the Guy, and Charles Grodin is the Villain in a 'Story that Needs No Villain.' The ape in this modern-day remake was widely trumpeted as a 40 ft. tall robot, but that didn't work so they used a guy in a gorilla suit, mainly, and somehow captured an Oscar for Visual Effects, to the horror and chagrin of virtually every living person. In what is either a nod to feminism or a collapse into utter stupidity, Kong is shown making friends with the Girl (Judith Crist: 'The story of a dumb blonde who falls in love with a giant plastic finger'). He also gets lost on his way to the Empire State Building and climbs the World Trade Center instead. The film, utterly lacking in every ingredient that made the 1933 original a great film, was a huge hit, which stupefied an entire generation of movie lovers. Producer Dino De Laurentiis waited nearly a decade to make a sequel, hoping we'd all forget how awful his version was. We didn't.

A\*P\*E (1976)

Made to capitalize on the year's OTHER lousy giant gorilla movie; we have THIS puppy, an extremely low-budget 3D feature made in Korea with American non-stars. The King Kong folks threatened to sue, which only gave the film added publicity. At one point, the A\*P\*E gives us a 3D finger, arguably the dramatic highlight of any Kong movie.

The Mighty Peking Man (a/k/a Goliathon) (1977)

And now let's go to Hong Kong for King Kong (I've been waiting all article to say that) for a Shaw Brothers film with beautiful Evelyne Kraft paired up with the world's largest ape and the world's smallest loin cloth. The most entertaining Kong film since the first one, but alas, for all the wrong reasons.

King Kong Lives! (1986)

As if to win a wager that it's humanly possible to make a stupider version of King Kong than his previous one, Dino De Laurentiis (winner of the Irving Thalberg award in 2001, bestowed on producers 'whose bodies of work reflect a consistently high quality of motion picture production', ha ha) gives us a sequel to his 1976 epic. Kong's been on life support all this time, but they find a big enough heart(!) to transplant into him, he marries a giant she-Kong and they have a baby before his fatal heart attack fells him, in a scene that obviously inspired The Godfather, Part III, sort of.

You all think I make this stuff up, I know.

King Kong (2005) When Peter Jackson announced he was going to follow up his Academy Award-winning, box office bonanza adaptations of The Lord of the Rings with a remake of King Kong set in the 1930s, there was great excitement, except by people who knew better. Jackson took three times the length to deliver one-third the excitement of the original, miscast the leads (what is Jack Black doing in this film?) and worst of all, makes the same mistake as the awful '76 version: bonds Kong and the Girl so that there's no sense of terror or suspense. A complete misfire, and an overly long one at that, it sent Jackson back, monkey tail between his legs, to the Tolkien books where he belongs.

Well, there's the run-down. Thankfully, none of the sequels and sidebars detracts from the power of the original King Kong, one of the screen's great adventures, packed with enough thrills, romance, suspense and wonder for twelve movies. Maybe next time, instead of another brain-dead sequel with juggling girls and an ice-skating gorilla, they'll simply recognize that the first one can't be improved on and deliver the great Kong we've already got.

Clifford Weimer is a writer and film historian in Sacramento, CA. He can usually be found lurking about the dark corners of a movie theatre at inthebalcony.com.