These films were released in 1933

Duck Soup

Duck Soup

Remember, you're fighting for this woman's honour, which is probably more than she ever did.

I would offer up Duck Soup as the spiritual great-grandfather of movies like Blazing Saddles and Airplane!. Its plot seems to exist as an afterthought, unnecessary baggage that gets in the way of the movie’s true purpose: “four Jews trying to get a laugh,” as Groucho Marx would later confess.

It’s possible to view Duck Soup as a brilliant political farce, lacerating the bloated self-importance of world leaders, or you can just look to it for 68 minutes of pure post-Vaudevillian anarchy. It works both ways. This may not be the Marx Brothers at their most coherent, but it’s easily them at their funniest.

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Son of Kong

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If you thought that rushed, unnecessary and inferior sequels to hit films were a recent phenomenon, think again. Son of Kong is proof positive that wringing every last dollar out of success has been standard operating procedure in Hollywood almost since before the ink was dry on Thomas Edison‘s patents.

This quickie sequel reunites most of the creative team from the original King Kong, including producer, Merian C. Cooper, director Ernest Schoedsack, screenwriter Ruth Rose and special effects supervisor Willis O’Brien, but with a fraction of the budget and time allotted to the first, this film lacks virtually every quality that made its predecessor a classic.

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King Kong

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King Kong is one of those movies that, like Casablanca, has far exceeded even its creators’ expectations for longevity. The fact that, 70-plus years after its debut, its first release on DVD is big news should give some idea how this modest little monster movie turned into something more than what the filmmakers thought they were putting into it. In short, by overcoming the technical obstacles that stood in the way of it getting made, the creators of King Kong wound up inventing the special effects industry, sound effects editing and the modern concept of the motion picture musical score.

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