In this universally panned remake of King Kong, the Petrox
Explorer, an exploration vessel belonging to an American oil company, sets sail
for the South China Sea in search of an uncharted island that reportedly is
loaded with oil. Unbeknownst to the crew, Jack Prescott (Jeff Bridges), a
primate researcher from Princeton University, stows away aboard the ship. When
Fred Wilson (Charles Grodin), the sleazy oil company executive in charge of the
expedition begins a briefing of the mission for the crew, Jack crashes it. He
informs Wilson and his men that they mistook the readings of the island their
satellite; instead of oil, they were actually seeing the inhalations of large
animals (I've heard of remakes updating their stories, but this is ridiculous;
it sounds like they've got technology right out of Star Trek here!).
Thinking he's a spy for a rival oil company, Fred orders Jack to be locked
up--but on his way to the slammer aboard ship, Jack sees a life raft floating
in the ocean. When the Petrox Explorer picks it up, there's a lone woman lying
unconscious inside. She turns out to be Dwan (Jessica Lange, making a dubious
big screen debut), a starlet wannabe who was the only survivor of an exploding
yacht. It seems everybody on her boat was watching a porno flick, which
offended Dwan; therefore she was the only one on deck when it exploded, and so
she owes her life to Deep Throat (groan). The Petrox boys take Dwan and Jack
with them to Skull Island, where, as expected, they don't find much oil. But
they do find a big ape that develops a crush on Dwan, which is good, because
her horoscope did say that she would cross over water and meet somebody big.
All of the magical sense of adventure that was prevalent through out the
original King Kong is sadly lacking in this 1976 remake. Instead this Kong is
rife with a cynical, money-grubbing atmosphere that is epitomized by Grodin's
Wilson character. While the original Kong's Carl Denham may have been a huckster
and a showman, he was never a complete lout, and could be depended on when
things got rough. And Bridges' whiny Prescott character is nothing more than a
lame effort on the filmmakers' part to try to update the film to the 1970s with
a "sensitive" leading man, while still pandering to environmentalists and
whatever other groups they could lure into theaters. And Lange's Dwan comes off
as such an air headed idiot, sprouting new age axioms that were cheesy even in
the 1970s, that at times I found myself wishing Kong would just step on her.
Thankfully, Bridges, Grodin and Lange have all managed to rise above this
turkey in the thirty years since its release by showing their acting chops in
far better movies.
And what of Kong himself? Well, there's a moment in the film that made me laugh
out loud: it's when the Petrox crew arrive too late to rescue Dwan from the
wedding ceremony, and as Jack surveys the scene of the crime, he tells Fred
that Dwan's abduction "wasn't caused by a guy in an ape suit." The fact that
the filmmakers actually used a guy in an ape suit is a perfect example of the
lack of imagination and creativity that was predominant on this production. And
while the Skull Island of the classic Kong film was a magical place that was teeming
with all forms of exotic life set within a lush tropical jungle, in the
remake, some of the Skull Island sets look as barren as the moon, and the only
other creature Kong encounters is a giant rubber snake that looks worse than
Kong does. And there is something inherently creepy about King Kong being
brought back to civilization as a prisoner inside an oil tanker. While it tries
hard to bash corporate greed, and take the side of the average person, this version of King Kong ultimately comes off as
being one long commercial for the very same oil companies that people love to hate. Fans of the original King Kong
are simply better off forgetting this insipid version ever existed.
--SF
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