King Kong is one of the most original, thrilling and mammoth novelties to emerge from a movie studio. A great show! But don't take nervous children to see it.

| Nov 10, 2022

Trickery? Nothing else, of course. But it is so ingenious, and on such a stupendous scale as the studios seldom if ever before yielded. It doesn't matter how the "shots" were made. You will be too busy wondering what is to happen next to Fay Wray.

| Nov 10, 2022

This is a great circus show. And it outdoes circuses, because it has its own menagerie. The kind that a paleontologist would rave about, and the sort that will make you believe that the screen has grown up overnight scientifically.

| Nov 10, 2022

There is some fine trick photography in the picture with a thrill in every foot of the celluloid, so that King Kong is a sure-fire box office success, even in these times.

| Nov 10, 2022

[King Kong] is perhaps definitely a winner -- Hollywood's super-sensation of the moment. It will give children bad dreams. Gosh! What a film!

| Nov 9, 2022

The producers, indeed, have been so busy piling Pelion on Ossa that they have destroyed King Kong in the avalanche. The film has so many excitements that it is not really exciting.

| Nov 9, 2022

One recalls The Lost World of silent days, and still finds King Kong a more artful result of superb trickery, good acting and accompanied by a serious and excellent musical score written by Max Steiner.

| Nov 9, 2022

The height of imaginative flight seems to have been reached in King Kong.

| Nov 9, 2022

As fantastic and as unbelievable as a tale from the Arabian Nights, King Kong... is an amazing and expert combination of trick photography, magnificently handled mob scenes and good old hokum.

| Nov 8, 2022

Artistically, King Kong is not a film of first-rate importance, but it is not likely to disappoint those who have a taste for a novel and spectacular show. Nothing quite of the same kind has been shown on the screen before.

| Nov 8, 2022

It is not a picture for the fastidious. Its horrors are never far removed from laughter, the treatment is frequently banal, and in places the machinery creaks badly. But as entertainment for the masses it is terrific.

| Nov 8, 2022

It has made up its mind to pile a Pelion of sensation on an Ossa of the ridiculous and, in spite of its many bad moments, there is something impressive about its grim determination to be a "mighty screen fantasy."

| Nov 8, 2022

From start to finish it is one big series of exciting spectacles packed with more improbabilities than Jules Verne could ever have encompassed.

| Nov 8, 2022

The susceptible will dream about King Kong afterwards, and the more sophisticated will get many a laugh.

| Nov 8, 2022

If your nerves are easily upset don't see King Kong, but if you have a sense humor, don't miss it. It could easily be ballyhooed as "the greatest show on earth" if John Ringling did not have a corner on that phrase.

| Nov 8, 2022

Kong's imaginativeness is inarguably one of the reasons it was such a hit and why it has endured.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 3, 2021

[Fay] Wray has never been more beautiful before the camera, nor acted as well as she does in this production.

| Mar 2, 2018

The story, like Frankenstein and Dracula, has taken on the significance of a modern folk tale, layered with obvious moralizing and as familiar as personal history.

| Oct 5, 2013

"King Kong," as spectacular a bolt of celluloid as has thrilled audiences in a couple of sophisticated seasons, is the product of a number of vivid imaginations.

| Mar 7, 2013

It might seem that any creature answering the description of Kong would be despicable and terrifying. Such is not the case. Kong is an exaggeration ad absurdum, too vast to be plausible. This makes his actions wholly enjoyable.

| Oct 7, 2008