A film crew travels to a tropical island for an exotic location shoot and discovers a colossal ape who falls for their blonde starlet (scream queen Fay Wray). Captured, the gorilla is transported back to New York City hailed as the "Eighth Wonder of the World." The rest is cinema history as one of the most enduring icons of American popular culture was born.   

In the late 1950s, while attending a screening of a French print of King Kong, Bill Pence realized he was watching footage that he had never seen before. All the US prints of Kong had been censored for suggestive content for the 1952 re-release, so American audiences were not seeing the 1933 film. Bill convinced the head of Janus Films to let him restore the US re-release to its original form and the Uncut King Kong was a smash hit at colleges as well as burgeoning arthouse theaters. It is the version we know and love today.

D: Merian C. Cooper & Ernest B. Schoedsack, US, 1933, 1h40m