The most unfortunate line of dialogue in the second version of King Kong (1976) is when Jack Prescott (Jeff Bridges), as proof of Kong’s existence, points to jungle debris and says, "Who do you think made that mess – some guy in an ape suit?"

Unfortunately, that’s exactly what I think.

In between the original 1933 version of King Kong (a classic and the best version –- no arguments allowed) and Peter Jackson’s 2005 version (which put me off but obviously has its fans), there came producer Dino De Laurentiis’ version –- which, to cop a much-used phrase from Roger Ebert, knew the words but not the music.

The movie attempts to "modernize" the story with a plotline that, surprisingly, is halfway serviceable. Fred Wilson (Charles Grodin), a greedy executive of an oil company named Petrox ("Pet Rocks," isn’t that cute?), is sailing his crew to an uncharted island that promises hoards of oil that will help Petrox lead the way during the '70s energy crisis. It’s kind of sad that the original movie’s Jack Denham, a happy-go-lucky adventurer who wanted the island for an exotic movie setting, is here transmogrified into a villain. But Grodin does such a great job as the chop-licking bad guy, you’re willing to settle.

Stowing away on the Petrox ship is Prescott, an "environmentalist professor" who tries to show Wilson the political incorrectness of his greedy ways. But Wilson cares only to exact his pound of flesh from Prescott; the price Prescott must pay for illegally boarding the ship is to be the trip’s photographer. Prescott acquiesces to this gesture surprisingly quickly.

But even before we see Kong, the plot point that sinks this movie is when a would-be actress named Dwan (an unfortunate film debut for Jessica Lange) is recovered from a raft at sea. It seems that a moviemaker on an ocean liner had promised her stardom just before a fateful wave washed away the ship and everyone on it except for Dwan. But when Dwan starts spouting hippie-girl talk and predicting everyone’s astrological sign, one wishes Dwan had gone down with the ship.

The story proceeds very quickly to the island and through the native’s ritual of sacrificing a goddess (who, of course, eventually turns out to be Dwan) to Kong. It’s when Kong shows up that the movie’s street cred sinks for good. After seeing an inanimate clay figure brought to astounding life in the 1933 version, it’s obvious and disappointing that the long shots depict only a man in a gorilla suit (special effects artist Rick Baker) –- although even he does a better job than the Carlo Rimbaldi-designed Kong robot, which was much ballyhooed at the time but was usable only for a few shots. (Rimbaldi went on to better things with Steven Spielberg, for whom he designed the iconic extra-terrestrial creature "E.T."

But even if Kong had been more convincing, poor Jessica Lange couldn’t be less convincing. You’ll never realize what a fine job Fay Wray did in the original until –- in the movie’s other prize-winning howler –- you hear Dwan shouting, "Put me down, you g****** chauvinist pig ape!"


The movie’s last great debit is that it looks and sounds like a 1970s TV-movie, not even a theatrical one. Despite its padded budget, the movie is so gun-shy that the exotic and scary jungle animals of the first movie are reduced here to a single, slithering snake that battles Kong. John Guillermin’s direction is very pedestrian –- no sense of dread or fun to mar the movie’s workmanlike march to its inevitable conclusion. And John Barry’s generic score is hardly a shadow of Max Steiner’s groundbreaking work in the original.

The part that should have worked better was the climax’s re-imagining from the Empire State Building to the then-timely (now tragic, of course) World Trade Center. At movie’s end, Lange finally starts to suggest the vulnerability that was Naomi Watts' forte in the 2005 version. But by then, it is all too little, too late.

King Kong is rated PG for stylized violence and peril, and some adult language.

Recommended:
No

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: None of the Above
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 9 - 12