King Kong burnt its image on to the retina of a generation. On its release in 1933, it made so much money for its studio RKO that it financed the birth of the Hollywood Golden Age. It terrified audiences. At a test screening in San Bernadino in 1933, a scene featuring Kong rolling a log with his fingers and hurtling four sailors into a giant spiders' lair caused such hysteria that the film's director Ernest Cooper decided to cut it for fear that people would run out of the cinema. [More]