Monkey See, Monkey Die

Do you have one of those "guilty pleasure" movies that you know just suck, but will always be a part of you (and if so, what is it? Let me know!)? I have many, but very few loom large in my heart like the late Dino de Laurentiis' 1976 version of KING KONG.

In late 1976, I was seven years old (going on eight), and was a prime target for the marketing machine that was behind KONG. A full year before STAR WARS perfected the art of selling movies to kids, the KONG machine was in full motion, and you couldn't go anywhere late in the Bicentennial year without seeing that image above plastered on anything and everything (I still have two KING KONG Slurpee cups!). Probably one of the savviest marketing moves was the inclusion of a free T-shirt iron-on inside the January 1977 issue of "Family Circle" magazine....thanks to mom, I had a King Kong T-shirt in just a few minutes...awesome!).

Of course, the most incredible indication of how everyone got snookered into Kong-mania in late 1976 was how the marketing machine actually got brand-new starlet Jessica Lange onto the cover of TIME magazine. No wonder they never did at STAR WARS cover, after getting scammed by the Kong publicists into promoting their movie!

But it wasn't the cover that was awesome....incredibly, the article inside featured a series of shots showing Kong feeling up Jessica Lange...including a shot where her top has dropped off and YOU CAN SEE HER BOOB! In TIME MAGAZINE! It was an incredible moment for a seven-year-old boy (probably for a few 37-year-old boys, too!). I wonder how many hundreds of parents thought they were doing their little sons a favor by letting them look at the new TIME magazine that had the story about the monkey movie, only to find that that issue disappeared into the nether regions of the son's room, never to be seen again. From what I found on the internet while I was researching this blog entry, I am certainly not the only 40-something male who fondly remembers the October 25, 1976 issue of TIME.

Okay, okay, but what about the MOVIE? Well, I recently went back to it, and found that it wasn't nearly as bad as I feared, but unfortunately it's about a giant gorilla's arm-length away from actually being a good movie. Jeff Bridges is magnificent as the earnest young anthropologist, Charles Grodin is suitably slimy as the villain, and there ain't nothin' wrong with a 27-year-old Jessica Lange in her first movie. The problems are two-fold: the script (by Lorenzo Semple, Jr., he of the "Batman" TV series fame) brings the story into the 1970s, but unfortunately with very mixed results. There's some nice post-modern irony (Charles Grodin refuses to believe in a giant ape, so Jeff Bridges points to the massive destruction done to the jungle and asks "What do you think did that, some guy in a gorilla suit?"), and it's nice to see subtle changes like how Kong climbs the World Trade Center instead of the Empire State Building.

On the down side, you have things like how Lange's character is, thirty-five years later, an absolute caricature of a 1970s dippy chick (she asks Kong what his astrological sign is, and calls him a male chauvinist pig), and the 1970s special-effects are frequently not-so-special.

On the other hand, the portrayal of Kong is pretty magnificent. Instead of the stop-motion brilliance of the 1933 original, you literally did have "a man in a monkey suit." Makeup-artist extraordinaire Rick Baker designed a very convincing Kong costume and played the King himself. Unlike the CGI effects that Peter Jackson used for the third version of the film, Baker's human emotions really allow Kong to become a sympathetic character in his own right (which, ironically, was also accomplished in 1933 with the stop-motion puppet).

Unfortunately, the publicity machine really dropped the ball in this respect. Producer de Laurentiis had commissioned the construction of a real 40-foot animatronic ape which, unfortunately, looked comically ridiculous and unbelievable. But if you believed the publicity hype at the time, you were led to believe that it was this incredible machine that did all of that acting and emoting, not the genius of Rick Baker. When KONG was given a special technical Academy Award for the achievement of the giant ape, it was hotly disputed and several people actually resigned from the board of the Academy! Poor Rick Baker....in the credits, he only gets thanks for something stupid like "special contributions," when in fact he's responsible for 99% of what makes Kong so appealing.

And that giant mechanical ape that was constructed with so much fuss and expense? It's in the movie for less than a minute, and only in long shots. Looks like everyone knew that idea was DOA. But the scene that it appears in? It's the NEW YORK DEBUT of a 50-foot gorilla, sponsored by a major oil corporation. That's a reason to rent out Shea Stadium, right? Yikes. No, instead it's set inside a janky little stadium that looks more appropriate for (and holding about as many people) as a 4-H junior rodeo in Kalispell, Montana. A super-weak climax for a movie that obviously spared no expense, other than setting the movie's ending in the Evel Knievel Stunt Stadium.

Other highlights: Some of the special effects are cool (Kong's rampage through Manhattan would make Godzilla green with envy), the score by uber-composer John Barry (he of James Bond fame and fortune) is magnificent, and there's plenty of secondary stars here for B-movie lovers (Rene Auberjonois, John Agar, Julius Harris).

Is it the best KING KONG? No way, not by a long shot; that title goes to the 1933 original. But its pleasures are many, its downsides few (but enormous), and it's definitely worth your time, at least once.

Things I learned from this movie:

1. Jessica Lange looks super-hot, even if she is getting blown dry by a giant gorilla.

2. Can a 50-foot gorilla actually leap from one skyscraper to another? Probably not, but I don't care because it looks freakin' awesome!!

3. If you are riding in an elevated subway car as a gigantic gorilla rampages throughout New York City, do NOT look like Jessica Lange!