Journey to Skull Island: A King Kong Retrospective (PART 3)

Part 3: A New Beginning

KING KONG
(December 17, 1976)

Back in America, much time had past and the copyright claim on King Kong had fallen into the public domain, which meant that the floodgates were open for several people to produce a remake. Everyone from Jim Danforth (a protege of Willis O'Brian), Hammer Studios and even B Movie legend, Roger Corman had plans to produce a Kong film.
The job would eventually go to Producer Dino De Laurentiis and Director John Guillermin

This version of 'King Kong' has a similar story structure, but a ton of the details and characters are completely different. Instead of a film crew going to Skull Island to shoot a movie, this has an oil company lead by a greedy business man played by Charles Grodin, who leads an expedition to an uncharted island believed to have a large oil supply. Stowing away on the ship is a paleontologist named Jack, played by Jeff Bridges (looking like he belongs in the band Alabama, from the 1980's), who wants to see the island for himself. Eventually he gets promoted to be the official photographer.

Our leading lady is named Dwan, played by Jessica Lange in her first film role. She becomes part of the voyage when she's found floating in a rubber life raft in the middle of the

ocean after the ship she was on exploded.

Eventually they find the island, which isn't named at all. I just refer to it as "Not Skull Island". And it plays out like you expect. The natives of the island capture Dwan to offer her up to their god, a giant Gorilla named Kong. Kong takes a liking to Dwan and unlike the original in which Ann Darrow spent most of the time screaming at Kong, Dwan actually tries to talk her way out of her situation and try to befriend Kong, even going so far as to ask Kong what his sign is, she guesses Aries, which is technically right.

After shenanigans, Kong is captured by the humans and brought back to New York to be used as a marketing tool, he breaks out and causes havoc. One major difference is that instead of climbing the Empire State Building, the filmmakers decided that Kong should climb the newly completed "tallest building in the world", the World Trade Center.
Eventually though, the Ape must fall as he is shot down by machine gun mounted helicopters rather than biplanes. And in a rather bloody, disturbing way I might add.

Let's talk about Kong himself. Like the Japanese films, Kong is played by a guy in a Gorilla suit. But not just any guy, Special Effects/Make-Up wizard, Rick Baker! The suit is top notch, looks really cool and the face is very expressive. This is one of the best Gorilla costumes used for a movie, the reigning champion to me is still the 1997 version of Mighty Joe Young (which Baker also worked on!).

Aside from Baker, the facial animatronics were controlled by Italian special effects man Carlo Rambaldi. Rambaldi and his team also had a full size robotic Kong built for certain scenes. Unfortunately, the full size robot wouldn't work right and only shows up in a few shots in the movie. Trust me, you'll know it when you see it. Rounding out the men who brought Kong to life, some of the vocals for Kong were done by Peter Cullen, best known as the voice of Optimus Prime.

I remember when I first saw this movie, I was at my grandmother's house and I honestly can't remember much of that experience. The only scene in the film I can recall clearly from first watching it was the scene where Kong is cleaning mud off of Dwan at a waterfall.
Since then, I've watched this movie more and more and I've come to the conclusion that the reason why I don't hold this movie in as much of a high regard as the original is that I don't find it to be that memorable.

The characters, while good in their own right, are nowhere near as charismatic as the original adventurers of Skull Island, except for maybe Dwan. I will admit that I think Jessica Lange does give a good performance for her first movie role. The music lacks energy and mood. Even the island is just a regular island with nothing interesting about it besides Kong. The old Skull Island at least had Dinosaurs, this island has a giant snake...and that's it.

I can recall countless moments and bits of dialogue from the original King Kong, King Kong vs. Godzilla and even the Peter Jackson remake.
But this one? Well, aside from the wonderfully executed character moments with Kong, Jessica Lange, the Waterfall scene and the finale atop the World Trade Center, nothing stands out much to me.

But hey, that's just me. I still recommend giving it a watch. Who knows maybe you'll find something in it to enjoy. I'd say just don't go into it expecting something bigger or more groundbreaking than the original. It's certainly better then what would follow 10 years later. 

KING KONG LIVES 
(December 19, 1986)

Despite a mixed critical reception, King Kong '76 was a financial success. And what comes hand in hand with a financially successful movie? RIP-OFFS, SPOOFS AND CASH INS!
There was a British "comedy" film titled 'Queen Kong'. A Korean made 'A*P*E'. with it's oh-so memorable tagline: "Not to be confused with King Kong". Even Hong Kong also made a cash-in titled "Mighty Peking Man". 
Then you have that one movie where a giant Gorilla falls from a building, survives and is put in a coma for 10 years while scientists try to bring him back to life with an artificial heart transplant
While that may sound like a spoof or rip-off, it's not. That's 'King Kong Lives', the official sequel to Dino De Laurentiis' King Kong.

This definitely ranks as a 10 on the "You Can't Make This Up" scale. I can't even fathom how Kong could have survived being shot like crazy and falling from 1368 ft.
But alas, by the power of Hollywood the idea came to fruition.

As I stated before, the movie is about Kong somehow barely surviving his fall from the World Trade Center and being kept alive at a university institute where a team of doctors are working on replacing his heart and bringing him back to life.
First of all, A: WHY?! and B: No, seriously, WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?!!?! You could make the argument that they would want him alive so that they could study him and make scientific breakthroughs from it, but there is no reason given as to why they are doing this. Did they miss the part where when Kong was alive, he broke out of captivity and went on a rampage through New York killing dozens upon dozens of people? It wouldn't do much good anyway, given the large amount of blood loss would kill Kong if they operated now. Turns out there's another giant ape found in Borneo, and this one is a female. The newly dubbed 'Lady Kong' is taken from her home and a blood transfusion is done making the operation a success.
When Kong wakes up he breaks out of his captivity and goes on a rampage. Shocking right? Kong immediately senses the presence of Lady Kong, rescues her from captivity and the 2 Apes instantly mate with each other.
The military however aren't having this and recapture Lady Kong and spend the rest of the movie trying to hunt down Kong.

None of the original cast return, Jeff Bridges and Jessica Lange are only seen in a brief prologue recounting the ending to the last movie.
I stated that I didn't find the last movie to be exciting or memorable and this movie is no different. Lame plot, boring characters and uninteresting music. One thing I can say about this movie is that it is definitely one of those "So bad it's good" movies. There are some scenes with Kong as he wonders through what I can only describe as "redneck country" and you may find yourself giggling at them.

Oddly enough, the one saving grace for this movie are the Kongs. While the suits are not as good as the one from the last movie with the departure of Rick Baker, they still look decent enough and can show a wide range of emotion in their faces. There is a bit of inconsistency though. In the last movie Kong only ever walked upright like a human, but in this one Kong will occasionally walk on all fours like a real gorilla. I have no idea why they chose to do this now. 

Depending on your point of view, if you decide to venture into this film, you may find it to be boring or dumb, but it's certainly got it's own form of entertainment, especially if you got a group of friends who can watch it and laugh with.

King Kong Lives was both a financial and critical failure, killing any chances of another sequel and supposedly another King Kong movie in general. But as history has proven, legends never stay dead.

Till next time, I have been your host Gryphon

and I hope you've enjoyed your time here in my lair.

So long...

If you would like to see more from The Gryphon's Lair, Be sure to give my FB page a 'LIKE' to see updates and other related stuff. Thanks for reading!

https://www.facebook.com/TheGryphonsLair/