King Kong (1976)

The first half is fantastic. A terrific and creative set-up with the famous story altered so that oil speculator Charles Grodin is seeking the island surrounded by fog as a possible origin for that gushy stuff that keeps cars running...Jeff Bridges, as a "hippie" stowaway who bribes his way aboard the ship/freighter, knows the island has a big secret, and yet even he's not sure exactly what... Had another actor been cast in this preachy photographer role, liking and even thinking he understands simians over humans (especially the 11th hour American Military in Copters that he infamously cheers upon their destruction), would be annoying and/or pretentious, even cliché: Given his cred, it's no surprise that Bridges can be just cool enough to add a tinge of pulpy action hero to the hairy modern do-gooder...And after what are the best scenes occurring on-the-way to Skull Island, he's part of, along with the mostly doomed search party on land that includes character-actors Ed Lauter and Julius Harris, the same kind of old school adventure vibe, keeping the action at a neat, economical pace: something director John Guillerman can do nicely. ranging from SHAFT IN AFRICA back to THE DAY THEY ROBBED THE BANK OF ENGLAND...In search of the initially lost-at-sea and now reluctant monkey's bride is a would-be actress with the strange name of Dwan, played by the extremely gorgeous Jessica Lange, an airhead character who probably wouldn't have made a good actress, so Jessica's own performance may seem stilted and campy, but like Bridges, her unique presence makes-up for any otherwise damaging flaws. "My horoscope said I was in crossover water," she says about the powerful man who can possibly change her life with a big role, and, unaware of the underlined irony that waits ashore, continues with: "And that I was going to meet the biggest person in my life."Skull Island more a tropical Hawaii than the original's African vibe Meanwhile, Grodin, with his usual glib persona, is a snarky, funny and likeable villain (whose forced selfish dialogue fleshes-out any and all villainy), and at one point says "Let's not get eaten alive on this island... Bring the mosquito spray!" And he's ultimately not as lucky as Robert Armstrong's original instigator, Carl Denham: after all, Hollywood prefers directors to oilmen...But this entertainingly epic yet nicely contained popcorn flick hits a gigantic Kong Wall, ironically when the Ape arrives and the story centers on he and Lange's idyllic honeymoon that's not only corny, but makes this formidable creature lack the complete and edgy, monstrous quality needed for his Big Apple destruction later on (but at least he doesn't ice skate like in Peter Jackson's multi-million-dollar vanity project). Kong is also inevitably bogged down by dated special effects... despite beautiful matte painting backdrops and Rick Baker's costume (Bridges says at one point: "Who do you think went through there: some guy in an ape suit?"), which seems genuine and palpable up-close as opposed to wider shots, the opposite of the 1933 classic - still the champ after all the sequels, remakes, expanded tales and in this particular case, with the working tag-title extension THE LEGEND REBORN, is one of the first reboots despite that term not being used (much) in 1976, one year before effects-driven pulpy adventure movies would be changed, forever.

King Kong 1976 is a film I've always avoided up until now due to some bad reports about it since it first came out. It came up on TV recently and I watched it tonight and it really was the most pleasant surprise of a put-down movie I've seen since Waterworld, which I enjoyed equally. Two movies then that are very misjudged. King Kong not only looks great, it looks big in every way, not just the gorilla, but the sets, the scope, the stunning scenery, big in every way. Jessica Lange in her first picture is amazingly good (in fact I just read she won the Golden Globe for best newcomer) and Jeff Bridges is his usual reliable hero, so two strong leads here. I did spot John Agar right at the end who I haven't seen since his 40's heyday so that was a surprise. I know the picture is now 41 years old but it just looked terrific to me so seven stars from me. I love the original and also the Naomi Watt's more recent one but this stands up extremely well against the others which I really didn't expect. Highly recommended if you, like me, have been avoiding it.

Almost everything in this film is bad in terms of conception, but not so much in terms of execution. The whole thing reads today as trash film with a higher than usual budget. Production values are great, for the time and type of film.Not much is made with the potential of the Kong story, at least nothing that wasn't already deeply explored in the previous 1933 film, and the Peter Jackson version. This means all the self- referential bits are either lost or are clumsy handled. So the Bridges character is still a photographer, but his character is used as a know-it-all who explains everyone around him what's going on, there's no film within in the island, and the show in New York is just a mechanical device that triggers the last expected sequence. Here that sequence is played in the twin towers instead of the empire state which the character from Lange references earlier. Impossible to watch any post- or pre- 9/11 which uses the WTC as a set without correlating...But one thing is magnificent here, and only incidentally helped by the creative/production decisions. Because this is made into an exploitation vehicle, the sexual friction (quite literally) is brought to the center of the thing. See how Jessica Lange enters the film, as a desirable sex being, stranded on a rubber boat. The ship crew, Bridges and, of course, us, the audience, lust after her. Lange channels the unaware-on purpose explicit sexuality which was Marylin Monroe's persona, and she does it so well. And that's what works in this film. Jessica Lange would do so much better later, in terms of ambition and acting. But here she is all sex, all desire, all lust, and she brings out that obvious side of the Kong story better than any of the versions or spin-offs that have already been made. That's because she teases you into the thing, seduces the audiences as she seduces Prescott, as she seduces Kong. What else is acting? Because of her such cheap trash tricks as the Kong finger unclothing her become a powerful erotic depiction, and only because of that this film may be worth seeing.

A new iteration of the giant ape tormenting humans hit the screen in 1976 with a different, yet similar, storyline. In this edition, an exploratory crew searches for a large oil find. Fred Wilson (Charles Grodin) runs the expedition betting a lot of money that there would be land amidst a cloud of fog somewhere in the South Pacific Ocean. Sneaking aboard the vessel is Jack Prescott (Jeff Bridges), a paleontologist, interested in the rumor surrounding the island. Picking up lost in the ocean is a young actress Dwan (Jessica Lange) who is at first in shock after surviving yacht explosion but determined to join the search crew as they land on the island. The group encounters the native people performing a ceremony and chanting "Kong". Like in the original film, the islanders see the golden-haired woman and offer to trade six of their women but the explorers refuse and return to the boat. Dwan is captured and used as the new center of the ceremony. When the beast shows up, it's apparent that they used a monkey suit that is filmed to look large. Kong grabs Dwan and takes her off into the jungle as the explorers mount a rescue led by Jack.Check out more of this review and others at swilliky.com