Welcome to the Post-Apocalypse: Things to Come (1936)

One of the pioneering "fathers of science fiction," author H.G. Wells (1866-1946) published a visionary chronicle of the future in 1933 titled The Shape of Things to Come.

As fascism rose across a continent like a dark tide, as economic depression savaged our  own nation, this stirring (and fictional) account of world events from 1933 to 2100 presented the detailed imaginings of a committed Anti-Marxist socialist; one who accurately predicted many elements of our world today.

In his fictional account of "things to come," author Wells foresaw weapons of mass destruction (chemical "air torpedoes"), submarine-based missiles, the rise of Warlord-ism, the Blitz (and ensuing destruction of London), World War II, the invasion of Poland, "surgical" missile strikes, and much, much more.

Wells also envisioned other events: a world war lasting for thirty years, followed by a deadly plague ("The Wandering Sickness"), and then, the rise of a World State...and the end of nationalism.

In his future world, Wells' benevolent dictatorship eliminated not merely nationalism (and nation states), but organized religion. His conquering regime controlled the survivors of the human race through advanced technology, particularly mass transportation (planes). This World State also included the idea of advancement in society by intellectual merit, not by family name, class, or wealth. Finally, Wells saw the overthrow of the dictatorial World State after a hundred years...and a new age of technological progress beyond.

Alexander Korda and director William Cameron Menzies collaborated with Wells to bring this tale of man's future to the silver screen in 1936. The film, Things to Come, has earned the title "classic" as well as the descriptor "visionary.” It is one of the genre's earliest and most awe-inspiring masterpieces, not to mention a special-effects stunner. I first saw it when I was a teenager- -- cut up for commercial television -- and have read about it in probably every science fiction film reference book in history. It's an important, landmark film in terms of genre, in terms of content, and also in terms of special effects technology.

Things to Come's central plot is divided into three portions or Ages. There is the pre-War Age (set in 1936). There is the immediate aftermath of War (set in 1966-1967) --  the post-apocalypse -- and the beginning of the World State, and a future Age of Progress (set in 2036).

Each of these three sections is centered in a fictionalized version of London called "Everytown." And, to one extent or another, each passage also revolves around one family facing the inexorable winds of change; the Cabal family.

This personal, identifiable element of family makes the film a sort of "generational" tale, and more easily approachable in terms of narrative. Raymond Massey stars as John Cabal in the first two portions of the film; and as leader Oswald Cabal in the Age of Progress section.

Our story commences in Everytown on Christmas Eve, 1936. John Cabal is a pessimistic brooder who believes war is inevitable, and worse, that it is impending. His friends and family members, including a young doctor, Harding, don't want to see war "mess things up," and resist the idea of war's inevitability. Cabal mulls over man's nature with grim fortitude. "We must end war. Or war will end us," he states.

Soon after this introduction to the characters, Things to Come depicts a happy Everytown by nightfall, at least until a truck with a white placard bearing the legend WAR SCARE appears in the background of a frame, in plain sight.

In this portion of the film, we get a rapid-fire montage of several such war-themed placards until -- still on Christmas Eve -- war breaks out. Cabal was right...nothing could stop the conflagration of destruction. That very night, Everytown is bombed from the air in scenes eerily reminiscent of the Blitz (though they were shot years before...).

Before our eyes, we see a local cinema explode and crumble, a sign that the age of man's technology and leisure is at an end.

As destruction rains from the sky, Menzies cuts to an image of a young blond boy -- no more than ten years old, perhaps -- wearing a soldier's helmet. The child -- apparently knowing what is to come -- begins to march like a "real" soldier.

After a few seconds of lingering on this image, Menzies superimposes new images (silhouettes, actually...) of adult soldiers on the march; juxtaposing play and reality; indicating that even the young will be conscripted into the never ending conflict. And indeed they are: the war lasts for a generation. In 1960, it ends....but only because so few people are left.

Worse, pestilence follows. In the burned-out city of Everytown ("a cursed ruin of a town," as one character describes it) in 1966, a disease called the Wandering Sickness takes hold. Those who contract the illness are shot on sight.

By 1967 half the human race is extinguished, and society attempts to re-build...in vain.

Everytown, for instance, comes under the corrupt leadership of "The Boss" (or "The Chief") played by Ralph Richardson, a warlord who quickly launches a new military offensive against neighbors called The Hill People.

Since there is no longer radio, cinema or even newspapers, The Chief sees his propaganda scrawled crudely on a board displayed before the ruins of City Hall. On this board, the Chief promises "victorious peace" after the Hill People are conquered. But winning the war isn't easy, and the Chief knows what he needs to win: working airplanes. His chief engineer, Richard Gordon, can't promise him anything. "We shall never get in the air again," he laments. "Flying is finished."

Yes, it appears to be a Dark Age for mankind as Everytown runs short on medical supplies. It is also a place where knowledge of aeronautics and machinery seems ready to slip away forever...

But then, one day -- out of the clear blue sky -- a highly-advanced plane arrives in Everytown. The pilot is a gray-haired John Cabal, making a homecoming of sorts. He now serves in "Wings over the World," an organization of scientists and engineers dedicated to restoring trade and civilization to the area of the Mediterranean.

Cabal's mission is also to stop "petty dictators" and bring an end to independent, sovereign states...the end of Nationalism. The Chief naturally resists, and has Cabal arrested and thrown in jail.

In a short time, however, Wings over the World arrives in force (in giant flying fortresses -- another prophetic concept from Wells), and bombs Everytown with the harmless "Gas of Peace." There is only one casualty in the attack: the Chief himself, who conveniently has suffered a heart attack. "He's dead and his world died with him," opines Cabal without pity, as the black-suited members of Wings over the World descend on Everytown by parachute. "Now...for a new life for mankind."

After a lengthy interlude during which vast machines build an advanced underground city, we skip ahead to the subterranean Everytown of 2036. 

Oswald Cabal is the leader of the city now (grandchild of John), but faces an insurrection from anti-progressives who fear that progress has gone too far; that technology is out-of-control and once again threatening the safety and peace of man.

Exhibit A in their argument is the vast Space Gun -- a giant device that is primed to "fire" a rocket to the moon. Cabal plans to send his daughter, Katherine, and her boyfriend, there, to prove that human progress is unstoppable, limitless.

"We demand a rest," argues the leader of the anti-progressives on a giant, city-size view screen (seen by thousands of citizens). "The purpose of life is happy living!" 

Cabal doesn't hinder the speech (a fact which promises a world of free speech and free expression, at least...). Instead, he trusts that his people will be wise about the future. "They'll have to hear him," says Cabal. "They'll have to hear him and make of it what they can..."

In the end, progress marches on, and the rocket is fired into space. Gazing out into space via a telescope, Cabal debates the future of the human race with an anxious friend, one who sympathizes with the anti-progressive movement. 

Is mankind ever to stop moving forward? What comes after the moon? After the stars? 

At this interrogative, Cabal deplores the "ugly spectacle of waste" that represented warfare in the twentieth century, and says that progress, technology and wisdom -- the push into the future -- has made "danger and death worthwhile" and that the human adventure is only beginning. Mankind he believes, must "go on; conquest after conquest." The choice is as simple as "all the universe or nothing."

The film ends with a stirring, dramatic question from Oswald Cabal to his friend (and to us, in the audience.) "Which shall it be?"

That's a good and highly relevant question in our turbulent times of terrorism, warfare, and violence. The element I admire most about Things to Come is this pervasive, thorough and committed anti-war message.

What could mankind do -- what could we accomplish -- if we didn't squander our blood, our youth, our treasure, and our science on killing, on war? The sky -- nay the stars themselves -- would be the limit.

Wells also (rightly) predicted that for every advance in science that man forges, there is blow back; a counter-movement of men who want to take us "back" to an earlier era; who desire to believe in old superstitions and myth rather than utilize science to scale new heights. We see it now in the anti-intellectual movement that flourishes in this country today. For every two steps forward, a rump movement is trying to hold us back.

Nor is it difficult to understand why Wells has targeted nationalism and religion for extinction in his utopia of the future. As long as we divide ourselves into little teams (Democrats, Republicans, Christians, Muslims, Jews, liberals, conservatives, gays, straights, Marvel, DC, etc.) he believes we won't work together for the common good. It's not enough, apparently, that we're all human beings, or all citizens of planet Earth. 

If you watch the news, you know that some people (like Alex Jones) are mortally terrified of a united Earth, and yet dreamers like Wells and Roddenberry, alternatively, see it as a necessary precursor to utopia.

Yet what I find deeply troubling about Things to Come is this Welles-ian notion of a World dictatorship - benevolent or otherwise. Look at the scenes in the film featuring The Wings over the World air men -- strangely faceless and identical -- swarming through Everytown in their sleek black uniforms. This is just another face of fascism, isn't it?

These men arrive, utilize deadly weapons (even the harmless "gas of peace" is technically a weapon...), and then impose their will on the citizenry using superior technology. Now, these men would tell you they are doing what's best for mankind. But I would argue that's the same point every dictator in history has likely made. 

Who knows what's best for mankind? Who chooses? 

The point, I suppose, is that human beings should be free to choose for themselves how they live; not have a particular ideology -- even progress forced down their throats. Or am I wrong? Do we need a strong hand to point us to the light?

Whatever its eventual form, Things to Come is accurate with this prediction of a World State. In our world, however, I believe it is likely to be a corporate world state, not a socialist one. There are steps being taken towards that today, if you look closely enough. Also, though I sympathize with Wells, I believe his socialist sympathies made him misunderstand human nature.

Here's an example: In his vision, man reaches the moon in 2036, after a uniform World State is in charge; after nationalism is long dead. In our world, by explicit contrast, it was nationalism -- the Cold War with the Soviet Union -- that spurred the space race. We made it to the moon in 1969, because of the need to compete; the need to beat Russia.

So I can see both sides of the nationalism debate. It divides us and makes us want to kill “others,” but it also spurs growth and competition. As far back as Athens and Sparta, nation states competed...and the competition brought about great art, great science and great literature, no?

Things to Come is a powerful film filled with fascinating ideas, but some do clearly border on the simplistic. Cabal is ruthless...but well-intentioned.  But how can we trust one man with all the power to be just?

Technology-wise, this film features extraordinary miniatures and blends them deftly with live-action sequences. The views of the Everytown cityscape of 2036 remain breathtaking and awe-inspiring. Some of the miniature war footage (of tanks rolling across barren wastelands) is virtually indistinguishable from stock footage. 

The aerial footage also appears remarkably real. This is an amazing achievement for a film made so long ago. It is ironic, however: Things to Come imagined a world where technological devices would become vast, colossal; in the real world, we've experienced a revolution of miniaturization instead.

Finally, the last moments of the film will remain with you, along with Cabal's probing question. The universe? Or nothing? Which shall it be? 

More importantly, if it's the universe, how do we find our way to that future? Benevolent dictatorship? United Federation of Planets? Global free trade?

Who’s got the answer?

Thanksgiving Blogging: The Son of Kong (1933)

The conventional wisdom regarding this sequel is that The Son of Kong (1933) is a not-very-good, not- very-memorable follow-up to the enormously successful and enormously beloved original King Kong (1933). 

It’s easy to see why critics, scholars, and some fans feel this way about the film.  The sequel is but a brief seventy minutes long, two of the original stars -- Bruce Cabot and Fay Wray -- are missing-in-action, and the film was produced on an extraordinarily low-budget.  

Furthermore, King Kong is a spectacular, a non-stop rollercoaster ride of action and spectacle, and The Son of Kong…is not.

And yet despite these deficits The Son of Kong is an intriguing little movie, primarily because it focuses almost obsessively on Carl Denham (Robert Armstrong), the man who brought Kong back to modernity because he wanted to give that jaded world a sense of “wonder.”

Denham has been repaid for that act, however, as The Son of Kong opens, with law-suits, public condemnation, and grand jury indictment.  His original desire to “escape” modernity, has, in fact, brought the bureaucracy of modernity crashing down upon him.

We also learn early in The Son of Kong that Denham feels guilty regarding Kong’s death, and wishes -- for his own sake and Kong’s -- that he had never visited Skull Island in the first place. 

This is all very interesting, very human material, and there is likely more focus on characterization and character development in The Son of Kong than in all of King Kong.  Robert Armstrong is terrific and charismatic again as Carl Denham, but he shows many more shades of the man here than he was able to reveal in the original Kong.

With its lead character dwelling in self-hatred and guilt, and facing a future of legal entanglements, The Son of Kong depicts a more dissolute, sleazier world than did its predecessor.  In short order, Denham and Captain Englehart (Frank Reichert) slink out of New York Harbor on the Venture not in search of great adventure this time, but in search of a job -- any job -- in the East Indies.

In far-flung Dakang, they settle in at a tiny port and meet another fallen Western entertainer, Peterson, and his lovely daughter, La Belle Helene (Helen Mack).  Both are going nowhere, and have no future save for the next (sparsely populated) show.

Denham and Englehart also meet the troublesome Captain Nils Helstrom (John Marston), the very man who first sold Denham the map to Kong’s island. Helstrom -- a murderer -- is looking for a way to escape Dakang too and soon he, Denham, Englehart, and Helene head to Kong’s island in search of a legendary treasure.

On Skull Island, Denham and Helene encounter a young giant ape, Kong Junior.  He’s more playful than his father, but no less fierce when it comes to fighting dinosaurs.  After Denham and Helene save Kong Jr. from a quicksand trap, he defends them from a giant bear, a four-legged dinosaur carnivore, and other grave threats. 

After the giant ape helps Denham retrieve the legendary treasure from a secret temple, an earthquake sinks the island, and Kong Jr. gives his life to save Denham.

While it’s true that the pleasures of The Son of Kong are relatively mild in comparison to King Kong, some are certainly worth noting.  I love the first act in particular, set in a corner of the world where people go to disappear.  There are some great deep-focus shots in the local bar, which sell beautifully the nature of the people living in that environment.  

I also admire the fact that the sequel attempts to make a human judgment about what happened to Kong in New York City…a subject the original film did not broach. 

Here, Denham admits that he owes Kong’s family “something,” and when he takes care of Kong Jr.’s injuries, he notes that the act is “sort of an apology.”   

These moments reveal Denham’s humanity and decency, and also acknowledge the audience’s (quite correct) feelings that King Kong was badly exploited in the first film.  This movie rehabilitates Carl Denham, one might assert, and that’s a worthy enterprise for a sequel.

The stop-motion effects of The Son of Kong are certainly as impressive as those of its predecessor, and the film suffers mainly in the final act when, out-of-the-blue, an earthquake arrives to, literally end the movie.  The earthquake comes from out-of-the-blue, and stops the movie’s development cold, skipping essentially from the beginning of the third act (arrival on the island and discovery of the treasure…) right to the denouement, Kong Jr’s sad death, and the ape’s heroic sacrifice to rescue Denham. 

Those valedictory images of heroic Kong Jr. holding Denham aloft above the swirling ocean waves as Skull Island sinks below the roiling surface are arguably as powerful as any image in King Kong, but in some sense they have not adequately been prepared for or built-up to.  The moment of Kong Jr’s death is powerful, but could have been infinitely more so if the film actually spent more than twenty or so minutes in the company of the mighty ape.

The Son of Kong’s final “happy ending,” that Denham and Helene will marry and share the proceeds from the island’s treasure, also fails to ring true.  Even a huge payday isn’t going to take away a grand jury indictment for Denham.  Plus, Carl has once again looted Skull Island for a resource or treasure by which he hopes to profit…an act which in some sense hampers his character’s development and maturity.  He's still, even after everything that's happened, a profiteer.

But taken in total The Son of Kong is a charming little monster movie, a good dessert after King Kong’s main course.  The sequel boasts some real humanity, and represents a turning point in the Cooper/Schoedsack saga because it is the first big ape film to suggest sympathy for the central animal, and to recognize that the exploitation of natural resources like Kong results only in destruction for everyone.

Also, I must admit that on a personal note, I get a kick out of one idea in The Son of Kong that is often not even considered in terms of sequels.  In essence, this humble movie acknowledges that King Kong was the main event, and that this is a smaller, perhaps less important story in the same universe.  That kind of modesty is, at the very least, refreshing.  It also seems realistic, to some degree.  Sequels traditionally get bigger and bolder, and more outrageous.

But how do you create a sequel bigger than a giant ape climbing the Empire State Building? 

I submit that The Son of Kong’s human, if small potatoes approach, works just fine.

Movie Trailer: The Son of Kong (1933)

Thanksgiving Blogging: King Kong (1933)

King Kong (1933) commences with a title card that recites an old Arabian proverb:  “And lo, the beast looked upon the face of beauty.  And it stood its hand from killing.  And from that day it was as one dead.”

This on-screen legend frames the famous monster movie as a beauty-and-the-beast story, though King Kong has been interpreted quite frequently over the decades as a coded social critique as well. 

No less prominent a figure than director Quentin Tarantino has interpreted the Merian C. Cooper (1893 – 1973)/Ernest Schoedsack (1893 -1979) film as an “allegory about the transatlantic slave trade and America’s fear of the black male.”

I recently re-watched the original King Kong in preparation for this review, and can’t deny that the sub-textual material is present.  Nor can I deny that the film is mindlessly racist and sexist by today’s standards, at  least at certain junctures.

But I was struck by another intriguing aspect of this famous monster movie as well. 

In short, this 1933 fantasy film seems very world-weary, and disappointed with the predictability, safety and even bureaucracy of modernity.  Accordingly, the film positions itself as an escape from modernity.

The modern world, represented by the gleaming skyscrapers and skyline of New York Harbor in the film’s inaugural shot, is a place that -- especially during a financial Great Depression -- can’t seem to provide much of anything to people in terms of answers, or even sustenance. 

Instead, people like filmmaker Carl Denham (Robert Armstrong) actively seek the “thrill of a lifetime” outside of modernity, in places such as Africa or the West Indies.  This desire for freedom and excitement is contextualized as the thrill of something new, or conversely, the thrill of something very old, and very natural…but never-before-seen and recorded by modern eyes or cameras.

Denham sees it as his mission to show “something new” to a depression-weary people.  The first such “new” thing he finds, for example, is the untested screen presence of Ann Darrow (Fay Wray).  Denham’s bosses want a female to appear in his latest motion picture to ramp up the box office grosses, and Denham must kowtow to their wishes.  But the “reckless” Denham goes out and finds a female star on his own, in his own way. He discovers the young woman, Ann, attempting to steal an apple from a fruit stand, on the verge of starvation. 

He essentially offers her an escape from modernity too. 

Denham then goes in search of that elusive “something new” on Skull Island, far beyond the well-populated waters of New York Harbor….beyond the horizon itself.  An old legend in the South Seas tells of an “island held in the grip of fear…” 

Kong’s island stands in unexplored, mysterious waters, beyond a gateway made of natural reefs. And Kong himself -- the ultimate unknown or something new -- exists behind yet another barrier, a large perimeter wall built by an ancient society of natives. 

To find Kong -- to find something new and natural, then -- one must pierce all the various “gates” of modernity, and head straight back into the less-calculated, less buttoned-down past…even to prehistoric times. 

The sea voyage of the Venture (a name meaning “risky or daring journey”) is accordingly one that escorts audiences and the film’s dramatis personae through a series of doorways leading from staid modernity to unfettered antiquity, and “freedom.”

This freedom is first expressed in terms of the rigidity of New York’s bureaucracy, where Denham learns that an insurance company plans to halt his voyage because of the dangerous explosives he is transporting.  Denham orders an early departure to assure there are no such further impediments to his…entrepreneurship.  

Once en route, Ann and Jack Driscoll (Bruce Cabot) let down their guards and fall in love.  This is a big deal for Jack, who finds that women are a “bother,” but comes to change his mind.  Something about the open air of the sea makes them connect, and come to love one another.

In modernity...

...the search for new faces and new things begins...

Beyond the reefs...

...and behind the wall...

...lives Kong.

King Kong’s final act -- with Kong returned to New York City as Denham’s captive -- reverses the film’s conceits regarding freedom. 

Once found by Denham, “freedom” (represented by Kong himself) becomes a commodity not to discover and enjoy, but to exploit, and share (at a price) with those dwelling in modernity.  People will pay good money to vicariously experience the danger of Kong Island, the expedition, and Kong himself.   The giant ape is billed as “The Eighth Wonder of the World,” something human eyes have never seen before.

To put a fine point on it, Kong -- the thing beyond modernity, the thing with the capacity to thrill a jaded modern audience -- is brought back and caged, but Denham quickly learns that no chains and no bars can hold him for long.  Instead, Kong runs free and, by nearly reaching the clouds atop the Empire State Building, eludes modernity again.  Modernity and nature, or freedom, cannot exist side-by-side, the film suggests.

If one considers the biography of the film’s producer/co-director, Merian Cooper, one can see how these ideas of escaping adventure-crushing modernity and pinpointing thrills in incorruptible nature fit in well with his career and biography.  An air force pilot during World War I and a founding member of Pan Am Airways, Cooper directed several early films such as Chang (1927) which were, essentially, travelogues set in far-flung, wild locales.  That film, for instance, famously featured an elephant stampede. 

For long stretches, King Kong plays like a travelogue or documentary, with hearty men of adventurous spirit witnessing beasts never-before-seen. In short, the film is a safari into the wildest jungle ever, with the most spectacular beasts in cinema history.  “Safari” is a Swahili word meaning “long journey,” and a safari usually involves explorers or other adventurous-types going where no man has gone before for the express purpose of seeing new wild life.   

Yet, what remains so interesting about this juxtaposition of a fantasy setting with the safari motif is that Cooper has utilized a tool of modernity -- film -- to bring this story back to his audience.  In fact, it’s not only modernity on display in King Kong’s creation, but pioneering technical innovation as well.  The Willis O’Brien stop-motion effects and optical composites look staggeringly good even to this day, particularly in black-and-white, a schema which hides seams beautifully. 

Thus, one can gaze upon King Kong as the work of a man who looked at the world, couldn’t see any new kingdoms to conquer, and so utilized technology to create something from whole-cloth that his audience had never before witnessed: a prehistoric world populated by the “dinosaur family” of Skull Island. He uses special effects to bring to life creatures people have read about, but never seen “alive.”

This travelogue or safari approach to the film precludes, to some degree, much in terms of humanity or characterization.  After Ann is taken by Kong to the interior of Skull Island, the film descends into a series of (still) harrowing fight sequences and battles, but always with a new animal on display, front-and-center in the frame. 

In short order the audience “discovers” Kong, a stegosaurus, an apatosaurus, a T-Rex, a giant snake, and a pterodactyl.  The film’s soundtrack, largely, is a sustained scream from Fay Wray, from about the forty-five minute point on.  People don’t talk or relate as people, they just delve deeper and deeper into the prehistoric jungle, and attempt to survive each new animal featured on the safari.

The Skull Island Safari #1

The Skull Island Safari #2

The Skull Island Safari #3

The Skull Island Safari #4

I also noted on this viewing that more than ever, King Kong boasts a strong reflexive quality.  Carl Denham takes a camera and a girl, Ann, into the jungle to make an adventure movie, a new kind of safari in a different kind of habitat.

But the movie that the audience is watching -- King Kong -- is also a safari…with a pretty girl fronting it.  When Denham complains about having to kowtow to studio bosses, one feels that the comment originates from Cooper himself. Denham is clearly his surrogate figure.

While we watch a safari film, Denham is also making a safari film.

A girl is needed front both films.  Hence the presence of lovely Fay Wray.

Fans of later generations of King Kong – in 1976 and 2005 – will be surprised upon returning to this 1933 classic that there is almost no reciprocal relationship between Kong and his bride, Ann.  He may love her, but here it’s an unrequited love.  She never moves beyond terror for the “beast,” whatever he may feel for her.  By Son of Kong (1933) and Mighty Joe Young (1949), a sympathy or love for “the beast” is added as a crucial element of the equation, but it is definitively not present in this film. 

Certainly, one can look at King Kong today and consider it a beauty and the beast story, though beauty has but distaste and fear for her groom. 

And certainly, one can see how Kong himself is a stand-in figure for a proud African slave, dragged from his country in chains to provide the entertainment for an elitist society that is both fearful and envious of him.  But the quality that makes King Kong so great is its sense or spirit of adventure. 

The film steadfastly takes us through the gates of a real world lacking magic, happiness, and perhaps even romance, and reminds us that there are places and things on this Earth yet unseen by man.  And those things, fierce or beautiful, still have the capacity to surprise us, and perhaps change us for the better if we don’t abuse or exploit them.

I suspect one reason that King Kong has survived for roughly eighty years at this juncture, and translated ably from one generation to another, is that many of us still want to believe in our own capacity to be surprised and delighted by nature.  The film is a non-stop safari of vicarious thrills and terrors, a spectacle in the truest sense of the word (meaning that it shows the audience things never before captured on film). 

Even today, King Kong exists to show bored and world-weary audiences that there is more in Heaven and Earth than is dreamed of in "safe" modernity.  

And even today, the film’s spirit of adventure -- if not divine -- is at least as “royal” as its title indicates.

Movie Trailer: King Kong (1933)