Many critics love to credit and/or blame Stephen Speilberg and George Lucas for inadvertently creating the high-octane, box-office smash culture of movie-making and marketing we now live in, thanks to Jaws and Star Wars. But the real blueprint for what has become the landscape of the film industry today was 1933’s King Kong; a quantum leap in special effects, editing, and scoring, King Kong was groundbreaking for its time, and ushered in the idea of film as spectacle. The stop-motion animation used was unheard of on a film this scale: Kong fights a Tyrannosaurus Rex, a Pterodactyl, a giant snake, picks up and eats humans, climbs the Empire State Building, and fights biplanes. It still looks amazing — a great feat, considering the life-like CGI effects that moviegoers are bombarded with today. The film’s score interweaves brilliantly with the onscreen action, including one scene where it incorporates the rhythm of a New York subway train’s locomotion to create a raging tension. But as revolutionary as the film was, there’s little excuse for the embarrassingly racist depiction of Skull Island’s natives, showing that King Kong was still a product of its time.

A common misconception about the film, mostly among those who haven’t seen it, is that it’s a horror movie, and King Kong is a “monster” who terrorizes New York. Neither is true; King Kong is actually a tragic story of beauty and the beast, but also has plenty to say about the forces of nature, civilization, and whether or not the two can coexist. Kong falls in love with abducted actress and would-be-sacrifice Ann Darrow (Faye Wray), and only commits acts of violence when either he feels threatened, or when he feels Ann is threatened. And the only reason he ends up in New York is because he’s brought there in chains. By the end of the film, an engagingly complex character plummets to his death off the Empire State Building.

The new 2-disc DVD features a stunning new transfer of the film (this is the best the movie has ever looked), an audio commentary track with special effects giants Ray Harryhausen and Ken Ralston (star Fay Wray and writer/director Merian C. Cooper also appear courtesy of old interview clips), and several documentaries. This is all essential viewing for anyone who cares about film history.

King Kong was and is a pure thrill ride — terrifying one second, funny and romantic the next — but by giving Kong a heart, directors Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack gave their film a soul. That is what separates it – along with Jaws, Star Wars, and its other smarter descendants — from much of the mindless dreck that saturates theaters today. King Kong still stands as one of the best motion pictures ever made, no matter what its influence – good or bad – may have been.

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