Actress Ann Darrow (Fay Wray) and director Carl Denham (Robert
Armstrong) travel to the Indian Ocean to do location shoots for Denham's
new jungle picture. Along the way, the actress meets and falls for
rugged First Mate John Driscoll (Bruce Cabot). Upon arriving at a
mysterious island, Ann is taken hostage by natives
who prepare her as a sacrifice to the enormous ape Kong who rules over
their jungle. But when Ann is rescued and Kong is captured, the real
trouble begins.
Egyptologist and professor Henry Morlant (Boris Karloff) thinks an
ancient jewel will give him powers of rejuvenation if it is offered up
to the god Anubis. But when Morlant dies, his assistant Laing (Ernest
Thesiger) steals the jewel. While a gaggle of interlopers, including a
disreputable lawyer (Cedric Hardwicke) and a fake
vicar (Ralph Richardson), descend on the professor's manor to steal the
jewel for themselves, Morlant returns from the dead to punish everyone
who has betrayed him.
In this version of the Lewis Carroll classic, Alice (Charlotte
Henry) discovers that an ordinary library mirror is actually a portal
into another world. As she adjusts to her constantly changing size,
thanks to some mysterious cookies, she follows a rabbit with a pocket
watch, stumbles upon a deranged tea party and seeks
advice from the shadowy Cheshire Cat (Richard Arlen). Later, Alice runs
into Humpty Dumpty (W.C. Fields), whose unfortunate tumble sets even
stranger events in motion.
When corpses drained of blood begin to show up in a European
village, town elders suspect a vampire on the loose. Policeman Karl
Brettschneider (Melvyn Douglas) doubts the existence of vampires, but
Dr. Otto von Niemann (Lionel Atwill) argues to the contrary. Fingers
point at the village idiot, Herman Gleib (Dwight
Frye), but after local vigilantes get him out of the picture, the
killings continue. Brettschneider then tries to keep a cool head as he
searches for possibly supernatural answers.
A crooked financier and his henchmen frame the district attorney who is investigating their fradulent operation.
Rival reporters (Ginger Rogers, Lyle Talbot) mix romance with work as they hunt an apartment-house killer.
