FAQ for
King Kong (1933) More at IMDbPro »

The following FAQ entries may contain spoilers. Only the biggest ones (if any) will be covered with spoiler tags. Spoiler tags have been used sparingly in order to make the page more readable.

For detailed information about the amounts and types of (a) sex and nudity, (b) violence and gore, (c) profanity, (d) alcohol, drugs, and smoking, and (e) frightening and intense scenes in this movie, consult the IMDb Parents Guide for this movie. The Parents Guide for King Kong can be found here.

No. The giant gorilla known as Kong was the brainchild of American aviator and screenwriter Merian C. Cooper [1893-1973], conceived after a dream in which a giant gorilla was terrorizing New York City. Screenwriters Ruth Rose and James Ashmore Creelman wrote the original screenplay. A novelization of the screenplay actually appeared in 1932, a year before the film, adapted by newspaper reporter and writer Delos W. Lovelace. It was published in serialized form in Mystery Magazine and in book form later that year by Grosset & Dunlap. A sequel, The Son of Kong was released 8-1/2 months later. There have been two remakes. The first, King Kong, was released in 1976; Peter Jackson's King Kong was released in 2005.

Skull Island, though this name is never heard in the course of the film. We do hear Carl Denham refer to Skull Mountain, but the island itself is never named in the film's dialogue. In the DVD commentary supplied by Ray Harryhausen and Ken Ralston, the two alternately refer to the island as either "Fog Island" or "Kong Island."

That question has been asked so many times that The World of Kong: A Natural History of Skull Island (2005), an encyclopedic book about Kong's fictional world made for the release of Peter Jackson's King Kong (2005), was compiled by Weta Workshop designers Daniel Falconer and Ben Wootten to answer that question and many others like it. In their interpretation, they suggest that the original builders were from Asia. They had earlier captured the offspring of the giant ape Gigantopithecus and raised them to work much like elephants. The giant gorillas are the ones that built the wall. Obviously, they needed a large enough door so that the working apes could go in and out. Then, because of civil war (again using the giant apes like war elephants) and then a great plague, the civilization declined and lost control of the apes. Of course, this is the interpretation of two men in 2005, not the original authors in 1933.