Ape Vs. Tyrannosaurs in KING KONG (1932)

"King Kong Planned To Thrill Picture Audiences" 
The Laredo Times, May14, 1933

With a sensational mixture of the prehistoric and the modern in a story of fantastic imagination, RKO-Radio makes a bid for an all-time record with its spectacular production, "KING KONG," featuring Fay Wray, Robert Armstrong and Bruce Cabot and in the same role a great animated 10-foot-ape, built to a proportion comparable with monsters of the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, "King Kong" will be presented at the Rialto Theater 3 days more.

As a production, "King Kong" was two and a half years in the making. Early in 1929 the first research inquiry was sent to leading paleontologists throughout the world. The studio had a vital interest in the appearance and habit of such primitive monsters as the pterodactyl, the brontosaurus, the tyrannosaurus and the dinosaur.

Did these formidable creatures, now extinct, run, hop, or fly when in fast pursuit of their prey? What, exactly, were their proportions? Active reconstructions of such monsters were to enact roles in the motion picture. It took a year and a half of tremendous work to collect the data, assemble it for practical purposes and construct dozens of reptilian and other monsters in exact scale. During that time and before a camera crank  was turned, the studio had created the largest and most varied collection of prehistoric colossi in the United States.

Man-Made Monsters
In the early part of 1932 Merian C. Cooper, world traveler, adventurer and associate producer for RKO-Radio Pictures, started filming operations with director Ernest B. Schoedsack, his old partner on many foreign trails.

It wasn't just a case of pointing a camera at a group of people. Scores of creatures dating back into the dawn of life had to be animated in smooth motion and in relation to the normal movements of human beings opposite to whom they were to perform. The methods employed in constructing them and photographing them are known to no one outside of Cooper. Schoedsack and their scientist assistants.

In Terrific Combat
The magnitude of their year's task at the camera is clearly seen in the results. One scene shows a battle between the mammoth ape and a tyrannosaurs, largest of prehistoric reptiles.

Still another is a desperate running fight between this giant ape, "King Kong," and scores of men while a white girl is held tightly clutched in the beast's paw. The most spectacular scene of all concludes the picture. "King Kong,'' seeking to escape the torments of man climbs the tallest structure in New York, and there, with the girl at his feet, waves a losing battle against a squadron of army pursuit and bombing planes.

It is said that the prodigious phantasy "King Kong" makes insignificant any film heretofore produced.