I rewatched this movie yesterday and I'm currently re-reading the Making Of book. Accepying that it could never compete with the original (which I consider the Greatest Film Ever Made), it is not a complete failure. The cinematography is good, John Barry's score is good, Jeff Bridges is terrific, Charles Grodin and Rene Auberjonois are both great fun and the supporting cast is solid.
The problems seem to me to be four-fold: Lorenzo Semple's script is diabolical; Jessica Lange is embarrassingly bad (though to be fair she has little to go on - see first point); there are no dinosaurs; and the special effects.
That said, the writer of this interesting fansite on the movie...
www.pulpanddagger.com/can...gpage.html
...makes some valid points in arguing that the top part of the ape suit is actually very good, with six different cable-controlled heads giving a very wide range of expressions. Where it falls laughably flat is in the long shots where Baker (against his wishes, I believe) strides around like, well, a man in a suit.
As for the infamous 'robot kong', it's appalling but, as the site says, it was an extremely successful publicity gimmick.
I think the movie is fascinating because it was the intended summer blockbuster for 1976, one year after JAWS had created the concept of the all-action summer event popcorn movie and the year before STAR WARS effectively defined that genre. It was pretty much the last big special effects film before STAR WARS reinvented special effects for ever.
There is nothing intrinsically wrong with remaking KING KONG, as the good vibe around this year's film shows, and there is nothing intrinsically wrong with a man in a suit if it is done well (for example, a lot of the shots of velociraptors in JURASSIC PARK are actually men in suits) but KK76 seemed to just over-reach itself. It was the last gasp of a mistaken belief that audiences didn't want animated models, they wanted everything to be full-size and real.
This strikes me as a historically and culturally fascinating movie which doesn't deserve dismissing with a sweep of the hand as an ill-conceived crappy remake. But what do other people think?
The problems seem to me to be four-fold: Lorenzo Semple's script is diabolical; Jessica Lange is embarrassingly bad (though to be fair she has little to go on - see first point); there are no dinosaurs; and the special effects.
That said, the writer of this interesting fansite on the movie...
www.pulpanddagger.com/can...gpage.html
...makes some valid points in arguing that the top part of the ape suit is actually very good, with six different cable-controlled heads giving a very wide range of expressions. Where it falls laughably flat is in the long shots where Baker (against his wishes, I believe) strides around like, well, a man in a suit.
As for the infamous 'robot kong', it's appalling but, as the site says, it was an extremely successful publicity gimmick.
I think the movie is fascinating because it was the intended summer blockbuster for 1976, one year after JAWS had created the concept of the all-action summer event popcorn movie and the year before STAR WARS effectively defined that genre. It was pretty much the last big special effects film before STAR WARS reinvented special effects for ever.
There is nothing intrinsically wrong with remaking KING KONG, as the good vibe around this year's film shows, and there is nothing intrinsically wrong with a man in a suit if it is done well (for example, a lot of the shots of velociraptors in JURASSIC PARK are actually men in suits) but KK76 seemed to just over-reach itself. It was the last gasp of a mistaken belief that audiences didn't want animated models, they wanted everything to be full-size and real.
This strikes me as a historically and culturally fascinating movie which doesn't deserve dismissing with a sweep of the hand as an ill-conceived crappy remake. But what do other people think?
http://www.MJSimpson.co.uk - cult movies and the people who make them
