Before Godzilla: Son of Kong
Sequels and follow-ups to popular works have been a part of the global film industry since close to the beginning, and the same is true of quick cash-ins. The first Godzilla film would have a sequel released within six months. More than two decades earlier, producers Cooper and Schoedsack waited a whole nine months before setting the template with a lower-budget Kong sequel of their own, with Shoedsack taking solo directorial credit this time around. Given the time and labor involved in creating stop-motion effects, there is little about the proposition of Son of Kong that is promising, and indeed Willis O’Brien largely stepped away from oversight of the special effects in frustration with the short schedule, leaving the lion’s share of the work to his assistants. Nothing about this would have boded well at the time.
To her credit, returning screenwriter Ruth Rose recognizes the lowered expectations in play, and decides to just have fun with the assignment. The plot is a deliberately low-rent affair that sees the return of three of the first film’s cast. Carl Denham (Robert Armstrong), Captain Englehorn of the Venture (Frank Reicher), and the caricatured, childlike Chinese ship’s cook Charlie (Victor Wong, though not the same Victor Wong who would be a beloved character actor in ‘80s/’90s films such as Big Trouble in Little China and Tremors) find themselves on the run from the legal ramifications of Kong’s rampage in New York in the previous film. They wind up in a Dutch colony in Indonesia, where they meet Nilstrom (John Marston), the unscrupulous ship’s captain who originally sold Denham the map to Kong’s island, and Hilda (Helen Mack), the daughter of a local circus owner who ends up dead after a drunken scuffle with Nilstrom. Before long, all five of them are aboard the Venture en route to Kong’s island in search of a treasure that might prove their financial salvation, with Nilstrom keen to incite mutiny among the crew and prevent Helen from revealing the truth of her father’s fate. Nilstrom succeeds in rousing the crew to mutiny, but gets thrown overboard into a lifeboat along with the protagonists as we learn the charming fact that apparently successful Communist workers’ revolts were just a plot beat that could end up in scripts for random studio films in the 1930s. No, actually. Ed Brady, who plays the crew’s spokesman, is credited as “Red” in case anyone in the audience didn’t pick up on the theme.
For the most part, Song of Kong is reasonable as quickie sequels go. None of the new or returning cast members have the ability to command the screen to the degree Fay Wray did as Ann in the previous film, but they’re effective enough, with Robert Armstrong as Denham proving a more interesting leading man than Bruce Cabot as Jack in the previous film. The narrative’s portrayal of its main characters as financially desperate and essentially washed up slyly fits the vastly lower scale of the production. Whereas the self-awareness of the first film amounted to telling a story about the quest to put on the biggest show possible, this film successfully spins it into a quest to find whatever show it can and have some fun along the way. As with its predecessor, Son of Kong’s self-awareness doesn’t extend to its racial depictions or the infantilizing treatment of its female lead, though Hilda arguably exhibits far more agency and steel will than Ann was ever allowed to. Still, the sequel’s irreverent approach yields a bouncy, breezy feel sufficiently different to the first film’s pomp and weighty grandeur that it is able to stand on its own two feet.
Where that pomp and grandeur is missed, though, is in the special effects sequences. Not only are they of lower quality than the first film, they take up barely a quarter of the 69-minute screentime, much less than in the first film’s considerably lengthier 100 minutes. After being booted from the Venture, Denham and his fellow marooned passengers manage to wash ashore on Kong’s Island, where they are turned away by the rightfully angry tribe from the previous film. Only then do they row around to a cavern where the island’s creatures lurk, including the titular Son of Kong, with just over twenty minutes until the ending. If I were an audience member in 1933, I can imagine I’d feel rather let down by the fact that the only appearances of the promised prehistoric monsters are practically at the climax. To be fair, there are highlights here: a horned Styracosaurus charge is sufficiently memorable that Peter Jackson included the dinosaur in his 2005 King Kong remake, and a large Cave Bear makes an interesting mammalian addition to the roster of opponents Kong fights. But there are no “Wow” moments on the level of the T-Rex fight or the Empire State Building showdown that might have compensated for the lack of stop-motion quantity with quality. Just about the only aspect of the stop-motion that stands out is the portrayal of Kong’s Son as a comic figure.
Those with more than a passing familiarity with the Godzilla series will note with interest Son of Kong’s introduction of a bumbling, less powerful child version of the original monster who is non-threatening and more sympathetic to humans. Granted, Kong’s Son holds his own in fights much better than Godzilla’s kid Minilla would in the Godzilla films, but the parallels are undeniable. When Denham and Hilda rescue the hapless Kong Junior from quicksand, he proceeds to become their protector and helps them find the treasure, frequently breaking out comedic facial expressions along the way. Indeed, given that the first film contained zero instances where Kong Senior was played for laughs, Junior’s mugging for the camera can accurately be called one aspect the sequel does better than the original. The shot where Junior looks at the camera and gives an innocent shrug while blinking his eyes might enrage certain Kong purists, but it’s quite effective on its own terms.
Having decisively made its Kong both a good guy and a figure of fun, Son of Kong still doesn’t seem to know what to do with him, as evidenced by the ending. Denham and his fellow travelers are forced to flee the island when a simultaneous earthquake and storm hit and send the whole thing to the bottom of the ocean. Everyone except Nilstrom and Denham make it to the lifeboat; while Nilstrom is killed by an aquatic plesiosaur, Kong Junior sacrifices himself to save Denham, bringing him to the lifeboat just before Junior sinks to his death beneath the waves. Leaving aside the galling “rocks fall, everyone dies” nature of the earthquake as a film-ending plot device, there’s something staggering about the way Son of Kong so comprehensively clears the board, wiping out the island, its indigenous tribe, and all of the creatures on it in one fell swoop. (Maybe the plesiosaurs survived?)
Denham has throughout the film expressed remorse for his actions in the first Kong and mourns Kong Junior in the same vein, but the film itself seemingly couldn’t be happier to be rid of the big monkey. It isn’t enough for this Kong to die; the entire tableau he comes from is taken off of the table just to remove any last chance of mining another story from the setting, perhaps because the filmmakers wanted to be sure there were no further sequels. There’s a strong sense of “this, and no further” to the move. Having made a sympathetic Kong and gotten fifteen minutes of screentime from him, Son of Kong goes out of its way to make sure the character couldn’t continue to evolve past the basic template: giant gorilla meets humans, feels an emotional bond with them, and dies. Given the chance to explore a new direction, Son of Kong seemingly lacks the initiative or desire to do anything but reiterate the character’s tragic end.
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