Movie Review: King Kong (1976)

King Kong (1976) directed by John Guillermin

This lavish remake follows the general plot points of the 1932 classic: A ship of Americans go to legendary Skull Island and discover a primitive society there that worships a giant ape called Kong. The girl in their group is kidnapped, first by the natives who offer her to Kong, then by Kong who takes her deep into the island. A group from the ship pursues the ape and the girl, eventually bringing both back to the ship. They return to New York City where they plan to make a lot of money displaying Kong to amazed crowds. Kong busts free when he sees the girl being menaced. He kidnaps her yet again and heads for the tallest building in Manhattan, which he climbs, carrying the girl. Aerial combat brings down the big ape, who fatally falls to the ground, surrounded by awed crowds.

The 1932 film was set in contemporary times and followed a Hollywood producer who wanted to make the greatest action film ever. He took a common girl off the street to be his romantic lead. He had a secret map that led to Skull Island. The girl bonds a bit with the ape on the island which helps them to capture Kong, though it's really one of the sailors that rescues her and keeps her safe. The producer is excited about the Beauty and the Beast angle to the story which he features in his New York debut of Kong. Things go haywire, leading to the famous attack of the biplanes at the top of the Empire State Building. The movie ends with the producer pithily claiming that "It wasn't the planes that got him. It's Beauty that killed the Beast."

The remake is set in contemporary times, specifically the 1970s. So the producer is replaced with an oil magnate (Charles Grodin) who thinks there's cheap and plentiful oil on Skull Island. As he sets out on an oil tanker, Jack (Jeff Bridges) sneaks on board. Jack is a primate expert who has heard legends about a creature on the island. He's soon found out but a storm comes up. After the storm, a lone lifeboat comes alongside the ship, carrying an unconscious Dwan (Jessica Lange). She's a shallow socialite who gets stuck on the petroleum search. They land at the island where she eventually winds up being offered to Kong by the natives. Kong is very aggressive, even sexually pawing at her. When they get back to America, the oil magnate puts on a big production to introduce Kong, even aping the way the natives offered up Dwan (and yes, that is not a misspelling, she made her name that way to be distinctive). Kong breaks out of his unbreakable cage and eventually catches her and climbs the World Trade Center, where he is shot down by helicopters. He falls. The crowds gathered around the gigantic corpse are more or less silent at the tragic ending.

Unfortunately, the film leans too much into the 1970s setting. Where the ambitious Hollywood producer has a more universal quality about him, the oil exec is just smarmy and is the villainous embodiment of the unpopularity of gas prices in the 1970s. Dwan is free-spirited and superficial, a liberated woman who does not have enough self-respect to not be treated like a sex object by everybody. The boat crew is excited to have a female onboard. Jack makes some passes. Kong often leers at her, lending some credibility when the oil exec claims Kong tried to rape her on the island. The other big 1970s concern is environmentalism, with Jack spouting a lot of "don't wipe out the species" and "don't exploit the locals" jargon so popular then. At the end, Kong is wheeled out inside of a gigantic gas pump, both a humiliation and a tasteless exploitation by the evil gas company. It all looks a bit dated and silly at this point, fifty years later.

The Kong effects are mostly amazing and do hold up. His face is very expressive (more than just the leering) and he has a bit more personality in this film. Too bad he's a bad boy from the 1970s! The ending is very downbeat, without a pithy one-liner from anyone, just wallowing in the tragedy of Kong's demise. The environmental message is a downer, lacking the pithiness of the 1930s producer's take on the situation.

I don't regret watching this but I do think it is more a product of its times than a story for the ages. The good stuff is taken from the original film. The new stuff is so contemporary that it looks fifty years old.

Mildly recommended--if you are a Kong completist, you should check it out.

Universal Studios Backlot Tour

While at Universal Studios Hollywood, we took the hour-long backlot tour where they actually make movies and television shows. The tour has been going on for decades and predates the park. Some of the attractions are classics.

New entrance to an old favorite

The tour bus is open air and lets riders get a good view of the soundstages and lots where all sorts of things are filmed.

Ready for fun!

Soundstage 14

The guide explained that she would have to be quiet if any of the red lights were on at any of the stages, meaning they were filming and did not want any outside noise if possible. The buildings are not fully soundproof and her PA system did make her much louder.

Stage 19 in action!

The lot still has the small bungalows that were used by writers, directors, and actors as offices and places to relax during the day. They are still used for administrative work.

Bungalow

City streets are fairly common in films and shows so they have a large outdoor street that is mostly facades of buildings.

New York? Chicago? LA?

Could be a bank or a courthouse, maybe even a church

Actual trees!

One of the demonstrations of special effects was a ride through the King Kong Experience, with the tour bus surrounded by screens of Skull Island. Dinosaurs attack the bus and Kong defends it. The floor moved the tour bus around in sync with the images, so when a creature climbed across the top we would feel it happening. It is very similar to the Kong ride in the Florida amusement park, so a lot of fun.

Going into the Kong Experience

Back in the city, we saw people parked so they could walk to work, right behind the fake buildings. Of course, some buildings are more fake than others.

Cast and crew park behind the scenes

A very thin building

A graffiti artist decorated some of the walls with the classic Universal monsters.

Frankenstein's Monster and the Creature from the Black Lagoon

I recognized these decorations from Back to the Future.

Where Marty lived (and behind which he hid the DeLorean)

We passed by the Old West street several times.

Old west street

Old west vehicles

Part of the tour recreates Amity Island, the beach community terrorized by the shark in the original Jaws. They showed the original trails with the famous John Williams score and no reveal of the shark. The tour guide made a joke about the movie's rating, PG, which is the same rating as Despicable Me.

Famous billboard from the movie

Riding by the seaside town, a diver swims out to deal with the shark and gets dealt with. Then the shark tried to deal with us!

A bit of the water you shouldn't go into

The diver disappears!

A bit of destruction trying to get the shark

The shark coming for us!

The shark swims backwards as the attraction resets

We drove back toward the Old West where we saw another practical effect--a sudden flash flood that almost engulfed the tour bus.

Happy and unsuspecting

Disaster approaches!

The old west town is bigger than I thought it would be. They even have a church (or maybe it's the Alamo).

I can just see a rifleman falling from the upstairs balcony

Church/Bank/Alamo?

A quaint train station is set up like when it was used for the TV series The Good Place.

Good Place to get out of the Bad Place

Storing vehicles where they don't look right

Our next visit was another soundstage set up as a subway station. The station is also rigged to experience an earthquake.

Generic subway

Things falling apart in the subway

More flooding

A vintage tour bus

The lot has a lot of spare vehicles, including ones used in movies like the Fast and Furious franchise and The Flintstones.

Guess I should have also mentioned Jurassic Park/World

Fintstonesmobiles

Fast and Furious rides

Another famous stop on the ride is the Bates Motel from Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. The house is there with someone on the porch.

12 rooms, 12 vacancies

Norman wants to make a point

The town where a jet crashed in Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds is still set up.

Plane wreckage

Neighborhood wreckage

The final bit of the tour took us by Jupiter's Claim, the wild west attraction from Jordan Peele's Nope.

Not sure we should go there

The tour is both informative and entertaining and a definite must for movie fans.

TV Review: Skull Island (2023)

Skull Island (2023) created by Brian Duffield based on the King Kong franchise

Charlie and Mike are the sons of two sea explorers who are looking for cryptids, specifically a legendary island that is supposed to have a lot of them (obviously Skull Island, home of King Kong). Their boat picks up a teenage girl whose escaped another ship and is a bit of a wild child. They don't have long to talk to her when they are attacked by some men from the other ship. Those men don't have long to attack when a giant sea creature shows up and kills most of the crew and the baddies too. Charlie, Mike, and the girl (named Annie) wash up on a mysterious island full of giant, mutant animals. It's a hostile island with dangerous natives. The survivors of that other ship are there and want the girl back.

This animated series promises some King Kong action though the big ape does not show up till halfway through the eight-episode arc. The humans' adventures are the typical fight against a variety of giant, mutated animals. The action is fun if a bit gory (the show is rated TV-14). The creators want to appeal to a broader audience than the typical youthful cartoon watcher. Hints at a larger story are left unfulfilled as the show clearly sets up a second season which does not seem to be in production two years later. The story is enjoyable enough on its own if you are a Monsterverse fan, which I certainly am.

Mildly recommended--this is more for fans of the Universal Studios Monsterverse like me.

As I write (March 2025), this is only streaming on Netflix.

Movie Review: Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire (2024)

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire (2024) directed by Adam Wingard

Kong is searching for other great apes in the Hollow Earth, a realm below the Earth's surface where a lot of primitive and prehistoric things live. His melancholy wanderings yield little more than an infected tooth. He returns to the surface where Trapper (Dan Stephens) gets him a replacement tooth courtesy of Monarch, an agency monitoring Kong's activities along with those of all the Titans on the Earth's surface. The main Titan is Godzilla, who wanders around fighting other Titans, typically stopping them from hurting humans (though there is plenty of destruction in his battles). Kong and Godzilla have been living peaceably thanks to living in separate parts of the world. Kong returns below the surface after his dental care and resumes his search for other apes. He becomes successful when he discovers an even deeper layer called the Subterranean World. The apes there live under the oppression of Scar King, a red ape with a bone whip and an enslaved Titan whose breath freezes things. Scar King wants to return to the surface of the Earth but has been kept in check by the Iwi people, a civilization whose only surface members used to live on Skull Island (where Kong was discovered back in the 1960s). The only survivor from Skull Island is Jia (Kaylee Hottle) who has been adopted by Monarch mid-level manager Ilene Andrews (Rebecca Hall). Their investigation into Kong's activities leads them to the Iwi civilization, creating some dramatic tensions for the humans. The conflicts between the monsters ramps up too.

The plot is quite outlandish. As if the Hollow Earth was not enough, there's an even deeper level! And a deeper mythology to go with it! The monsters behave more or less intelligently depending on the needs of advancing the story. The whole situation is a bit hard to take seriously, though probably no one expects to take it seriously. Some of the fight scenes are entertaining, though my pet peeve of the "obviously meant to be seen in 3D" bits of action are a little annoying when I am not watching it in 3D. The special effects are good if not always convincing. The ending was fairly standard without much surprise or satisfaction.

Mildly recommended--this is more of a special effects extravaganza with some good fight scenes between the monsters. I was entertained but not wowed. The story needs a lot of work.

Movie Review: Godzilla vs. Kong (2021)

Godzilla vs. Kong (2021) directed by Adam Wingard

Kong is kept safely contained on Skull Island while Godzilla, who turned out to be a hero in the last film of the franchise, is left to roam free as humanity's defender against other titanic monsters. That trust in Godzilla is broken when he attacks a high tech facility in Pensacola, Florida. The company is Apex Cybernetics. Weirdly enough, the company has been working on a failsafe in case Godzilla turns bad. Maybe their work turned Godzilla bad? To find a power source great enough to counter the giant, Apex needs Kong to travel to the center of the Earth. The legends of the Hollow Earth give the scientists hope that they can harness the power in the middle of the planet, if only they can get there. The only entrance they know is in the Antarctic and as they take Kong there, Godzilla shows up to fight against the other alpha titan, a rivalry that goes back to prehistoric times.

The movie has enough plot to string together the various massive fight scenes. Many elements in the story are a bit ridiculous, but the tale is about a giant ape fighting an oversized dinosaur with atomic breath, so viewers need to be generous with their suspension of disbelief. The movie is a lot of fun and does not take itself too serious (a problem with said last film of the franchise). Big monsters tear up the town and each other in entertaining and epic ways.

Recommended--I hope they continue the monster movies in this tone.

Movie Review: King Kong (1933)

King Kong (1933) co-written and co-directed by Merian C. Cooper

Carl Denham (Robert Armstrong) is a movie director of jungle action pictures, but his latest project is sure to be his biggest ever. He's got a secret map from a Norwegian captain that shows a Pacific island governed by a great brute known as Kong. Denham's hired his usual ship and loaded it with lots of rifles, ammunition, and gas bombs. He only needs one more item, the most potent bomb he ever carried--a blonde bombshell named Ann Darrow (Fay Wray). His previous pictures all lacked a romantic angle. The critics and distributors think his next film will make twice the money with a female in it. He reluctantly agrees though is quite enthusiastic about the "beauty and the beast" angle. Most of the crew share his reluctance, though their anti-female stance seems mostly based on inexperience. When they get to the island, things don't run according to plan. Ann is captured by Kong. The rescue effort is costly in human life but profitable when they capture Kong and bring him back to New York as "the Eighth Wonder of the World." The New York situation doesn't run according to plan either.

This movie is a classic for many reasons. The special effects, which look dated today, were state of the art and are still impressive given the resources at the time. A lot of care and craft went into scenes of Kong fighting the humans or the other prehistoric giants on the island. The performances work really well. Denham's honesty and straightforwardness seem at first really square but he is the sort of fellow to take charge of a situation even if he can't control the situation. He's a showman of the first caliber. Fay Wray is famous for screaming her way through her performance but she has her charming moments as well. She certainly doesn't have the depth of Naomi Watts's character in Peter Jackon's remake, but Wray isn't a cardboard cut-out either. The New York sequence is perfectly paced and has the iconic Empire State Building ending. The movie is thrilling and satisfying, well worth watching and rewatching.

Highly recommended.

The movie is discussed on A Good Story is Hard to Find Podcast #185.

Movie Review: Kong: Skull Island (2017)

Kong: Skull Island (2017) directed by Jordan Vogt-Roberts

After discovering a previously uncharted island, corporate science exec Bill Randa (John Goodman) spends his last political favor to send a crew of scientists and soldiers for a "geologic survey" as the Vietnam War ends. Randa's team includes ex-British forces tracker Conrad (Tom Hiddleston) and war photographer Weaver (Brie Larson) who self-identifies as an "anti-war" photographer. The science team plans on detonating several bombs on the island (called Skull Island since it's shaped like a skull) to facilitate the survey. When they get to the island, they encounter more than they bargained for, even Randa, who was expecting to find extraordinary monsters on the island. Action and mayhem ensue.

The 1973 setting provides an interesting political backdrop for the movie, heightening the tension between the military and the civilians. The technology is advanced but not enough to make communication and control of the situation easy. The period music is evocative and the visuals imitating Apocalypse Now and other films seem more like homage than rip-off. It's an original setting for a King Kong movie.

The movie also pays respect to the Kong mythology. The island is full of other dangerous creatures, some as big as Kong, who are a threat to man and to monkey. The natives have their big wall and their weird ways and their faith in Kong as a god. While Weaver isn't offered up as a sacrifice and doesn't shriek like Fay Raye, Kong does protect her when they meet up. The action is entertaining and well executed.

Unfortunately, the movie has too many elements thrown in, leaving it a hodge-podge of themes and ideas. It comments on the Vietnam War. It develops a conflict between science and military. It has a revenge story that isn't all that convincing. It has a bunch of random attacks thrown in for nothing other than to keep things exciting. The natives seem like they have some back story that would explain their strange tattoos and their telepathic communication but that is never explained. Kong is defending the outside world by keeping the weird creatures on the island contained but why they are hostile and why he defends are never satisfactorily explained. None of all these elements are dwelt on long enough to make them really interesting.

The movie is fun but doesn't quite know what it wants to say or says too many things at once, drowning out any deeper meaning.