10 King Kong Movies Ranked Worst To

Best
All hail the king.

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Paramount Pictures
Directed by Ernest B Schoedsack and Merian C Cooper, King Kong (1933) is far
from the first monster movie though it can lay claim to being the father of today’s
effects-heavy, destruction-filled blockbusters. Without Kong, there’s no Godzilla,
Alien or Jurassic Park.

In his debut, Kong is brought to life by Willis O’Brien’s frame-by-frame stop-motion

technique, and the filmmakers take a bit of poetic licence when it comes to telling us
how tall their leading man actually is. According to Roger Ebert, Kong is eighteen
feet tall on Skull Island, twenty-four feet on stage and fifty feet tall on the Empire
State Building.

But then, Kong has been taking poetic licence throughout his long and illustrious
screen career. He’s tall enough to stand head to head with Godzilla, who seems to
tower over Tokyo’s buildings, yet still has to climb up the side of skyscrapers to
reach the roof.
More than any other screen monster, though, Kong retains the ability to fascinate
and enthral. More than eighty years after he first reached the screen, he remains the
“eighth wonder of the world”, his very name a byword for size and strength.

The following list includes remakes as well as the best known spinoffs and rip-offs
but excludes animated films and TV movies. It should keep monster fans busy until
Kong: Skull Island reaches screens in March.

10. Queen Kong

Dexter Film London

Laughable in every respect apart from when it attempts to be funny, this no-budget
sex comedy knock-off of Dino de Laurentiis’s King Kong remake is so lame-brained
and amateurish you can’t imagine anyone queuing up to see it. In fact, viewers never
had the chance – “legal difficulties” meant it was never released theatrically and
remained unseen until its DVD debut twenty-five years later.

Rula Lenska is looking for a “real man” to star in her jungle adventure film, but in 70s
England the best she can find is Robin Askwith, who also played Timothy Lea in the
Confessions movies. Venturing to “Lazanga, where they do the konga”, Askwith is
kidnapped by the bikinied natives who want him as a mate for their goddess, Queen
Kong.

Throughout the film, the score sounds like ersatz Benny Hill Show theme music,
which is apt because Queen Kong is basically an overextended sketch, filled with
dreadful puns (“so that’s gorilla warfare!”), casual sexism and politically incorrect
‘humour’. Oddest of all is the end credits song, which includes the couplet, “You
would stop yelling ‘rape’/ If I was just an ordinary household ape.”
9. King Kong (1976)

Paramount Pictures

As needless (and needlessly stupid) as this 1976 remake is, it serves as a prime example of what
happens when filmmakers take a camp approach to epic material. Maybe Lorenzo Semple Jr, who’d
written for the Batman TV series in the 1960s, wasn’t the right screenwriter for the project.

Fay Wray’s character in the original was no feminist icon, but Jessica Lange has even less to work
with, portraying a bimbo named Dwan (“You know, like Dawn, except I switched two letters”) whose
life was saved by Deep Throat.

It gets worse: whisked away by Kong, she discusses horoscopes with the big guy (“I bet you’re an
Aries, aren’t you?”) and tells him his habit of knocking down trees is a sign of insecurity. Then comes
a line that should never be uttered in a monster movie: “Put me down you male chauvinist pig ape!”

The film’s highly touted special effects (which won an Oscar for “Special Achievement”) amount to
Rick Baker in a gorilla suit and some obvious back projection. A 40-foot tall mechanical Kong was
constructed especially for the production, but when the filmmakers got it in front of the cameras
they quickly realized how fake it looked and resorted to cheaper trickery.

Remember that. It’s more interesting than the movie.

8. Ape

Worldwide Entertainment
“Not to be confused with King Kong!” lies the poster for this cheap Korea-lensed 3D
knock-off, which appeared in theaters a week after Dino De Laurentiis’ 1976 remake.
Such a disclaimer is moot, however: the eponymous creature is referred to as Kong
twice in the movie.

Leaving out the expedition to Skull Island, the dinosaurs, plus Kong’s introduction
and subsequent capture, Ape begins three-quarters of the way through the
traditional narrative with the hirsute antagonist wading ashore to stomp model
buildings and throw around vehicles that look suspiciously like Tonka toys.

In a sequence strangely absent from its bigger-budgeted brethren, our antagonist,

smitten by a hanglider, skips along merrily behind it, arms aloft, head moving from
side to side. “Let’s see him dance for his organ grinder now,” growls an unimpressed
General, before sending in some wire-supported helicopter gunships. He’s left open-
mouthed, however (as is the audience), when Ape/ Kong swats them aside before
giving him the finger.

7. King Kong Lives

De Laurentiis Entertainment Group

Dino De Laurentiis may have inspired (and created) more cinematic flotsam than any other
producer: not content with remaking King Kong very badly, he subsequently followed it up
with this masterpiece of unintentional comedy.

Being asked to believe that Kong survived his climactic tumble is one thing; being told that
Dr Linda Hamilton has been looking after him in Atlanta ever since is more likely to raise a
smirk. However, by the time Lance Kerwin’s explorer chances across a double-D female
Kong in Borneo while Hamilton carries out a heart transplant on The King using oversized
instruments and a crane, you may well be helpless with laughter.

Movie scientists are of course idiots so the doc keeps our hirsute hero chained up in a hangar
patrolled by a single guard, who proclaims, “the other monkey’s gone apesh*t” as Kong gets
a whiff of the female’s scent and decides to break free. Somehow able to grab her and elope
without being followed or spotted, he takes his new bride to “Honeymoon Ridge” so he can
make goo-goo eyes at her, snuggle up and show her why they call him The King. Funny by
itself, this scene works even better when you realize it’s two men inside the monkey suits.

6. Son Of Kong
RKO Radio Pictures
Released nine months after the original, Son Of Kong could well be the film that sent
Hollywood down its current path of following up landmark movies with needless and
forgettable cash-ins.

After contracting the mysterious disease known as “screenwriter’s contrivance”, Carl

Denham (Robert Armstrong) returns to Skull Island in search of treasure and
immediately encounters unfriendly natives, dinosaurs and an albino gorilla he names
“Little Kong.” The special effects include an earthquake and Little Kong fighting a
dragon-like creature, but the film lacks the sense of awe and wonder (not to mention
the creative energy) that made the original a landmark of cinema.

Running a slender 69 minutes, Son Of Kong is literally half the movie its predecessor
was. Knowing they could never top the original’s Empire State Building grand finale,
the filmmakers concentrate less on epic effects sequences and more on humour,
which only lends the picture an air of quaintness and gentility.
5. King Kong Escapes

Toho Studios
Having previously pit Kong against Godzilla, Toho Studios brought the big fella back
in this gloriously camp 1967 movie to fight a giant mechanical version of himself.

You see, an evil supervillain wants to acquire Element X, a radioactive element

found only at the North Pole, so he builds Mechani-Kong to accomplish the task for
him. What he fails to realize is that the radiation will cause the robot’s brain to shut
down so he decides to kidnap the real Kong instead, and if you just thought, “I bet
Kong and Mechani-Kong end up fighting”, give yourself a cigar.

A must-see for fans for badly dubbed camp nonsense, King Kong Escapes boasts
some of the worst effects you’ve ever seen in a Kong movie, including a
spectacularly tatty monster suit for the King himself. It is fun to watch him stomp
through a toy model version of Tokyo, and how many films feature a Japanese
supervillain named Dr Who?

4. King Kong (2005)

Universal Pictures

Clocking in at over three hours, this second remake is the first $200 million Kong directed by an
Oscar winner, with Oscar nominee Naomi Watts ensuring that the heroine isn’t the screaming bimbo
from the 1976 version. Is it a better movie? Not really.

Running 84 minutes longer than the 1933 original, this version is as clunky as the original was
graceful, largely because co-writer/director Peter Jackson insists on fleshing out ciphers to give them
“depth.” The ugly truth about the Kong movies is that the people and their motivations aren’t
important – don’t bore us, just get to Skull Island.

After spending too long with these characters (and discovering that all Adrien Brody’s Jack Driscoll
really wants is to be respected as a playwright – ugh), the film finally lumbers to the island, but the
wow factor is sadly when the King arrives. Willis O’Brien’s Kong might’ve only been a puppet, but
this digital version is no improvement – where’s the awe and wonder in watching an animated
monster stomp more animated monsters?

3. King Kong Vs Godzilla

Universal/Toho

“Not to be confused with King Kong!” lies the poster for this cheap Korea-lensed 3D knock-off, which
appeared in theaters a week after Dino De Laurentiis’ 1976 remake. Such a disclaimer is moot,
however: the eponymous creature is referred to as Kong twice in the movie.

Leaving out the expedition to Skull Island, the dinosaurs, plus Kong’s introduction and subsequent
capture, Ape begins three-quarters of the way through the traditional narrative with the hirsute
antagonist wading ashore to stomp model buildings and throw around vehicles that look
suspiciously like Tonka toys.

In a sequence strangely absent from its bigger-budgeted brethren, our antagonist, smitten by a
hanglider, skips along merrily behind it, arms aloft, head moving from side to side. “Let’s see him
dance for his organ grinder now,” growls an unimpressed General, before sending in some wire-
supported helicopter gunships. He’s left open-mouthed, however (as is the audience), when Ape/
Kong swats them aside before giving him the finger.

2. Mighty Joe Young

RKO Radio Pictures

“Mightier than King Kong!” claims the trailer, but even in 1949 Mighty Joe Young must’ve given
audiences a sense of déjà vu: it reunites Kong’s director, screenwriter and star for more monkey
business.

Once again, Robert Armstrong plays an explorer who gets more than he bargained for, but instead of
discovering an ancient beast on an island inhabited by dinosaurs and savage natives, he finds Mighty
Joe in Africa while searching for animals to display in America. Mighty Joe is the Kong it’s okay to
love – instead of going on destructive rampages, he only fights back when attacked, and then only to
protect his female owner.

Joe is so cute and lovable, in fact, that the movie wants the audience to feel a deep sympathy for
him and never allows him to come to any real harm, something that may have contributed to the
fail’s failure at the box office. It’s still worth seeking out for the effects by Willis O’Brien, who with
this movie passed the torch on to his assistant Ray Harryhausen.

1. King Kong (1933)

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No prizes for guessing that the original Kong, released in 1933, is still the best. As Roger Ebert points
out, the movie has the scope and feel of an expensive epic despite its modest budget and
comparatively slender running time. There's a lesson in there somewhere.

True, the human characters are never particularly interesting and their casual sexism will raise a few
eyebrows among modern audiences, but once Kong appears everything is forgiven.

From the moment Fay Wray first lays eyes on the beast to the epic finale atop the Empire State
Building, King Kong never stops to take a breath. Unlike the remakes, there are no pauses to allow
the characters to reflect upon their situation; the movie is a quick hop from startling sequence to
another, finishing up with a sequence that is now cinema folklore.

–– ADVERTISEMENT ––
Once the characters reach Skull Island, the movie literally pulls out all the stops, with almost every
scene employing either back projection, miniatures, models or matte paintings. Also, note how
Kong's fur in several scenes - the animators disturbed in during every stop-motion shot.

You can call the effects primitive, but Willis O’Brien’s creation holds up better than any digital effect
or man in a suit, and the technology of the time prevents the filmmakers from getting carried away
and spending too long documenting Kong’s rampage instead of moving the story forward.

Peter Jackson, take note.