Producer Dino de Laurentiis was convinced of the success and saw an animal horror film in front of him that would outrun the “Jaws”: “When the Jaws die, nobody cry. When my Kong die, everybody cry.” Because King Kong was a romance, one between ape and woman, and its 1976 remake would prove that.
It flopped terribly, the critics laughed their heads off. Carlo Rambaldi’s robotic monkey was twelve meters tall, weighed six tons and was so useless that he was only seen in two shots. For the rest of the film, Rick Baker donned a suit. But as in the original 1933 Kong, this primate walked on two legs instead of four, which of course made him appear like a horny person in the presence of his beloved Dwan – the “romance” stop.
But John Guillermin’s film is wronged. He’s more than a guilty pleasure. Jessica Lange, in her acting debut, actually seems fond of the giant gorilla (more so than Naomi Watts in Peter Jackson’s later version); Jeff Bridges as her lover Jack looks like a predecessor to the Big Lebowski, so lets greasy beard and hair do the part for him; and Charles Grodin as an oil field prospector is – three years after the oil crisis – a perfect nature-exploiting antagonist. Significantly, the finale of this “King Kong” takes place on the roofs of the World Trade Center, not on the Empire State Building. So the message is right. Composer John Barry, entering his romantic phase in the late 1970s, wrote one of his most moving scores, setting to music the feelings the gorilla could not express. Jessica Lange asked Kong, “Are you in there?”, believing in the human in the animal.
The approximately 190-minute long TV version still remains unreleased, and the first 4k edition possibly shows the costume and mechanics in a sharpness that is unfavorable for the credibility of the creature. But Dino was right: everybody cry. Well, some anyway. (studio canal)
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