King Kong starts in 'Surbabaya Indonesia' in a port where the 'Petrox Explorer' is about to set sail for a previously uncharted island recently photographed by a satellite orbiting the Earth, the photo's revealed that there is a possibility that the island is a rich source of oil & Petrox executive Fred S. Wilson (Charles Grodin) wants to get his hands on it before his competitors. Just before the ship sets sail paleontologist Jack Prescot (Jeff Bridges) sneaks aboard in hope of studying the islands untouched wildlife. As they head for the island they discover a raft floating in the open sea & pick up has been actress Dawn (Jessica Lange). Once on the island the initial landing party discover a primitive tribe who fear & worship a god they call Kong & they want to offer the pretty Dawn as a sacrifice, an idea which no-one is that keen about. That night back aboard the ship some natives kidnap Dawn, take her back to the island, chain her up & leave her for Kong who turns out to be a 40 foot Gorilla. Kong takes a shine to Dawn & carries her off, a rescue party is already on the island & they must set out to try & save Dawn from Kong & whatever other horrors the island holds...

Directed by John Guillermin I actually had a fair amount of fun with this usually hated remake of the original 1933 classic. The script by Lorenzo Semple Jr. moves like an absolute rocket & at least is never dull or boring but at the same time it's rather camp & silly. Would a 40 foot Gorilla really be able to avoid detection in Manhattan by simply hiding behind a skyscraper? Would a 40 foot Gorilla be able to 'sneak' up on someone? What are the chances of a small raft being found in the middle of the ocean? The odds must be astronomical! A fog bank that remains totally unchanged for 100's of years? Wouldn't the wind not affect it at all? It sticks to the originals basic story except that all the monsters & dinosaurs are gone & have been replaced by a rubber snake that looks like one of those draft excluder's that you place at the bottom of doors. This is one aspect of the original that is sorely missed in this remake. The character's are over-the-top but quite likable, Wilson as the annoying Petrox executive irritates though. I liked it as a piece of harmless entertaining fun although it can't really compare to the original.

Director Guillermin does an OK job, apparently Roman Polanski, Michael Winner & Sam Peckinpah were offered the chance to direct but turned it down, all I can say is I'd have loved to see what Michael Winner would have come up with! Now the special effects, well apparently Carlo Rambaldi built a 40 foot full sized mechanical Kong at a cost of $1.7 million but has about a minute of screen time & it looks awful so Guillermin went with Rick Baker in a monkey suit & the results variable to say the least. Each Kink Kong film had to work within limitations & are a product of they're time, the original has stop motion animation that won't impress many these days, this one has a man in a rubber suit & the recent remake has the nicest CGI effects you can get.

With a healthy budget of about $25,000,000 King Kong is well made & has that Hollywood polish to it although I'm not sure it deserved two Oscar nominations, the Hawaiian locations are nice & the climax atop the World Trade Center has a strange feeling to it. The acting is OK but nothing spectacular.

I know a lot of people dislike this remake, personally I'm judging it on it's own as I feel it's a completely separate film from the original or Peter Jacksons big budget remake. If you prefer the original to this than fine watch that, & I have to say now I'm a huge fan of it, as no-one is forcing you to watch or like this. Good fun & provides a couple of hours of entertainment & thats all I want in a film.

A petroleum exploration expedition comes to an isolated island and encounters a colossal giant gorilla.

While certainly one has to give credit to the original 1933 film, I actually think this one succeeds in ways that one did not. Sure, some of it is cheesy (the ape suit is not very believable), but it brings the film to modern times. The oil company angle was interesting, and the references to "Deep Throat" were, um, interesting...

I know at the time there was a complaint that the Empire State Building was changed to the World Trade Center. Now, I guess there are two ways I can look at this. The part of me that prefers homages says that the Empire State Building was the only real proper choice. But now, seeing the film in 2011, I have to say that capturing the World Trade Center on film is a bit more historic -- though they could not have known that at the time.

Oscar award-winning Jeff Bridges is excellent as always, here playing a liberal archaeologist or anthropologist or something like that. He seems to be a jack of all trades, smuggling himself on board and being useful at countless moments (and yes, his name is appropriately enough Jack). The hair and beard give him that "Dude" look, and I can never get enough of that.

Last comment: Jessica Lange, what the heck? I have never before and will never again find her attractive. But here, she wins me over. And the rumor is that Barbra Streisand could have received the part? Yuck! Lange was the right choice, by far... and what a way to start a career.

King Kong (1976) King Kong was a huge hit back in the seventies--I know because I was there, I saw the frenzy, I remember the crowded theaters. Now, admittedly, it also had a huge pr campaign, which undoubtedly helped it garner a lot of that dough, but there was a lot more to the flick than just the hype. And it could have probably been an even bigger hit if the filmmakers had played it safe and hadn't gone out of their way to make a film so stubbornly odd. I mean this thing stomps over a gigantic swath of styles: panoramic spectacle, high adventure, pathos, romance, social commentary, absurdist comedy, thrills, and occasionally outright goofiness--all comprised in a slyly satiric package designed to tweak the noses of Kong purists. Lorenzo Semple Jr.'s ("Papillon ") screenplay is all over the place when it comes to style and tone, borrowing from whatever and whenever, almost as though it had been patched together from several different treatments--yet it still remains incredibly tight in terms of interesting, well-drawn, consistent characters, witty dialog, exploration of theme, and the forward momentum of the plot. King Kong 76 is a great example of anarchic postmodernism being perfectly wed to the staunch formalism of good storytelling. A contemporary example of this approach would be Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill films.

The direction by veteran John Guillermin was absolutely fearless, pushing each of Semple's concepts to its limit, even at the risk of seeming silly. And he had a great cast to work with, especially young Jessica Lange in her first film role. Unfortunately, Jessica played the role of the vivacious, childlike, kinda dimwitted bubblehead blonde Dwan so incredibly well that most people wrote her off, assuming she was just a dumb blonde playing herself. But in actuality it is a bravura performance, one of the best in her career, and certainly a more individual, more fully-realized character performance than we get in most movies these days.

As big a hit as the disco era Kong was, however, there were a lot of people who were put off because they weren't expecting anything as freewheeling and insane as what they were given. They weren't expecting weirdness and satire. They weren't expecting to see Kong blowing a hot, wet blonde dry after a dip in a lake (metaphors anyone?), a scene simultaneously erotic and ridiculous. They weren't expecting to see the captured Kong turned in to a corporate shill--is there any scene in mainstream 70s cinema more surrealistically satiric than that of Kong being presented to the masses encased in a thirty story replica of a gasoline pump? They also were not expecting to see a big budget adventure film with a downer ending--the romantic leads ending up emotionally separated by their experiences instead of united. And they didn't expect to feel bad when the monster died.

So I put it to you all that not only was the 1976 Kong a financial success, it was also an artistic success. But you can't watch it as a remake of a classic film. It is no more a remake of the 1933 King Kong than Quentin's Kill Bill is a remake of Sonny Chiba's Streetfighter's Revenge. Watch the film for what it is, not what you think it should have been, or what you wanted it to be, and you will be better able to appreciate its cracked brilliance.