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Lady Killer (Warner Brothers) illustrates its makers' theory that a James Cagney picture requires less plot than movement. Starting out as a routine record of the rise of Dan Quigley (James Cagney) in crookdom. Lady Killer abruptly shifts its ground, loses itself in aimless mockery of actors, film directors, newspaper critics. In Hollywood hiding from New York police, Quigley gets a film bit as an Indian chief, becomes a star by subscribing to a stamp-bureau which sends him fan mail from all over the world. Tired of bashing his ladies on the chin. Cagney in this picture drags Myra (Mae Clarke) out of bed by the hair, hurls her twelve feet down a corridor.
Son of Kong (RKO), sponsored rather by economy than inspiration, makes mediocre use of the mechanical monsters which littered RKO studios after last year's production of King Kong. Unlike famed Kong, 30-ft. prehistoric whatnot who, transplanted to Manhattan, was shot by airplanes off the top of the Empire State Building, his son is a mild hobgoblin, with small taste for adventure. When Robert Armstrong and Helen Mack (instead of Fay Wray, who aroused his father's lust) arrive to hunt for hidden treasure on his South Sea island, he greets them hospitably, defends them against hostile natives.
The pterodactyls, brontosauri and jungle foliage are the same as those in King Kong but young Kong himself is a new animal. His father was black but he is white, and only 12 ft. tall. Young Kong dies as bravely as his father, though less dramatically, when his island is disrupted by an earthquake.