Son of Kong (1934) Saturday Monster Movies

A mere nine months after King Kong was released, Cooper and Schoedsack were back with another story of the characters based on themselves. Attempting to escape the many understandable lawsuits triggered by the giant gorilla they unleashed on New York City, Carl Denham and Captain Engelhorn are sailing the south Pacific. When they hear of a treasure on Kong’s island, they head back there hoping again to get rich.

This film feels rushed and not nearly as rich as King Kong. The new ape, is not as well realized as Kong had been. It feels more like a child’s television-level Claymation than the realistic and nuanced ape of the first film. Last time we had a monstrous force of nature somehow emotionally connecting to a woman and being misunderstood by civilization. This time, we get a younger ape who is helped out of a couple of fixes by the humans, and who is so grateful that he sacrifices his life to save them at the climax of the movie.

If Kong was a movie about men trying to get rich off selling an adventure story, that was loosely based on its creators, this is nothing more than a fast money grab.