10 King Kong Movies Ranked Worst To Best

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.

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.