# Reaction to the original King Kong **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [December 14, 2005, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reaction-to-the-original-king-kong/335624 "2005-12-14T19:46:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2005, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reaction-to-the-original-king-kong/335624/1 "2005-12-14T19:46:59Z")
This seems as good a time as any to clarify what actually happened when the first King Kong movie was released. I’ve always heard stories that it was so terrifying that adults would faint in their seats or run screaming from the theater. True? ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2005, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reaction-to-the-original-king-kong/335624/2 "2005-12-14T19:53:41Z")
I’ve heard this, too. I think Goldner and Turner report it in their book **The Making of King Kong** , but I’ll have to check my copy at home. I’ve heard other reports that people laughed at it. Certainly new effects affect people in odd ways. New York Times reporters were supposedly taken in by clips of the fiolm that Arthur Conan Doyle showed to them and sorta kinda tried to pass off as “real”. Today, they wouldn’t fool anyone – we’re too jaded. People were supposed to have thought the early interactive animated cartoon “Gertie the Dinosaur” was a giant mechanical contraption that Winsor McCay was interacting with – thwey’d never seen anything like it before. When Harryhausen’s **Jason and the Argonauts** (circa 1964) got to the skeleton-fighting scene, some audiences _laughed_. One writer suggested that it wasn’t that they were amused by the scene or the effects, but simply didn’t know how to react to something so far out of the ordinary. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2005, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reaction-to-the-original-king-kong/335624/3 "2005-12-14T19:56:51Z")
The giant spiders supposed freaked out the audience. Here’s what a trivia item from the IMDB entry for the movie said: > [@](#): > > This original version was released four times between 1933 and 1952, and each release saw the cutting of additional scenes. Though many of the outtakes (including the censored sequence in which Kong peels off Fay Wray’s clothes) were restored in 1971, one cut scene has never been found. It is the clip in which Kong shakes four sailors off a log bridge, causing them to fall into a ravine where they are eaten alive by giant spiders. When the movie (with spider sequence intact) was previewed in San Bernardino, California, in late January 1933, members of the audience screamed and either left the theatre or talked about the grisly sequence throughout the remainder of the film. Said the film’s producer, Merian C. Cooper, “It stopped the picture cold, so the next day back at the studio, I took it out myself.” ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2005, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reaction-to-the-original-king-kong/335624/4 "2005-12-14T21:59:39Z")
> [@ITR champion](#): > > This seems as good a time as any to clarify what actually happened when the first King Kong movie was released. I’ve always heard stories that it was so terrifying that adults would faint in their seats or run screaming from the theater. True? Couldn’t have been too many. The movie made enough money that it saved RKO from bankruptcy. I seem to remember reading that some of the reports of screaming viewers were generated by the flacks to build interest, but I’d need to find a cite. ---
**Author:** ![Rico](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rico/32/3582_2.png) [@Rico](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rico)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2005, 10:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reaction-to-the-original-king-kong/335624/5 "2005-12-14T22:02:40Z")
\ I’m going to send this thread screaming and running into _Cafe Society_. Moved. \