A sound designer slows down recorded lion and tiger roars, plays them backward, and creates the most iconic monster bellow in film history. This episode explores how RKO Pictures, on the brink of bankruptcy during the Great Depression, gambled on Merian C. Cooper's obsession with gorillas and the box office of a racist hoax documentary called Ingagi to produce King Kong, a film that essentially invented the modern special effects blockbuster.

The conversation follows the relay race of screenwriters from Edgar Wallace to Ruth Rose, whose fairy tale framing turned a monster fight into a tragic romance, then digs into Willis O'Brien's 18-inch rabbit-fur armatures, the six-operator mechanical head, traveling mattes and rear projection, and Fay Wray's 22 hours in a fake tree. It covers Murray Spivak's invented Foley, Max Steiner's 46-piece orche ...