King Kong (1933, 103m, RKO) Starring Fay Wray, Bruce Cabot and the Empire State Building. Produced & Directed by Merian C. Cooper, and Ernest B. Schoedsack. (It was, of course, remade in 1976, with a model named Jessica Lange debuting in the Fay Wray role. Two Oscars™ and six nominations later, it's nice to reflect on that....)

Two years later, Cooper and Schoedsack would try again with another big-budget epic: The Last Days of Pompeii (1935, 95m, RKO). This film would have absolutely no significance here except that it too was remade, (1960, 105m, Italy), this time featuring that big time American Body-builder-turned-actor star of Italian "Cloak-and-sandal" action-fantasy flicks: Steve Reeves (He had already starred in Hercules, Hercules Unchained, and Goliath and the Barbarians in just 1959 & 1960). (Just so you know these things are circular, Goliath... also starred Bruce Cabot). Although Reeves would only make those two, the Italian "Hercules" movie series would continue for at least 26 years and 11 movies; some starring other body-builders-turned-actors Lou Ferrigno and Arnold Schwarzenegger. (Yes, I know that this is an incredible contrived segue from King Kong to Steve Reeves, but Steve is just about the only film reference mention in Rocky Horror that I don't mention somewhere here, and I'll be damned if I going to leave him out)

And while we are on the subject of incredible contrived segues, we should note that The Last Days of Pompeii took its title (but not its plot) from a novel by the19th century British writer Sir Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton. Bulwer-Lytton, while famous for several historical novels, is infamous for the novel Paul Clifford which gave us the classic opening line "It was a dark and stormy night".