Review: The Son of Kong

Set a week after the events of the first film, promoter Carl Denham (Robert Armstrong) is given much grief (and legal action against him) for the calamitous, ill-advised attempt at making a star attraction out of a giant frigging ape. He decides to get the hell outta Dodge, and eventually catches up with Captain Englehorn (Frank Reicher). They are soon joined by a Norwegian skipper named Helstrom (John Marston), and a young woman (Helen Mack) who has a monkey stage act. Helstrom tells Englehorn and Denham of a treasure map he has for unclaimed riches on Skull Island. So off they go, with Mack turning up as a stowaway for…reasons, I guess. Also on the island, though, is the son of Kong, the beast who Denham wronged and now has somewhat of a guilty conscience about. Lee Kohlmar appears briefly as a debt collector named Mickey.

How did essentially the same damn people get it so damn wrong? Disappointingly lame, clearly rushed sequel to 1933’s “King Kong”, released the same year, but with much, much lesser results than that iconic monster movie. Released only 8 months after the first film, it’s made on less than half of the budget of “King Kong”, and sadly looks it. The title character only turns up after 56 minutes of this 89 minute movie, and it’s a seriously long, slow slog getting there. Directed by Ernest B. Schoedsack (“King Kong”, “Most Dangerous Game”, “Mighty Joe Young”) and scripted by Ruth Rose (“King Kong”, “Mighty Joe Young”), it’s not only slow, but it doesn’t offer up much of interest along the way. Early on we get a bizarro act with some capuchin monkeys, which is really something. Also, the music score by Max Steiner (“King Kong”, “Johnny Belinda”) is quite clearly too damn good for the film, the highlight by far.

The stop-motion is obviously of a much lesser quality than the original, but it’s still cute, including a nice triceratops. I particularly liked the cool fight between mini-Kong and a bear, but you have to get past the poor attention to scale involved first. The bear looks slightly bigger than Kong Jr., when it quite clearly should be at least a bit smaller. At any rate, by then it’s just too late to salvage the film, because we’re given so much of so little preceding the Skull Island portion of the film (Did we really need a mutiny scene to slow things down?). Twiddling your thumbs would be more eventful. Robert Armstrong’s crisis of conscience is corny, unconvincing, and uninteresting. In fact, the only halfway decent performance in the film comes from Lee Kohlmar, and he’s only in the first few minutes or so. 

Honestly, almost every single minute of this cheapo, rushed sequel tells you that it should never have been made. Was this the first ever unnecessary sequel? Perhaps. Either way, it’s tedious and uninteresting. Even “Son of Godzilla” was a lot more fun than this.

Rating: D+