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"Yeah, some baby." A tattered poster sums up the earlier venture, the camera pulls back and pans left to find the strapped showman (Robert Armstrong) trying to ditch creditors in a New York fleapit hotel. Regret follows him to Dakang, where the exploitation of the colossus is mocked by dressed-up apes performing to sparse applause in a miniature band. "I guess next time you leave big monkey alone, huh?" The ukulele-strumming trouper (Helen Mack) comes along for the return to Skull Island, they're cast off by mutinous seamen ("Row, you blasted bourgeois!") and barred by vexed natives, a craggy corner of the shore is the only way in. The titular progeny sports silver fur and rolling peepers, first seen chest-deep in quicksand. "Well, if it isn't the little Kong." The simian lummox is indicative of the diminished production, "not a patch on your old man" but with a dinky charm of its own. The rushed filming and slashed budget cramp Ernest B. Schoedsack's scenic constructions, though the treasure temple, with its fanged stone idol, gives a useful blueprint for Holden and Pichel's She. A charging Styracosaurus provides a few choice seconds of Willis O'Brien, for the rest there's an oversized grizzly getting bopped with a tree trunk and a sea serpent snacking on the treacherous skipper. Little Kong rises to the occasion with paw aloft like Lady Liberty atop a sinking mound, a sacrifice acknowledged aboard the tramp steamer before the discussion turns to empty fortune. "You know, it's funny how anybody's troubles are somebody's gains." The gang later reunites for the proper companion piece of Mighty Joe Young. With Frank Reicher, John Marston, Victor Wong, Ed Brady, Clarence Wilson, Lee Kohlmar, and Noble Johnson. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |