King Kong (1933 film)/Trivia

• Accidentally Accurate: Some have questioned the credibility of the fact that Captain Englehorn is able to translate the language of the islanders, who have apparently never had Western visitors before. He describes it as similar to the language of the Nias islanders. Nias is a real place in Indonesia, but the language of the film is completely fabricated. Nonetheless, Englehorn's ability to translate is not all that implausible; most of the languages of the Pacific share common enough roots to be mutually intelligible to fluent speakers.
• What Could Have Been: At one time in the 1933 film there was a scene when Denham and his crew fall into a pit that is filled with giant spiders that soon devour everyone except Denham. However, the filmmakers felt that the spider pit scene would be too scary for children and that it would slow the film down, so they had to remove it. That scene would later be reworked as an insect pit for the 2005 film remake and also restored as a deleted scene for the original.
  • Also removed from the original was a scene of King Kong playing with Ann's... let's just say... clothes.
• They did build a to-scale animatronic of Kong's head and shoulders for the 1933 film. It has several quick appearances, the most notable being Kong's unveiling in new York and during his rampage in the native village (the close-ups where a villager is in his mouth). Though it was pretty motionless (only the eyes and mouth could move, and limited at that), it still worked fairly well.