King Kong (1976)

 

The 1976 version of King Kong may very well be the silliest version of this famous story of the encounter between a large ape and the outsiders who want to exploit the ape for their own financial and celebrity gains. This film does follow some of the more familiar tropes of the Kong legend: The island where Kong lives is isolated from and difficult to access by the rest of the world (in this case, thanks to a thick bank of fog), the natives on the island make periodic sacrifices of women to Kong and are interrupted in the middle of such a ceremony, Kong is particularly enamored of the white woman who unexpectedly shows up on the island, and eventually, Kong gets transported to New York where chaos ensues and the misunderstood ape gets killed. This time, however, the people invading Kong’s secret island are mostly representatives of an oil company looking to find an untapped resource of crude oil. When that doesn’t quite pan out, the misguided oil company executive in charge of the expedition, Charles Grodin’s Fred Wilson, decides that Kong could be as great for publicizing Petrox Oil Company as the “tiger in your tank” was for Exxon. (I kept puzzling over the name of the company, “Petrox.” “Pet Rocks”?) He faces considerable pushback from stowaway paleontologist Jack Prescott (Jeff Bridges). Yes, he’s a paleontologist who snuck on board the oil tanker because the expedition had purchased maps to the island, and he’s a bit of a nerd about the strange history of the island and its possible animal inhabitants. However, his is not the most unique arrival on the ship. That belongs to aspiring actress Dwan (not Dawn, since she changed it to make it more interesting). She’s found floating in a rubber lifeboat in the middle of the ocean, the lone survivor of a yacht explosion. She survived, coincidentally, because she was alone above deck since everyone else was below deck watching Deep Throat with the director who promised she would star in his next film, Harry (as in Harry Reems, the star of Deep Throat). Now that’s an entrance! Dwan, by the way, is played by Jessica Lange in her first movie role, and it’s a far cry from her later Oscar-, Emmy-, and Tony-winning work. It’s really not Lange’s fault or the fault of any of the actors, though; it’s the script that gives them some rather stupid dialogue to speak. As just one example, remember that the Kong films almost always have an undercurrent of the fear of miscegenation. In addition to the horrifying leering faces that Kong makes when looking at Dwan (and they are both terrible and almost comical at times), Bridges’s paleontologist gets this immortal line: “There is a girl out there who might be running for her life from some gigantic turned-on ape.” I suppose it’s at least more honest and/or direct than some of the other film versions. Lange’s interactions with Kong feature some true howlers, such as when she calls him a “goddamn chauvinist pig ape” or when she asks him about his astrological sign. Not sure how the big ape would be expected to respond to that one, but after watching him blow-dry Lange’s Dwan after dowsing her in a waterfall, I’m not certain I want the answer anyway. King Kong won a special Academy Award for its visual effects, but it’s tough nowadays to get past the “man in an ape suit,” an uncredited Rick Baker, later known as one of Hollywood’s most legendary make-up effects artists. When you consider that this film was released about half a year before Star Wars and its game-changing effects, it just looks hokey by comparison. By the way, one key difference in this film is that Kong doesn’t climb the familiar Empire State Building. Instead, he looks for a landmark similar to one on his home island: the World Trade Center. It’s haunting nowadays to see the two structures, especially so if you can recall, as I did, some of the areas like the observation deck that are used in this film.

Oscar Win: Special Achievement Award for Visual Effects (tie with Logan’s Run)

Other Nominations: Best Cinematography and Best Sound