And using the World Trade Center instead of the Empire State Building was a perfect way to update the film’s final act, especially since it gave two buildings for Kong to defend himself from.
However, I’ve always thought that changing the reason for the trip to the island from a moviemaking venture to a quest for oil was a great twist, especially given the oil shortages of the 1970s and the concerns people had about fossil fuels at the time.
Let’s face it, though: You don’t watch a King Kong movie for the sparkling dialogue. And, yes, the script is a bit flat in spots, although the three leads do their best with the lines they’re given. Sure, Dwan’s entrance is a bit random, as if screenwriter Lorenzo Semple was told that this updated version of Fay Wray’s Ann Darrow could not simply be aboard the ship from the beginning as another stowaway or a crew member or something like that. Jessica Lange, in her film debut, plays Dwan, an aspiring actress who is found adrift at sea after the yacht she was traveling on blew up. I enjoy the first two acts of the story, with Charles Grodin turning in a great smarmy Petrox Oil company guy who takes to the sea in search of oil on a mysterious island and Jeff Bridges playing an earnest primate paleontologist who sneaks aboard the ship. I had cut my teeth on the Godzilla films too, but I could never get over how hokey it looked to see someone in a suit stomping around on model cities and toy tanks, and that’s where this version of King Kong lost me, especially the part that takes place in New York City. Unfortunately, it turned in a lackluster box office performance, and I found myself less than thrilled with the “guy in a suit” approach to the effects. That interest in the original helped prime my pump for Dino De Laurentiis’ 1976 remake, which was hyped in a major way by Paramount Pictures leading up to its December release that year. Part of it was Willis O’Brien’s stop-motion animation, which fascinated me, and part of it was just the story itself: What kid isn’t a sucker for a story about a hidden island that’s home to a giant ape who’s captured and brought back to New York City, where he wreaks havoc? The output of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg was a huge influence on me as a kid, but the original 1933 King Kong also made a major impact. Shout! Factory seemed to have read our minds when they prepared a new Collector’s Edition of the film, complete with the problematic TV version, a big batch of new interviews, and two commentary tracks. Starring Jeff Bridges, Charles Grodin, Jessica Lange, John Randolph, Rene Auberjonois, Julius Harris, and Jack O’Halloran.ĭino De Laurentiis’s 1976 remake of King Kong tends to be forgotten in favor of Peter Jackson’s 2005 version, but many of us who were kids at the time tend to remember it fondly as the major monster movie of our youth.
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