Fourth viewing, probably; previously viewed on December 11, 2014; once or twice between 1983 and 1986 (if once, then there may have been another viewing on an earlier date).
A movie producer-director takes his cast and crew on a sea voyage to an uncharted island where he intends to shoot a picture featuring a gigantic ape. They end up not making that film, but instead bring the ape to America. The ape can't resist a blonde, and that spells his downfall.
This film has been a recurrent source of entertainment for me, but his charms have faded somewhat along the years. It's a triumph of technique, and its simple plot has some grandiose connotations, but coolly considered it's basically just an exceptionally well made adventure movie for kids (maybe I'm getting old?). To be fair, it is also a self-referential story about the disadvantages of location shooting: the film within the film, as planned, is roughly the same storywise as the film we watch, but completely antagonic as a filmmaking procedure. Thus, King Kong extracts its poesy from the human need for adventure and realism, but expresses this poesy by resorting to artifice and deceit. That's sort of fascinating in itself.
Here's my earlier review from 2014.
Rating: 59 (down from 69)
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