King Kong

Carl Denham is a filmmaker with a reputation for dangerous expeditions and a taste for spectacle. He charters a ship from Captain Englehorn and picks up Ann Darrow, a young woman down on her luck in Depression-era New York, to star in his next picture. He has a destination in mind — an uncharted island in the Indian Ocean, coordinates from a stolen map — but he won't say what he expects to find there. On board, Ann meets first mate Jack Driscoll, and the two fall cautiously in love.

They reach Skull Island and find it fortified: a massive ancient wall separates the village from whatever lies beyond it. That night, the village holds a ceremony — a girl adorned and presented as a bride. The chief sees Ann and offers to trade for her. Denham refuses. They return to the ship. That night the natives slip aboard, drug Ann, and carry her through the gate as a new offering. By the time the crew notices she is gone, the ceremony has already begun. A name is chanted in the dark: Kong.

Kong is an ape — thirty feet tall, prehistoric, alone on an island full of dinosaurs. He takes Ann into the jungle. Jack, Denham, and a rescue party follow. Kong kills a Tyrannosaurus Rex that threatens Ann. The rescue party reaches a log bridge across a ravine; Kong shakes them off into the abyss. Jack survives and follows Kong to his mountain lair, reaches Ann, and they escape while Kong is distracted.

Denham captures Kong with gas bombs at the wall. Back in New York, Kong is presented to a packed Broadway theater as "the Eighth Wonder of the World," shackled and on display. Photographers surge forward. Their flashbulbs enrage him. He breaks free, devastates the city searching for Ann, finds her in her hotel room, and climbs the Empire State Building with her in his hand.

The Army sends biplanes. Kong fights them off, swatting them from the sky. Shot repeatedly, he sets Ann down gently on the ledge and examines her one last time. Then he falls. The crowd gathers around the body on the pavement below. A police officer says the airplanes got him. Denham pushes through and looks at what he made happen. "No," he says. "It was Beauty killed the Beast."