When I was a kid, the original King Kong was a Thanksgiving Day staple in New York City. I visited my grandmother, who still lived in the City then, for turkey day. One of the local NYC channels would run King Kong, often with Mighty Joe Young, on the holiday. When the remake of King Kong, starring Jeff Bridges and Jessica Lange, was released in 1976, I was taken to see it in the movie theater by my mother’s then-boyfriend. The three of us had plans to go Christmas shopping, but my mother had to work a night shift at her job in the city. It was her idea for us guys to see a movie to pass the time until she could meet up with us after work. It's hard to believe all of this took place almost fifty years ago now.
I don’t remember the name of the NYC theater where I saw the ‘76 Kong, but it was very large and ornate, a real temple of the cinema. It was just too bad the movie didn’t match the majestic setting that I saw it in. I was eleven at the time, and was something of an expert on the original 1933 King Kong, having seen it several times by then. The 1976 King Kong wasn’t terrible, but it lacked the imagination of the original, which took the viewer to a completely different world of Skull Island. That lost island in the 1933 film was a mysterious and scary place that was filled with dinosaurs.
The Skull Island in the ‘76 film was sparsely populated with any such fabulous creatures. Instead, we just have Kong, who’s played by a guy in a gorilla suit (played by makeup effects artist Rick Baker, who created the suit with Carlo Rambaldi—the latter would later create the titular character for ET: The Extraterrestrial). There is one lame scene where Kong fights a giant Boa Constrictor, but it’s a weak replacement for the T-Rex battle in the original. The ‘76 Skull Island looks underpopulated, which reflects its lack of creativity. At least director Peter Jackson appropriately repopulated his Skull Island with a flock of fantastic monsters in his 2005 remake.
The ending, now taking place at the Twin Towers, instead of the Empire State building, also still feels very lackluster, lacking any real emotion between Kong and Dwan (Jessica Lange). And having Kong get shot down by Vietnam-era helicopters struck me as being wrong, even when I first saw it as a kid. As an adult the whole idea of Kong getting taken from his home by an oil company looking to use him for an advertising blitz feels very low rent. Lacking any sense of epic adventure, the 1976 King Kong showed that the original story was better served by being a period piece set in the 1930s. And while Peter Jackson’s 2005 remake had its own problems, at least Jackson and his team seemed to understand the original story better than the ‘76 filmmakers, who were determined to make their version as cynical and devoid of any mythic qualities as the decade it was set in (the seventies were devoid of any mythical storytelling, right up until George Lucas released his little space epic in 1977).
But the ‘76 King Kong, while not perfect, was still entertaining in its own way. The script by Lorenzo Semple Jr. is witty in places, and the cast is very sturdy, with Jeff Bridges (Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, Tron) playing a heroic character who’s doomed to have his warnings be ignored by everybody. Charles Grodin (Midnight Run) is very good as the oil executive in charge of the expedition that finds Kong, as is René Auberjonois (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) as Roy Bagley, an oil company chemist. John Lone (Year of the Dragon, The Last Emperor) made his film debut as the unnamed cook aboard the ship, and Jack O'Halloran, who would later play the Kryptonian Non in the first two Chris Reeve Superman films, plays another crew member aboard the ship. The ‘76 King Kong is also Jessica Lange’s film debut, and she’s perfect as Dwan, who turns out to be a flawed, shallow woman who’s constantly looking for fame.
I remember enjoying this version of King Kong when I was eleven, and then—years later—I absolutely hated it. I thought it was an abomination! But having re-watched it recently for this 50th anniversary look-back, my view of this remake has mellowed a great deal. While it will never match the classic ‘33 Kong (nor the ‘05 remake), the ‘76 King Kong is still entertaining in its own goofy way. --SF
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