King Kong (1976 film)



This version of King Kong, released in 1976, was produced by Dino De Laurentiis and directed by John Guillermin.

The story remains pretty much the same, but the characters and situations are changed: instead of a filmmaker seeking an exciting movie locale, an amoral oil executive is seeking an uncharted island (hidden by a perpetual fog bank) where he hopes to find an enormous untapped deposit of crude. The requisite blonde, Dwan (Jessica Lange), is encountered at sea, adrift in a lifeboat, the sole survivor of a yacht explosion; and The Hero (Jeff Bridges) is a stowaway anthropologist. The oil exec, upset to learn that the island's crude is unfit for refining, decides to "bring home the big one" in a very literal sense; when the hero brings Dwan back from Kong's clutches, Kong is again captured and brought to New York in a gaudy publicity stunt. Again, Kong misinterprets the intentions of pushy photographers, and the story goes on from there.

The rest of the film plays out more or less as the previous version, albeit with a somewhat more realistic depiction of the natives and with fewer island hazards (the only oversized animals featured are Kong and a snake). It differs from the 1933 version in another, very important aspect: the relationship between Kong and "his" girl, which is given several extended scenes--on the island, on the ship back to America, and in New York--actually forming a bizarre sort of bond with the big guy.

"Wilson: ALL HAIL THE POWER OF KONG! [sotto voce] And Petrox!"
 * Corrupt Corporate Executive: Charles Grodin's "Fred Wilson".
 * Dada Ad: In-Universe example with Kong's New York premiere. Given that he entered the stadium disguised as a giant Petrox gas pump, one could presume that this whole thing was a stealth ad for Wilson's oil company. Exactly what oil has to do with a 50-foot ape remains unclear.


 * The Ditz: Dwan comes across as this initially.  She gets a little better as the film goes on.
 * Enforced Method Acting: The scene of the crowd surging forward to surround the fallen Kong was footage taken of a crowd of onlookers to the filming, who had until that moment been held back by police lines.
 * Gorn: Kong's death.
 * Made of Explodium: Rampaging through the city, Kong picks up electrically powered subway cars and tosses them from the trestle, making them explode dramatically.
 * My Nayme Is ...Dwan.
 * Off-the-Shelf FX: It's painfully obvious that the subway cars that Kong picks up are miniature models.
 * People In Hairy Suits: The 1976 film and King Kong vs Godzilla and the other Toho Kong film.
 * It may bear mentioning that this style of creature making was practically invented for Godzilla because Toho didn't have the time or money to stop motion animate the Big G like Kong was.
 * What few know, however, was that the suit technology -- particularly its very expressive face -- was truly groundbreaking, and made the career of a then-unknown SFX guy by the name of Rick Baker.
 * Special Effect Failure: At the time the film was being made, a great deal of fuss was raised about the full-sized robotic Kong which had been built and would be seen "throughout" the film.  When it was deployed for filming in the World Trade Center plaza there was a lot of press coverage but pitifully few photos of it, all of which were long-distance and fuzzy.  As it turned out, the robot Kong was a bust, and appears for only a few seconds in the final cut -- and is very obviously different from the performer in an ape suit who did most of the film.
 * Then again, there are those who argue that the robot succeeded admirably at what it was really intended to do: support the pretense that it actually was playing Kong throughout the film, reinforcing the illusion that the miniatures were in fact full-sized sets through which it tromped.  (As well as being a publicity stunt.)
 * Waterfall Shower: Kong gives one to Dwan. (It also appears in the animated musical adaptation The Mighty Kong.)