If I could only bring back one of these alive.
I've long been familiar with the original King Kong, but for whatever reason I never got around to seeing its sequel. Since The Son of Kong picks up pretty much right where its predecessor left off, I figured it made sense to watch them back to back. This doesn't do The Son any favors, but it does reinforce why the King remains the preeminent fantasy-adventure yarn of its day.
A lot of this comes down to Kong himself, rightly billed as "The Eighth Wonder of the World" and brought to life by stop-motion wizard Willis O'Brien, who did the same for the other prehistoric creatures on the uncharted island Kong calls home until he's captured by ballyhoo artist Carl Denham (Robert Armstrong). Of course, that wasn't his original plan. Rather, he wanted to make a jungle picture in an exotic location with a pretty girl. How was he to know that his girl, desperate blonde Ann Darrow (Fay Wray, who earns her scream queen status), would get the big ape so hot and bothered? And that goes double for Jack Driscoll (Bruce Cabot), the misogynistic first mate of the boat Denham charters, who takes his time warming up to Ann, but when he does the turnaround is swift and decisive.
Co-directors Merian C. Cooper (who conceived the story with mystery writer Edgar Wallace) and Ernest B. Schoedsack take their time at the start, but once Denham's crew reaches Skull Island, the action ramps up and hardly lets up until the end of the picture. (Remarkably, only the final 20 minutes take place in New York City.) And it all climaxes with Kong climbing the Empire State Building and being buzzed by biplanes aiming to knock him off his perch (without endangering the damsel in his grasp, if possible). As much as I enjoy the smoothness of the animation in the rest of the film, I think I'm most impressed by the herky-jerky POV shot of one of the planes as it swoops past Kong. Unsurprisingly, O'Brien didn't attempt anything so complicated when it came time to do the sequel.
Rushed into production so it could come out the same year as King Kong, 1933's The Son of Kong is a slighter and more whimsical take on the story. Coming in just under 70 minutes and directed by Ernest B. Schoedsack solo (with Merian C. Cooper retaining an executive producer credit), the film opens one month after King Kong's spill off the Empire State Building and finds Carl Denham (a returning Robert Armstrong) flat broke and coding process servers and a subpoena to appear before a grand jury to answer for all the property damage. Instead, he skips town with Captain Englehorn (Frank Reicher, also returning), the skipper of the boat he chartered in the first film, who's eager to weigh anchor before somebody gets the bright idea of serving him with papers for transporting Kong to the States. Also back for a return trip is Chinese cook Charlie (Victor Wong), because some unfortunate racial stereotypes can't be contained by a single film.
After moving freight through the East Indies for a period of time, Denham and Englehorn wind up at the port of Dakang, where they pick up two passengers: shifty-eyed Norwegian captain Helstrom (John Marston), a drunkard who gave Denham the map of Kong's island in the first place and spins a tale of unclaimed treasure there to gain passage; and pretty young stowaway Hilda (Helen Mack), who blames Helstrom for the death of her father and the destruction of their dismal traveling show when the tent goes up in flames. Clearly, there's no love lost between them, which is why they both wind up getting put off the ship along with Denham, Englehorn, and Charlie when Helstrom sows discord among the crew on the way to Skull Island. Unfortunately, the natives are less than pleased to see them, so they have to make landfall elsewhere on the island. This is how Denham and the barely tolerated Hildy -- who have done ahead to scout around -- come across Kong, Jr. stuck in some quicksand and, against Denham's better judgment, help the not-so-little guy out. He returns the favor by fighting off an oversized bear that attacks them, while Englehorn, Helstrom, and Charlie (who carries a meat cleaver wherever he goes) have to contend with a rampaging dinosaur on their own.
Unlike his ferocious forbear, the Son of Kong does a fair bit of shameless mugging for the camera, breaching the line that separates cute from cutesy. When a sudden earthquake sends Skull Island to the bottom of the ocean, though, Kong, Jr. steps up and heroically saves the life of the man most responsible for the death of his dad. That's what I call a monster case of irony.