The 1933 giant-monster film featuring Willis O’Brien’s stop-motion animation is King Kong.
Directed by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, King Kong follows a film expedition to Skull Island, where a giant gorilla is captured and taken to New York. The film combined live-action performances with miniature animation, rear projection, matte paintings and mechanical effects to make Kong interact with human characters.
Willis O’Brien supervised the stop-motion effects. Animators moved detailed models a small amount between individual exposures, creating the illusion of movement when the frames were projected in sequence. Kong’s close-ups used a larger mechanical head and upper-body model, while many creature scenes relied on articulated miniatures.
Mighty Joe Young also involved O’Brien, but it was released in 1949. Son of Kong was a 1933 sequel, while The Lost World was an earlier dinosaur adventure. King Kong is the original film in the long-running Kong franchise.