Set in 1932, during the Great Depression, the film tells in a straightforward manner the story of showman/movie producer Carl Denham (Robert Armstrong) who travels to an uncharted island to film a giant gorilla named King Kong, captures Kong, brings him back to New York City, puts him on display, and is responsible for the havoc and destruction wrought by the gorilla when it escapes. Ultimately Kong is destroyed by civilization.
King Kong is also a poignant love story, as Kong enters the area of forbidden love. The gorilla falls in love with the "golden woman," the blond actress Ann Darrow (Fay Wray in her memorable role), and his love for her is the cause of his downfall. Some of the film's best lines (albeit corny ones) spoken by Denham, have to do with the King Kong/Ann Darrow relationship. "Some big, hard-boiled egg gets a look at a pretty face and bang! -- he cracks up and goes sappy." And the famous last line when the police lieutenant says to Denham, "Well, Denham, the airplanes got him," and Denham replies, "Oh no, it wasn't the airplanes. It was beauty that killed the beast."
The movie is a beauty and beast story of two mismatched beings, a popular dynamic in a love story. The sexual interplay adds a great deal to the resonance of the film. In one scene, Kong holding Ann's slender, white body in his enormous hand, after he has kidnapped her, starts to tear off pieces of her dress. It's clear what he wants. But of course this is a liaison that can never be fulfilled in a 1930s Hollywood movie. The racial undertones of the film are clear, not just in the forbidden relationship of beast and human, but in the image of Kong in chains, standing in a Broadway theatre with the white audience sizing him up that is remindful of African slaves on auction blocks in America. Watching Kong is all his desire and misery, he is the character the audience sympathizes with rather than with the constantly screaming Ann, the stereotyped dam...