King Kong (1976)

This version certainly lacks the sense of majesty, mystique and dreamlike horror of the original. In fact, this one is so grounded in reality for much of the first hour, concerning the plot of a petroleum company looking for oil, that it all just screams 'routine' at us. Grodin is miscast as the blustery loudmouth who wants Kong for his sideshow. Actually, Bridges is also miscast as the hippy hero. And, in a way, Lange isn't too good in her key role. So, that's zero-for three in the big roles. No, not good at all. But, some of the scenes of Kong capturing the blond and on a rampage do work.

The giant ape antics are mostly courtesy of Rick Baker, who was that decade's expert at gorilla suits and acting them out (an early job for him was as a 2-headed ape in The Thing With Two Heads-1972). He ends up giving the best performance. There was a huge robot-like version of Kong also built for this; it ended up in just one scene, for a few seconds, towards the end (just after Kong breaks free); it looked pretty bad. I'm probably a bit too tough on the other actors; some of the scenes with Bridges and Lange after Kong is captured aren't too bad. BoG's Score: 6.5 out of 10

I found a cool pre-production painting for this film, as well as some trivia. See the next post. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvuqEz-UyVY