[suspenseful music] (host) It's one of movies' most iconic moments.

King Kong Perched precariously on top of the Empire State Building.

-[suspenseful music] -[King Kong roaring] In what would become an international phenomenon, "King Kong" revived a struggling studio and birthed a canonical monster that has endured for almost a century.

King Kong, as both a character and a film, is commentary on greed, social economics, and a disturbing snapshot of racial politics in America at the start of the 20th century.

I'm Dr. Emily Zarka, and this is "Monstrum."

Quick recap of the 1933 film: Carl Denham, a filmmaker desperate for his next box office hit, hears rumors of a mysterious deity called Kong, living on a secret island in the south seas.

Determined to make the rumored monster the antagonist of his next film, Carl heads out with a hired crew to capture Kong.

One member of the group is an out-of-work actress named Anne, played by iconic Hollywood beauty Fay Wray.

On the island, the group interrupts the ritual sacrifice of a woman to the fabled Kong.

The natives, angry at the interruption, and inexplicably captivated by Anne decide she would be a more fitting tribute.

The foreigners attempt a hasty retreat to their boat, but Anne is later kidnapped and the natives string her up as an offering.

An infatuated Kong carries Anne off with Carl and the crew in pursuit.

The rescue party discovers not only the massive gorilla but living dinosaurs on the island.

Cut to a battle between Kong and the Tyrannosaurs Rex.

During the fight, it becomes clear that Kong isn't a threat to Anne.

He's actually her protector, but despite Kong saving Anne from the dangers of the island, he is captured by the search party and, ever the colonial fantasy capitalist gentleman, Carl absconds with Kong back to New York City.

He opens a show featuring Kong as the eighth wonder of the world.

[show music] (Carl) Ladies and gentlemen, look at Kong, the eighth wonder of the world.

[triumphant music] (Emily) And as you can guess, this does not go well.

Kong escapes his chains and captures Anne, whom he believes to be in danger.

He wreaks havoc upon the city and famously climbs the Empire State Building before being shot down by the military... [suspenseful music] falling dramatically to his death.

The airplanes got him.

Oh no, it wasn't the airplanes.

It was beauty killed the beast.

(Emily) The movie was produced by two filmmakers, Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Shoedsack.

Cooper claims credit for crafting the original story.

One of his inspirations was a friend's unsuccessful attempt to display two Komodo dragons at the Bronx Zoo.

Another was watching a plane flying over New York City skyscrapers.

And Cooper drew heavily from a 19th century travel log, "Explorations and Adventures in Equatorial Africa."

The book includes a recounting of a gorilla who supposedly took a female villager into the jungle.

Monster horror films from the time, like "The Gorilla" and "The Ape," featured gorillas violently murdering humans.

There's also "King of the Kongo," which probably isn't a coincidence that the title resembles the "King Kong" namesake four years later.

This one involves ivory smugglers and a giant gorilla who at one point threatens the protagonist with a gun.

A quick aside here-- though gorillas are rarely aggressive, popular Western opinion at the time stereotype the species as rampaging violent untamable beasts, and Cooper leaned into this trope.

He even wanted to use real gorillas in the attack shots in the film.

Oh, and have the gorilla get into a fight with a Komodo dragon, which I guess kind of made it onto screen in the T-Rex versus Kong battle.

And that was only possible thanks to Willis Harold O'Brien.

He was the stop-motion and special-effects pioneer behind Kong, while Marcel Delgado was the sculptor behind Kong's famous form.

O'Brien might actually be responsible for making Kong a giant.

He sized the creature up in an early concept portrait, making Kong's first encounter with Anne more frightening.

While pre-production of the film staggered along, hindered by a rotating door of script writers and financial setbacks, RKO Radio Pictures was headed for bankruptcy after a string of box office busts.

They needed a hit and needed it fast, so they put everything they had into "King Kong"-- marketing the film's groundbreaking special effects and over-the-top plot as a spectacle that had to be seen to be believed.

Kong himself was also a spectacle, a terrifying monster on a rampage of destruction.

Ads of Kong on top of the Empire State Building shocked the public, and one trailer featured only a giant menacing shadow.

And it worked.

All ten shows a day were sold out during opening weekend in New York City in the middle of the Great Depression.

Record-setting attendance was followed by glowing reviews that praised the film's technical achievements and thrilling plot.

It made about $2 million worldwide upon its first release and single-handedly saved RKO from bankruptcy.

The harsh truth is that "King Kong"'s success highlights the Western tendency to fetishize and exploit foreign cultures.

"King Kong"'s influences give us a perspective into the history of conquest and colonialism.

Both filmmakers, Cooper and Schoedsack, previously worked on films documenting wildlife and human inhabitants of exotic locales.

And jungle adventure films were a popular genre of the time.

These movies set in-- you guessed it--the jungle, show predominantly white characters exploring a faraway land.

A classic example-- "Tarzan of the Apes," and its many, many, many sequels and spinoffs.

Tarzan himself became king of the apes and embodied the noble savage trope.

Then there's 1922's "Jungle Goddess," which featured a kidnapped white woman who becomes the goddess of an African community.

Overall, there's a lot of racist and colonialist tropes in this genre.

The white adventurers face threats from stereotypically-portrayed natives who are constructed as uncivilized, violent, and obsessed with white female beauty.

But another nefarious influence on "King Kong"'s story may have been the faux documentary racial exploitation film "Ingagi."

In the film, African women are offered as sexual sacrifices to gorillas, essentially pornography that grotesquely demonized interracial relationships.

The 1930 film would be pulled from theaters under the Hays Code, but not before reaching box-office success.

It was one of the highest grossing Hollywood films that year.

This financial success likely fueled RKO Radio Pictures' investment in "King Kong"'s creation and distribution.

They just needed to monetize racism in a less obvious way.

Considering the overt racism at the time "King Kong" was produced, Kong's place in the dark history of dehumanizing people of color is undeniable.

Comparing people to and portraying them as gorillas, monkeys, and orangutans was a common practice at the time, and these undertones in the film would not have gone unnoticed by moviegoers in 1933.

The so-called savage ape, dark and menacing, obsessed with the beauty of a white woman he seizes for his own was a pretty transparent metaphor for racist fears.

There's also the fact that Kong's physical journey from his native land to the U.S. to be exploited for profit aligns with the narrative of enslaved people.

King Kong appears at a time when civil rights deprivations were fueling cause for equality in housing, employment, and education.

"King Kong" can be read as a metaphor for how Black men were treated and are still treated in America as both glorious spectacle and violent threat.

Kong evokes the dangerous exotic other, but he is also a sympathetic character that the audience is meant to identify with.

Kong triumphantly clutches the top of the needle in one hand -and Anne in the other.

-[Anne screaming] He has not just conquered the city, but the world.

At the time, the Empire State Building was the tallest building in the world.

He towers over the symbol of modern civilization.

Cooper stated that part of the creature's inspiration came from a desire to place a symbol of prehistoric life in the modern mechanized world and have a modern weapon, the airplane, kill him.

In a press release for the film, he said, "Why not place him at the pinnacle "of the tallest building, "symbol in steel, stone, and aspiration, and pit him against modern man?"

Of course, as a foreigner on U.S. soil, Kong's triumph is short-lived.

A revived RKO Radio Pictures followed up the success of "King Kong" with a quick sequel, "Son of Kong," released just nine months later.

But then no new contributions to the franchise until the 1960s.

Sure, there were re-releases that drew big crowds and established a global audience, but nothing new was added to the story for almost 30 years.

And when those changes came, they would be pretty big ones.

He wreaks havoc upon the city and famously climbs the Empire State Building before being shot down by mm-the military.

Sorry, it's okay, I'll do the whole paragraph again anyway.