King Kong's Spider Pit and the Allure of Horror Myth

For those that became horror fans before the advent of special features, deleted content and the deluge of behind the scenes information that now makes up our entertainment news diet, it was pretty common to watch something with the idea that “This isn’t even the best bit.” Whispers would become mythology and even the most violent slasher films would be accompanied by playground rumors that, somewhere out there, there were versions that were even more brutal, graphic and horrifying. In some cases, these notions would see fruition. For example, thanks to fairly recent home video releases, fans can get the full My Bloody Valentine experience, instead of the one full of edits that originally mauled the 1981 Canadian cult classic.

Perhaps the most notorious in this subgenre is the spider pit sequence in the 1933 King Kong. For those unaware, the rumor goes that in the initial cut, as soon as Kong shakes the unfortunate sailors off the log and into a deep ravine. those unlucky enough to survive the fall are set upon by an army of giant bugs, spiders and creepy crawlies.

Why it was cut differs from tale to tale - Some say that directors Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack were dissatisfied with how it slowed the film down and cut it. Some say that the early audiences that saw it were so shocked by it that the filmmakers couldn’t, in good conscience, leave it in. And a few have said that the creatures in the pit looked so hokey that they actually got the opposite reaction: guffaws and ridicule in what had previously been a very effective film full of state of the art special effects. All we know for sure is that, at some point, the spider pit sequence was meant to exist. Script samples, production stills and concept art assure that.

In the almost ninety years since the release of King Kong, the chances of that footage ever being recovered have gotten exponentially slimmer. In reverse order, though, its reputation has gotten stronger over time. By the time Peter Jackson, fresh off concocting the fantasy blockbuster of a generation with his Lord of the Rings trilogy, tackled his own King Kong remake in 2005, he didn’t just include a spider pit sequence in his new film, but remade what he imagines it would’ve looked like in 1933 in a short film. It’s included in the boatload of special features on a recent release of the 1933 King Kong:

Jackson is nothing less than an obsessive filmmaker. Recently, for the documentary The Beatles: Get Back, he scoured hundreds of hours of footage to create a lively tribute to the creation of the Let It Be album. The fact that he would take it upon himself to create a scene that no living man had ever seen in a movie directed by others over seventy years prior doesn’t surprise me. It’s the power of legend in the horror and fantasy genres, and when he made his own spider pit scene for the 2005 film, that’s what he had to live up to: Not cinema reality but Hollywood legend.

His attempt certainly is effective - It’s remarkably visceral in an already visceral film (A recent rewatch revealed that, during Kong’s battle with the three Tyrannosaurus-esque Vastatosaurus rex, he bites one of their tongues out! Didn’t catch that in theaters, but it’s a cool, savage detail,) and it builds on the fairly universal human fear of “That thing shouldn’t be that big.” Adrien Brody screaming “Not my eyes!” as he’s attacked by a giant cricket is so oddly disturbing. Andy Serkis swinging his machete in futility as he’s consumed indefinitely by monstrous swamp worms is one of those things that you don’t really forget.

But does it match the spider pit sequence, not the one that Jackson recreated, but the one passed down from film historian to King Kong aficionado as the be-all and end-all of deleted scenes? No. But then again, nothing ever will. It lives in our minds in a way that’s more prominent than if it had actually been included in the film itself, a true testament to horror’s power to prey on what we don’t know and inhabit the little corners of our mind, our own little spider pits, that we had no idea existed.