King Kong (1976)

For any child of the Seventies, chances are they had never even seen the 1933 King Kong, seeing that video rental places weren't really right around the corner at the time, unless of course they happened to catch it on the late-night movie or the Saturday Afternoon Movie right after the Pro Bowler's Tour. That kinda thing.

So when Dino De Laurentiis announced his intention around 1974 or so of remaking this classic monster movie, teens didn't really make that much of a big whoop on the matter. Purists who had seen and loved the original stop-motion classic, of course, kind of winced and turned their heads, hoping that the producer of such cinematic treats as Crazy Joe, Lipstick, Mandingo, Drum and To Bed Or Not To Bed would do their big hulking primate proud.

That's the thing about monster fans; they always hang on to that last thread of hope as long as they can, no mater how outlandish that hope may be: they were counting on Dino De Laurentiis to produce a great movie!

Now on the subject of remakes for a moment, of which 76's King Kong most definitely falls into category-wise, I'm not sure when the first remake was made; probably right after the first motion picture was made by the Lumieire Brothers. For such a lofty tradition, it had to have begun relatively early so as to become such an expected by-product of the film experience.

Certainly, as sure as the sun rises in the morning, there has been remake after remake after remake of almost every major motion picture ever made - and a few of the minor ones.

Sometimes they're good, but that is not always the case as one would expect. I've lost count when producers, studios and directors have put their heads together to make high-standing wrong-headed decisions, most of which led to major disasters right there on the screen. And I don't just mean in monetary terms - that's a given. But disasters also in terms of loss of integrity - both artistic and personal - for all involved. And it hurts. Bad.

You remember the first King Kong from 1933, don't you? I'm safely sure we've all seen the original at least once in our lives, right? Sure, it's old school, and not the CGI marvel we expect from all modern films. Even so, you could see the desire to entertain, bring things to light that had never been seen before in films and make a story that would fill you with awe and wonder as to what lies in the deepest jungle on the farthest reaches of the Earth.

We're talking Fay Wray, Robert Armstrong, Bruce Cabot, Empire State Building, "T'was beauty killed the beast", the whole thing.

So came our old friend Dino, the very man who thought he could do everything better - including The Bible! And with the opportunity afforded him by thees a-big a-monkey, he saw a way to not only update the story and make a spectacle for this generation but maybe even make a few bucks in the process.

Then we were given Paramount Pictures' Dino De Laurentiis Production of King Kong in Christmas of 1976. Or as I like to call it: The Year Without A Santa Claus.

Let's peel this banana of a story now. Big oil company Petrox is heading for distant Kong Island in search of a hopefully-large oil strike. The expedition is headed by the equally oily Fred Wilson (Charles Grodin), who promises to bring back "something big". Hmmm.... In the process, the crew comes across a stowaway (Jeff Bridges), a castaway (Jessica Lange) and the island in question which may not hold oil but does hold natives who worship a gorilla named (ironically enough) Kong. The crew is slow to catch on that the natives' huts and housing are encased within some VERY BIG WALLS. In time, they'll soon discover what the walls are for after the castaway is kidnapped and offered as a sacrifice. After that, it's pretty much your basic monkey-loves-girl, monkey-gets-captured, monkey-escapes-in-Noo-Yawk, catch-the-big-monkey, save-the-girl, destroy-the-city-in-the-process story. They even managed to include the recently-completed Twin Towers to fill in for The Empire State Building.

We got us one big honkin' movie here, $24 million worth - and Lorenzo Semple Junior wrangled a script from the original Merian C. Cooper and Edgar Wallace story that dolloped in some heavy doses of...well, I can't really call it irony and it isn't quick enough to be considered a satire...let's just call this heavy doses of Mad Magazine-level nonsense.

Now, about the acting? Chuck Grodin is always worth watching and makes slimy and reprehensible very entertaining; of course what could you expect from the man who all but made Ishtar his own? Jeff Bridges will always be a great actor and makes his moments memorable - though I liked him better in Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, he at least fares better here than in the Farrah Fawcett-Majors vehicle Somebody Killed Her Husband. Lange had several years to go to get better parts in films like Frances, Country and Blue Sky, and not be thought of as a model. She at least does her best while playing against a superimposed image of an ape head, but I'll get to that.

This is one of those films that you'll enjoy even more if you have any knowledge of who was who in Hollywood bit-parts and have watched more than your fair share of films in general. Then you can join in with the rest of the people who've watched this and play "Spot The Star - Seventies Version". The attentive will amuse themselves no end by catching performances by Rene Auberjonois, Jack O'Halloran, Ed Lauter, John Lone, Forrest J. Ackerman, Corbin Bernsen, Joe Piscopo, Walt Gorney (Friday the 13th's own Crazy Ralph, ladies and gentlemen!), and even a little part for John Agar, speaking of old school....

Director John Guillermin isn't known for his good judgment in lensing such "epics". Oh sure, he can use the widescreen lens as well as anyone else, but the stories he films? Check out The Towering Inferno, Sheena, Hell Heaven or Hoboken, and the inevitable King Kong Lives for further proof. Of course, he did helm Shaft in Africa, so a few coolness points go to him for that. Still, Sheena....

Can we at least count on the awesome effects expected for 1976 as compared to 1933? Well, Rick Baker designed a pretty effective monkey suit and a well-articulated face for it. He even played the title part - as he is wont to do roles in monkey suits from time to time as he did in The Thing With Two Heads, The Kentucky Fried Movie and The Incredible Shrinking Woman. Then all we're left with are small-scale sets with Baker in his suit stomping around; the sets are about the same quality you'd find in your typical Godzilla flick. Then we have to have 30-foot tall Styrofoam and semi-mechanical Kongs in big settings so we can have people mill around at his feet and/or run in pants-wetting terror from him. It's that whole to-scale thing we're talking about here, and it's not always successful - you tell me; if you're going to build a giant robot of a gorilla to use in a movie, shouldn't it at least not look lobotomized, as compared to the non-suit-wearing and articulated-mask-wearing scenes?

Then we have Lange interacting with blue screen scenes so that her emoting can show Kong reacting in kind. After all, it's hard to act against a styrofoam ape head. And there are a couple of successful scenes, like when Lange is held under a waterfall to clean off by our big boy then he blows air on her to dry her off, his cheeks puffing out as he blows. That part kind of amazed me as a kid, seeing as how even then realized we were talking a mask here instead of a real ape. Overall, it kind of lacks the entertainment value that A*P*E had in its cheap, dumb setup and purring gorilla destroying buildings made of paper.

Back in the day, I remember all the hype that Paramount ladled over the American public like so much ape gravy. Kong's face was on everything you could imagine: t-shirts, cups, stickers, drink glasses, magnets, posters, candy, and I think someone even came up with a King Kong Cocktail! Just the thing to drown your sorrows after watching the film!

But the fact of the matter is that Dino's Kong, no matter how much you saw of it on posters and at Burger Chef or whatever couldn't mask the fact that THIS version, while big and flashy, just didn't hold the same allure as the 1933 original.

What went wrong? They treated the whole endeavor NOT as a sequel to the original, but as a continuation of the clunky, jokey Japanese versions where their Kong would fight against Godzilla or some big robotic version of himself. They don't even do a version of the "beauty killed the beast" line. They do have Kong's hand reach in and grab up Lange at one point like in the '33 version, though without the hysterical screams.

Man, people were so depressed in the Seventies they didn't even scream when gigantic monkeys abducted them.

And even with all of that working against it, King Kong STILL managed to make $132 million overall, well over five times its budget. See, all those drink glasses they sold made SOME impression. And I think that may be it - merchandising is a big part of any movie's success. the more stuff you have for sale with your movie's name on it, the more money your movie will pull from it and the better your chances of making a profit. That's the power of marketing for you, baby - it has the power to make fertilizer appealing to the unwashed masses; even the unwashed masses expecting a 1933 throwback and instead got thrown down. To the curb.

When all was said and done, I guess there were some who preferred the Seventies' Kong to the Thirties' Kong. All well and good, save for the fact that they were replacing cinema gold with fool's gold and doing no one a favor in the process except the studios. Just another example of what a good advertising campaign can do for you.

It didn't last, though. The 1986 sequel to THIS film, King Kong Lives (oops, sorry - SPOILER ALERT), didn't even earn back it's $10 million budget. Ten million bucks - that's what they get for not getting Rick Baker back, I guess.

So when it comes to a taste test, comparing 1933 with 1976 in terms of gigantic gorillas, 4 out of 5 dentists (you innocent viewers being the dentists), would be wise to stick with the original.

That fifth one? If he wanted monkey shines, he sure got 'em.