Film Review: King Kong (1976)

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Great actors are not only those who simply display great talent in their roles, but also those who manage to build their careers despite serious impediments. Oscar-winning actress Jessica Lange created such an impediment for herself by taking a debut screen role so dreadful that it nearly ended her career. Thankfully, that role was in King Kong, the 1976 monster epic directed by John Guillermin, a film with more than decent box office success.

King Kong is based on the eponymous 1933 film directed by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, a combination of adventure, horror and disaster film which displayed the very pinnacle of early 1930s Hollywood film technology and quickly developed a reputation as a classic, inspiring many other filmmakers in the following decades, including the Japanese creators of Godzilla. The 1976 film faithfully follows the basic plot of the original – an expedition comes to a remote South Pacific island, finds a giant ape that falls in love with a beautiful blonde woman, gets captured and shipped to New York where he breaks free and causes mayhem before meeting his end at the top of New York’s tallest building. The script by Lorenzo Semple Jr., however, tries to update the plot for 1970s audiences. The expedition to the island is led by Fred Wilson (played by Charles Grodin), an ambitious oil company executive convinced that the mysterious island, permanently covered by a veil of fog, holds enough deposits of black gold to make him obscenely rich. Jack Prescott, a young primate paleontologist, has secretly boarded the ship to reach the island and confirm semi-mythical accounts of a large ape living there. Along the way, the ship’s crew rescues Dwan (played by Lange), a shipwrecked starlet who miraculously became the sole survivor of a yacht explosion. They find the island and its natives, who have built a large wooden wall to protect the village from something large on the other side. The natives kidnap Dwan and use her as a sacrificial “bride” for what turns out to be a gigantic ape called Kong. The ape apparently takes a liking to the horrified woman, who is later rescued with Jack’s help. Meanwhile, Wilson discovers that there are no oil deposits on the island and the only way to justify the expedition is to trap and imprison Kong, later using him for company publicity stunts.

Made as an attempt to exploit the popularity of Jaws and disaster films, this second version of King Kong was produced by Dino De Laurentiis, who managed to provide a large budget. This is mostly visible in the spectacular scenes, particularly those featuring special effects by Carlo Rambaldi, which were more than decent for their time and even won the film’s only Oscar. Apart from being superior to the 1933 version by being shot in colour instead of black-and-white, the new version also features a very good soundtrack by John Barry. But those are, more or less, the only good things that can be said about this film. Semple’s script tries too hard to be relevant by stuffing the dialogue with 1970s references like the energy crisis, New York urban decay, environmentalism, feminism and even Porno Chic, which would most likely be incomprehensible to an audience that doesn’t remember or isn’t familiar with those times. But even worse is the way he handles characters, especially Dwan, who is presented as a dimwitted bimbo and burdened with truly atrocious dialogue. Prescott, played by a young Jeff Bridges, is an interesting character who could have transcended the clichés of a tree-hugging liberal hippie, and whose “wokeness” makes him the only one from this film likely to survive purges on today’s Twitter; however, he is terribly underwritten and lacks necessary chemistry with Lange. Even worse is Grodin, who simply goes over the top and makes his villainous character, as well as the rest of the film, almost parodic. Although watchable and much better than its infamous 1986 sequel King Kong Lives, this film might give some idea of how today’s superhero films and similar Hollywood blockbusters would look in the next fifty years or so.

RATING: 4/10 (++)