Los Angeles Times
"...KING KONG is the screen's ultimate Beauty-and-the-Beast fable, and it endures through the power of innocence that has all but vanished from the screen..." 03/24/1989 p.C4Chicago Sun-Times
"...KING KONG is more than a technical achievement. It is also a curiously touching fable....There is something ageless and primeval about KING KONG that still somehow works..." 02/03/2002 p.7 Total Film
"...The grand-daddy of all monster movies..." 04/01/2001 p.105 Premiere
"[T]he first Kong has something today's CGI masters are hard-pressed to give their monsters: a soul." 04/01/2004 p.67 Movieline's Hollywood Life
"[I]t's still the quintessential pulp saga, capable of popping eyeballs 70-odd years later without the help of computers." 11/01/2005 p.104 Entertainment Weekly
"[The] black-and-white granddaddy of beast-on-the-loose movies....The movie looks improved over earlier video and TV copies, and still packs a wallop..." 11/25/2005 p.87 Premiere
4 stars out of 4 -- "What makes KONG unique is its mix of hokum, horror, and peculiar poetry..." 12/01/2005 p.181 Rolling Stone
"[T]he joy is seeing the 1933 original, complete with Max Steiner's classic score and once-censored scenes..." 12/01/2005 p.92 Rolling Stone
Ranked #3 in Rolling Stone's "Top 25 DVDs Of 2005' -- "[T]he joy is seeing the 1933 original, complete with Max Steiner's classic score and once-censored scenes..." 12/01/2005 p.92 BBC Online 10 of 10
The classic monster picture that spawned the rest is not simply a venerable old cinematic relic that one is obliged to give a passing mention to. King Kong was created to grip and thrill like no movie before, and these basic principles hold surprisingly true today. - Almar Haflidason
ReelViews 10 of 10
Despite its various deficiencies and occasionally antiquated style, King Kong remains not only a milestone of movie-making, but a magical experience. Ultimately, the mystique of the film lies not so much in what it offers today, but what it has contributed during the course of the last six decades. Watching King Kong reminds us of what movies once were and what they have the potential to be, and that's something that Jurassic Park will never be able to do. - James Berardinelli
Chicago Sun-Times 9 of 10
On good days I consider "Citizen Kane" the seminal film of the sound era, but on bad days it is "King Kong." That is not to say I dislike "King Kong," which, in this age of technical perfection, uses its very naivete to generate a kind of creepy awe. It's simply to observe that this low-rent monster movie, and not the psychological puzzle of "Kane," pointed the way toward the current era of special effects, science fiction, cataclysmic destruction, and nonstop shocks. "King Kong" is the father of "Jurassic Park," the "Alien" movies and countless other stories in which heroes are terrified by skillful special effects. - Roger Ebert
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