King Kong (1976) – Review

That Hollywood was going to remake the 1933 classic film King Kong surprised no one. Universal was actually working on their own more faithful version of the classic for years, but they backed out when Paramount’s modern remake was announced, and it’s this Paramount version, produced by Dino De Laurentiis and directed by John Guillermin, that we will be looking at today. Moving the time period to the current day was not necessarily a bad thing (the original was not a period piece but set during the current economic depression of the thirties), and the script by Lorenzo Semple Jr. managed to work the current national oil crisis into the story. Though I’m sure placing it in a modern setting was more about shaving some money off its 24 million dollar budget than anything to do with artistic integrity. So let’s look at King Kong, the 9th Wonder of the World.

Aside from Kong himself, no characters that appeared in the 1933 original are featured in this remake. Instead of film producer Carl Denham, we have Fred Wilson (Charles Grodin), an executive of the Petrox Oil Company who mounts an expedition to find oil. He is risking his career on the idea that a recently discovered island in the Indian Ocean could contain huge deposits of oil. He is basing this on some infrared satellite photos that show the island is just lousy with carbon dioxide. Jack Prescott (Jeff Bridges), a primate paleontologist from Princeton, has stowed away aboard the Petrox Explorer because he believes that the excess carbon dioxide could be caused by beasts on the island. Yeah, the science in this film isn’t all that great.

Wilson doesn’t have the foggiest idea of what he is talking about.

In the original film, the ship passed through a fog bank as they approached the island, but in this remake, we learn that the fog bank is permanent and caused by the high levels of carbon dioxide. I’m not sure how many giant apes it would take to create a fog bank by heavy breathing, but I bet it’s more than one. So I’d say Mister Prescott is full of shit. Jack informs the crew of the Petrox Explorer that he has read journal entries from a visitor to the island; one log mentioned that upon “Landing on the beach of the skull where he heard the roar of the greatest beast.” While another account has to do with a waterlogged lifeboat being found that had an image drawn in blood, “A likeness of some huge, slouchy humanoid thing.” So Prescott kind of fills the part of Denham here as the believer in Kong, but he also plays the heroic lead.

The Dude Abides.

Now a heroic lead has to have a love interest, and in this film, it is not a half-starved depression-era Fay Wray, but a beautiful aspiring actress who survives a shipwreck and is spotted floating adrift by Prescott. Dwan (Jessica Lange) is the remake’s blonde damsel in distress, and for her first screen appearance, Lange does a decent enough job. (Note: After the film opened, she didn’t appear in a movie for three years as she focused on learning her craft and becoming the awesome actress we know today.) Dwan is not the brightest bulb in the box, and her relationship with a Princeton associate professor makes about as much sense as hers with a forty-foot ape. Though there could be something they both saw in her that appealed to their baser natures.

I wonder what that could be.

When they eventually arrive at Skull Island, though it is never called that, and we certainly don’t see any “Beach of the Skulls” that the log Prescott rambled on about mentioned.  They do run into a very large wall, which Wilson is sure is an ancient ruin, while Prescott insists that it has been recently maintained. They then hear native drumming from beyond the wall, proving Wilson to be wrong…again. The wall in this version is not some monstrous Egyptian-like monolith like in the original, but it does have that same massive gate that begs the question, “If you want to keep out giant monsters, why build such a bloody big door?”

And unlike the full-scale set in the 1933 Kong, this is just a matte painting.

The movie starts to follow the original story for a while, with the group stumbling upon a native village during some kind of wedding/slash sacrificial ceremony. Jack does not understand the native language but is somehow able to understand exactly what is going on. I’m guessing he read ahead in the script. Our intrepid adventurers are forced to retreat to their ship, where, of course, Dwan is later snatched by the natives and offered to Kong. This is where the film makes its first major misstep; Kong is introduced with the camera at Kong’s eye-level as the camera tracks his approach to the altar. This completely robs Kong of any sense of scale, and this is not helped by the fact that Kong is now being played by a man in an ape suit.

A decent ape suit, but still just an ape suit.

When this film was in production, Dino De Laurentiis made much ado about the full-scale robot Kong they constructed for the movie. Created by Carlo Rambaldi, this forty-foot Kong was constructed with a 3.5-ton aluminum frame and was covered with rubber and 1,012 pounds of Argentinian horsetails. This Mecha-Kong also consisted of 3,100 feet of hydraulic hose and 4,500 feet of electrical wiring, and at a cost $1.7 million. You couldn’t open an entertainment magazine without coming across an article with De Laurentiis spouting off about his fabulous robot. The one problem this robot had was that it sucked. It could barely move and looked about as lifelike as Donald Trump. This is why 99.9 percent of the shots, the ones consisting of Kong, were special effects man Rick Baker in an ape suit.

The suit didn’t suck so much as blow.

Dwan and Kong romp around in the jungle for a while. First, she is frightened and tries to escape, but then after getting a waterfall bath and Kong providing a blow-dry, she starts to like her tall, dark and hairy co-star. And maybe a bit too much, for when Kong blows her dry she looks to be having multiple orgasms.

Dwan could be considered the world’s first furry.

Meanwhile, Jack and a group of sailors had ventured into the jungle to rescue Dwan. Unlike Denham in the original, Wilson does not accompany the search party. Where Denham was a crazy showman, Wilson is just an asshole. He at first doesn’t want to believe Dwan was captured by a giant ape, but he has to admit the possibility when Jack points out all the knocked-down trees and says, “Who in the hell do you think went through there, some guy in an ape suit?” Possibly the film’s most meta line, and I wish I knew if it was intentional or not. Fans of the original will be greatly disappointed by the following section of this movie’s version of Skull Island, as it is anything but impressive. In the 1933 film, the island not only supported a forty-foot ape, but we encounter a Stegosaurus, a Tyrannosaurus Rex, an Elasmosaurus, a girl-grabbing Pteranodon, and a gorgeous jungle right out of a Gustave Dore painting.  In this version, there is a guy in an ape suit, a giant snake, and sets that would not look out of place on the original Star Trek television series.

“Be careful, the Gorn could be around here someplace.”

Now let us talk about the giant snake. As mentioned, the original was just chock full of dinosaur action, and the titanic battle between Kong and the T-Rex still holds up today as one of the best monster fights ever put on film, but for this movie, we get Rick Baker in an ape suit wrestling a larger rubber snake. Not since Bela Lugosi floundered around with an octopus in Bride of the Monster has such action been produced. The producers couldn’t have Kong fight a dinosaur in this version, because mixing a live-action ape suit with a stop-motion dinosaur would have been tricky and expensive to pull off. Then again, if they went the route of a guy in a dinosaur suit, they’d have been in danger of becoming King Kong vs Godzilla.

Of course, that would still have been better than this.

While Jack spirits Dwan away, and Kong rolls around with his rubber nemesis, back at the village Wilson is building a Kong-Trap. Turns out the black ooze on this island won’t be able to be refined into oil for another ten thousand years, and Wilson had already radioed head office that he was “Bringing in the Big One.” With visions of his head on the corporate chopping block, he suddenly gets the brilliant idea that as long as he brings back something big, he’s in the clear. He figures that if “Put a Tiger in Your Tank” made Esso a fortune, then an actual giant ape will make them millions. I do really wish they’d put in the scene of the corporate meeting that actually agreed to this idea because in reality Wilson would have been fired shortly after they sued him for gross incompetence. Yet somehow Fred Wilson sweet-talked his way out of being shit-canned, and so the company airdropped him several barrels of chloroform to use in his pit trap. Strangely enough, it works.

Note: The continuity in the Kong-capture sequence is all over the map.  The size of the pit Rick Baker in the ape suit falls into does not remotely match the full-scale hole we see them dig on location.  Also, the picture below clearly shows that, going by the location and size of Kong’s arm, the giant ape would not actually fit in that pit.

“OH my God, they’ve captured the Kong arm!“

Regardless of the stupidity and implausibility of this plan, as that much chloroform would cause paralysis, cardiac and respiratory failure, resulting in Wilson bringing back a very dead Kong, it all turns out well, and they get Kong back to America for his big unveiling in New York City. Dwan is excited about being a star, Jack is all pissed off at the idea of Kong becoming a sideshow, and Wilson just struts around like a dickhead, threatening to ruin careers if he doesn’t get his way. Jack’s integrity wins out, and he quits, but Dwan can’t risk losing her one shot at the big time, so she goes along with the show. Kong is wheeled out in a giant replica of a gas pump, and it looks as dumb as it sounds, but when the reporters all get grabby around Dwan, the ole guy goes ape shit.

It’s here that we get those glorious 15 seconds of the 40ft robot Kong.

Jack once again spirits Dwan away from Kong, while poor Fred Wilson meets his untimely end. There is no “It was Beauty killed the Beast” closing line for him; instead, he gets turned into toe jam by Kong. The following scenes consist of Kong rampaging through New York City while Jack and Dwan find a deserted bar for a drink. Of course, Kong has some kind of Super-Detecting-Dwan-Sense as he is able to track Dwan across the river, through Manhattan, and into a below-street-level bar, all while remaining undetected by the police or military.

Kong seen here in stealth mode.

Because Jack recognizes that the twin towers of the World Trade Center resemble rock formations from back on Skull Island, he deduces that Kong will climb them. This is complete bullshit, as Jack never saw Kong climb those rock formations, as they weren’t something he could even have climbed even if he wanted to. So this is just more Mary-Sue bullshit that Jack pulls out of his ass, and because he is such a friend to all animals, he makes a deal with the city that he will only tell them where Kong is heading if they promise to capture him alive. As Jack is a bit of a moron, at least when the script dictates it, he believes them when they quickly agree to his idiotic plan of netting a 40ft ape atop a New York City landmark. This results in Kong climbing the towers and then being gunned down as if he were Sonny Corleone at the tollbooth in The Godfather.

Was Sam Peckinpah the second unit director on this film?

This is certainly not a slavish remake of the original, which is not a bad thing, but the shift from campy adventure film to this blood-soaked, gory finale is a rather odd choice. Dino De Laurentiis is noted for saying, “No one cry when Jaws die but when the monkey die, people gonna cry. Intellectuals gonna love Kong. Even film buffs who love the first Kong gonna love ours. Why? Because I no give them crap.” I’m not sure fans of the original film loved to see Kong going out under a gory fusillade of bullets, but the film was successful, and it even became the seventh highest-grossing film that year. Though I doubt many of this movie’s patrons actually cried when the monkey died. I definitely did not. Though I did rush out and buy the cool King Kong board game.

Stray Observations:

• Director John Guillermin continues the Kong tradition of including racially insensitive stereotyped natives.
• The natives put blonde wigs on the women to be sacrificed. So how did Kong first develop this thing for blondes?
• The film does have a beautiful score by legendary composer John Barry.
• Jack cheers when three soldiers are immolated by Kong. What a dick.
• Not one but two helicopter pilots fly close enough to Kong to get swatted out of the sky. Does no one understand what hover and shoot means?
• The film’s tagline was “The most exciting original motion picture event of all time.” As this is a remake, I’m not sure they understand what the word “original” means.
• Exactly what planet is Skull Island located on

Possibly Moon Zero Two? 

So there you have it, the 1976 version of King Kong, a fascinating but deeply flawed attempt to bring the Eighth Wonder of the World into a new era. While the film deserves credit for its ambition, impressive production design, and Rick Baker’s remarkable work bringing Kong to life, it never quite captures the magic and emotional power of the original. The decision to make Kong more of a misunderstood giant than a terrifying force of nature is an interesting one, but the story around him often feels padded out with corporate greed, questionable character choices, and a lot of 1970s excess. Still, there is something strangely charming about this remake, especially thanks to Jeff Bridges, Jessica Lange’s memorable debut, and the sheer spectacle of seeing Kong return to the big screen. It may not reach the heights of the 1933 classic, but it remains an intriguing piece of monster movie history, proving that even a giant ape can have an awkward phase.