Returning for the project were co-screenwriter Ruth Rose, special-effects pioneer Willis O’Brien, and original co-directors/co-producers Merian C. Cooper and Ernest Schoedsack. This time Cooper would solo produce and Schoedsack solo direct. But RKO Pictures quickly thwarted the initial enthusiasm of all by allotting the sequel only half the budget of the original film and only six-months to get it into theaters.
Son of Kong begins one month after Kong’s sky-dive down the side of the Empire State Building. Actor Robert Armstrong returns as Carl Denham, the hot-shot movie producer who captured Kong and brought him to New York City. Nearly everyone in the Big Apple is suing Denham for the giant ape’s deadly rampage. Facing bankruptcy and an impending indictment, Denham evades the law by absconding to Asia on the cargo ship of Captain Englehorn (again played by Frank Reicher), who faces similar litigation.
During their travels, they meet Nils Helstrom (John Marston), the man who originally sold Denham the map that led him to Kong. Helstrom tells Denham and Englehorn about a treasure buried on Kong’s island. The men, joined by an American “monkey show” performer (Helen Mack), make a return trip to the late Kong’s homeland. Once there, they make a surprise discovery: Kong was getting laid. Proof of which lives on in the form of his offspring, Little Kong.
Son of Kong starts off great with a high-seas adventure story, replete with double-crossing, buried treasure, and burning circus tents. But once the characters arrive on Skull Island, all the air drains from the story. The film’s final sequences (minus the denouement) are a dispiriting let down, both in storytelling and visual design. All the technical wonder and sizzlingly imagination displayed in the original film are no where to be found. The dinosaurs and giant bears encountered by our intrepid treasure hunters seem dull, stiff, and lack personality. Apart from his taste (pun) for good-looking women, Little Kong lacks his dad’s legendary dangerous charm.
The blame for the lackluster stop-motion animation rests squarely on the frugal shoulders of RKO, who immediately knee-capped Willis O’Brien with a paltry budget to pull off his usual animated alchemy. O’Brien was a true pioneer and innovator in the fields of motion picture special effects and stop-motion animation. His work on such films as King Kong, Mighty Joe Young (1949), and The Lost Word (1925) continue to inspire current and future special effects artists.
For O’Brien, Son of Kong was a low-point both professionally and personally. He disliked working on the sequel, which he would later describe as cheesy. Discouraged by RKO’s lack of financial backing, he left the actual animation to his assistant, Buzz Gibson and asked for no credit on the final film. But any heartache about the sequel paled in comparison to the true heart-wrenching tragedy that struck his family during the film’s production.
In 1925 O’Brien married Hazel Ruth Collette. Despite producing two sons, William and Willis Jr., the marriage was an unhappy one, and they divorced in 1930. Only weeks after their sons visited the Son of Kong set, Hazel, dying of cancer and tuberculosis, shot and killed their two sons. She then turned the gun onto herself. The suicide failed but, in a bizarre twist, the bullet ripped through her tubercular lung, draining it and adding an additional year onto her life. She would die in 1934 in the prison ward of Los Angeles General Hospital. Devastated, O’Brien refused to speak about Son of Kong, which he associated with these terrible tragedies, for the rest of his life.
Despite all the setbacks, drawbacks, and devastations, Son of Kong premiere on December 25, 1933, a mere nine months after its predecessor. Budgeted at $269,000, the film grossed $616,000, a less than modest success. Son of Kong would be eclipsed by all other “Kong”-like projects that followed and forgotten by audiences at large, apart from Kong-devotees and giant monster enthusiasts. Revisiting the movie today in 2022, Son of Kong plays more like an extended epilogue to the original than existing as a film in its own right.
Son of Kong does possess bright spots. The storytelling remains fast-paced, lean, and taut, never dwelling in one place for too long or over-staying its welcome. The movie succeeds as a fun and entertaining way to kill 69 minutes. Despite that rushed running time, Rose actually manages to add characterization and dimension to the previously one-dimensional Carl Denham. Robert Armstrong would go on record as preferring Son of Kong to King Kong, feeling the sequel offered him more character development (and top billing and an attractive woman to kiss). The film’s climax, though not as achingly gut-punching as King Kong’s, will manage to render a few sniffles and maybe a few tears.
Ultimately, Son of Kong will never climb out of his famous father’s shadow and Son of Kong will likely remain a forgotten obscurity, except for those few who wish to book a very short and cheap trip back to Skull Island.
-T.Z.
