King Kong (1976)
The opening is absolutely bonkers. It starts cold, only with the title card placing the location at Subayana Indonesia, and then you see character actor Richard Kiel who is best known as Jaws from The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker, Rene Auberjonois from Benson and Star Trek: DS9, an apparently next-level drunk Jeff Bridges, Charles Grodin from Midnight Run and The Great Muppet Caper and, perhaps most notably for we two podcast hosts, none other than John Randolph as ship captain Ross, but who we know best as Clark Griswold Sr. from National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.
Quite a setup! But it’s pretty much downhill from there despite the capable hand of John Guillerman and on of the most radiant acting debuts in cinema by none other than the positively stunning Jessica Lange.
One of my favorite stories from the making of the film was the fact that Meryl Streep was up for Lange’s role of Dwan, the beautiful starlet fished from the ocean by the crew of the oil expedition. Apparently producer Dino De Laurentiis said in Italian at Streep’s interview that she was “Too ugly for King Kong.” Streep being Streep, responded in flawless Italian that she was sorry to have disappointed him and left the infamous producer shocked as he’d clearly had no idea she was fluent in the language since he believed, according to Streep, that all actresses and Americans are stupid.
Legend has it another actress was also badmouthed by De Laurentiis. When recasting the role of Clarice Starling for Hannibal, the sequel to The Silence of the Lambs, he said “Do I want to go to bed with Julianne Moore when I see her in the movie? The answer is yes. Do I want to go to bed with Jodie Foster? The answer’s no.”
I think any discussion of this movie needs to go deep into De Laurentiis, who was Mr. Moneybags on some of the biggest films of the 70’s and 80’s, including Serpico, Death Wish, Conan the Barbarian, Flash Gordon, David Lynch’s Dune, as well as many adaptations of Stephen King’s novels – The Dead Zone, Silver Bullet and King’s only directorial effort, Maximum Overdrive among. One neat thing to remember about the producer was that he was the original right’s holder to Thomas Harris’s Hannibal Lecter character and was producer on every other Hannibal Lecter film except “Silence of the Lambs.” His career was massively hit or miss, with huge-budgeted failures and small-budget hits, but I think he’s among a small handful of producers – like Irving Thalberg, Robert Evans, Jerry Bruckheimer and Don Simpson – whose name could help sell a movie.
With “King Kong,” a paperback was released of the screenplay by Lorenzo Semple Jr. Was director John Guillerman’s name anywhere on the cover? Nope. But the official title of the book was “The Dino De Laurentiis Production of King Kong.” The man had SWAY.
But is King Kong a good movie? Clocking in at a chonky 134 minutes, it’s an epic for sure with huge set pieces. The 24 million dollar budget would be the equivalent of a 137 million budget in today’s dollars, and I gotta say, it looks like it cost that much… up until King Kong shows up. At that point, nearly one hour into the picture, the limitations of 1970’s visual effects start showing their seams and, well, we get an often unsatisfactory rendering of the legendary monster that, in many ways, loses a lot of the awe-inspiring spectacle of the original 1933 film starring Faye Ray. The original film, which is still considered a classic and was entered into the archives at the Library of Congress due to its historical significance back in 1991, is best known for its incredible stop-motion photography work by screen maestro Willis O’Brien. Here, we get a good deal of pricey animatronics and green screen which, sadly, don’t feel terribly organic or realistic. I’d argue that this early work by special-effects legend Rick Baker, who was part of the team led by Carlo Rambaldi which won the Oscar in 1977 for this movie, does show some incredible promise. But ultimately? It’s a guy in an ape suit, and the size and scope of King Kong isn’t sold well-enough for the movie to succeed, especially once we leave the island for New York City.
Hilariously, the scene where Kong bathes and “blow dries” Dwan is one of the most expressive moments in the film, his eyes wide and as perfect a personification of the male gaze as could ever be rendered.
Questions:
- What are your thoughts on the character of Dwan? She’s… shockingly terrible, and I think it’s sort of hilarious how wrapped-up Bridge’s character Jack gets caught up in her, thus reducing any admiration the audience might have had for him.
- What about the treatment of the indigenous people? The idea that the people on the island would be hopeless drunks with their God is supposed to be sold as Jack’s sensitivity, but it comes off as base and incredibly condescending.
- Is there something sort of, I dunno, inherently gross about King Kong in general? I get that there’s an anti-colonialist viewpoint at work in most of the stories, and here its personified by Charles Grodin’s greedy oilman. But the whole giant indigenous beast stealing and leering at a gorgeous white chick feels icky. And this representation of that story is the ickiest
Bottom Five Dangerous Animals:
Bride of the Gorilla (1951)
Dir. Curt Siodmak
I just can’t with the older films. It’s not their fault, but by God why did some of them even try to take things so seriously. This 1951 Jungle-set drama mixes corporate intrigue, lust and voodoo into an impotent cinematic potion despite starring the great Raymond Burr and a later-career Lon Chaney Jr. This time, it’s Burr who gets to transform into a monster, although we really don’t get to see his Gorilla form fully until the final reel and, egad, is it ever disappointing. While the narrative attempts to explore themes of love, betrayal, and the supernatural, the film bellyflops at the end due to incompetent special effects. The transformation scenes are executed with a lack of finesse, and the gorilla suit struggles to convey any menace or pathos. The seams and zippers of the costume are unintentionally visible. Director Curt Siodmak, known for his work in the horror genre on films such as The Wolfman and Donovan’s Brain , faced a daunting task with the limited resources available, considering the movie was shot in just 10 days. While he skillfully navigates the narrative, the film is ultimately hindered by the technical shortcomings of its time. Siodmak’s vision may have been grand, but the execution is a reminder of the challenges filmmakers faced in delivering convincing visual effects in the early days of cinema.
Congo (1995)
dir. Frank Marshall
Nominated for 7 Razzies in 1996, Congo was sort of a follow-up to Jurassic Park for the Amblin crowd that failed in every way to capture the character, magic and adventure of the Michael Crichton/Stephen Spielberg film. Here, director Frank Marshall, who is best known for helming 1993’s harrowing “Alive” and Mike’s favorite movie of all time, “Arachnaphobia,” seems lost when it comes to making mutant gray gorillas in any way threatening. In this case, it’s certainly not the fault of the special effects people – as these killer apes were created by FX Maestro Stan Winston – nor is it the cast, which includes Laura Linney, Tim Curry, Ernie Hudson and Bruce Freaking Campbell! But rather, it’s that the whole thing feels like it’s shot in a studio and not a jungle, so when the apes ambush our intrepid team of diamond hunters, it feels like an episode of classic Trek, with people wearing obvious-looking gorilla suits and pouncing around less in a monkey way and instead, very much, in the manner that a person pretends to be a monkey. It’s all sloppy, lacking any sense of suspense or stakes, and I’ve not even mentioned Amy, the talking Gorilla yet. I’ll leave her for another Bottom Five someday, though. Possibly, for Bottom FIve “Look Whose Talking Now?”
Night of the Lepus (1972)
dir. Robert F. Claxton
Good lord, is this thing an absolute clunker. Coming from workman director Robert F. Claxton who is best known for working with good buddy Michael Landon on Bonanza and Highway to Heaven epsiodes, this killer rabbit movie has a surprisingly decent cast that includes Janet Leigh, Rory Calhoun and DeForest Kelly (Bones!) who all slum while trying – and failing – to lend this thing any gravitas. This is the perfect example of what I wanted to represent my Bottom Five Dangerous Animals list, because the special effects fail miserably here. Slow motion bunnies hopping around though Half-Zero scale sets with lion-roars dubbed over their rampage is beyond silly, but I will say it’s all worth seeing so you can be believing. The filmmakers fail completely at making the rabbits look at all threatening, and the quick intercutting of pouncing rabbits with people holding fake, bloody fur-puppets immediately reminded me of when Monty Python and the Holy Grail played the same gag for laughs at the Cave of Caerbannog. More than once, I wondered if someone was going to pull out the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioche during Night of the Lepus, but instead they just try – and fail – by using standard TNT. Sadly, instead we get a ridiculous ending where the killer bunnies are herded by drive-in movie visitors and the National Guard to an electrified railroad track that’s used as a fence. Not nearly as satisfying.
Graveyard Shift (1997)
dir. Ralph S. Singleton
A god-awful adaptation of the Stephen King short story, I managed to catch this 1990 debacle in the movie theater and, if I’m not mistaken, it might be the first truly terrible film I ever saw at the cinema proper. It many ways, Graveyard Shift suffers from the same problem as “Night of the Lepus” in that it cannot make it’s allegedly dangerous animals scary. It might be a person thing, but I think rats and mice are cute, and even when you’re cutting from a screaming victim to their little faces near some fake blood, it’s simply not at all convincing. Director Ralph S. Singleton’s only feature-length directorial effort – he’d worked a ton as a production manager and helmed two episodes of the 80’s TV cop-drama Cagney and Lacey – this thing tries to ratchet up the tension by introducing a giant mutant rat that lives in the basement of an old textile mill in Maine, but the incompetent FX work and creature design makes the big baddie of the film come off as laughable at best.
Jaws: The Revenge (1987)
dir. Joseph Sargent
If ever there was a thoroughly incompetent portrayal of a dangerous animal, look no further than the third and final sequel in the Jaws franchise, which famously sported the tagline “This time, it’s personal!” As directed by relative nobody Joseph Sargent, who after directing Jaws 4 turned his focus to helming only TV movies, the ending of Jaws four pits the title shark against a now widowed Ellen Brody as well as Michael Caine and Mario Van Peebles. It’s a mess of a climax involving a sea-plane and the most laughable re-emergence of a thought-dead character this side of Chewy in The Rise of Skywalker. It’s well-known just how much trouble Spielberg had with Bruce the shark while filming the original Jaws, and those technical challenges led to a show-less plan that significantly amped-up the suspense. Jaws 4 could have learned a lot from Spielberg – just look at the laughable banana-boat sequence which shows a stiff, non-articulating shark launch itself high out of the water and gently snatch and unsuspecting, and equally stiff, young woman from off a banana-bought otherwise filled with children. On the plus-side, one YouTube viewer of this clip proclaimed that even though it’s fake-looking, he’s afraid of animatronics, so it was still terrifying to him!