King Kong FAQ

Are there any other "lost" sequences from King Kong?

For Kong's 1938 re-release, film censors required that seven scenes be removed from King Kong for being too graphic. In order they include:

• Two scenes of the brontosaurus biting sailors
• Kong pealing some of the clothes away from Fay Wray
• Kong biting and chewing natives when he breaks through the gate on Skull Island.
• Kong squashing a native under his giant foot in the same sequence
• Kong biting a New Yorker when he escapes from the theatre
• Kong picking a sleeping woman from her hotel room, inspecting her and upon deciding that she's not Ann throwing her to the sidewalk several stories below.

These scenes were lost for many years but were eventually found by an American film collector in an RKO vault and added back to the Janus Films prints released in the early 1970's. Most prints and video copies of King Kong today now include these scenes. The film stock was also darkened to hide some of the gory details in the '40s. This was not corrected until Turner Home Entertainment digitally re-mastered the film for its sixtieth anniversary.

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