King Kong is a 1976 American adventure monster film, directed by John Guillermin. It is a remake of the 1933 film about a giant ape who is captured and taken to New York City for exhibition. It stars Jeff Bridges, Charles Grodin, and Jessica Lange, and features mechanical effects by Carlo Rambaldi and makeup effects by Rick Baker, who also portrayed King Kong. It is the fifth entry in the King Kong franchise.
The idea to remake King Kong was conceived in 1974 by Michael Eisner, who was then an ABC executive. He separately proposed the idea to Universal Pictures CEO Sidney Sheinberg and Paramount Pictures CEO Barry Diller. Italian producer Dino De Laurentiis quickly acquired the film rights from RKO-General and subsequently hired television writer Lorenzo Semple Jr. to write the script. John Guillermin was hired as director and filming lasted from January to August 1976. Before the film's release, Universal Pictures sued De Laurentiis and RKO-General alleging breach of contract, and attempted to develop their own remake of King Kong. In response, De Laurentiis and RKO-General filed separate countersuits against Universal Pictures, all of which were withdrawn by January 1976.
The film was released on December 17, 1976, to mixed reviews from critics and solid success at the box office, grossing $91 million against a $23–24M budget. It won a noncompetitive Special Achievement Academy Award for Best Visual Effects, and it was also nominated for Best Cinematography and Best Sound. A sequel, King Kong Lives, was released in 1986.
Plot
Frederick Wilson, an oil executive, leads an expedition using infrared imagery that reveals an undiscovered island permanently hidden by clouds. Wilson believes the island has a huge oil deposit. Jack Prescott, a primate paleontologist, sneaks onto the expedition's vessel and attempts to warn the team against traveling to the island, citing an ominous final message about "the roar of the greatest beast" from previous doomed explorers. Wilson orders Prescott locked up, assuming he is a spy for a rival corporation, but eventually hires him as the expedition's photographer. Prescott spots a raft that carries the beautiful Dwan, an aspiring actress who was aboard a director's yacht, which exploded. During the rest of the ship's voyage, Prescott and Dwan become attracted to each other.
On reaching the island, the team discovers a primitive tribe living within a gigantic wall built to protect them from a mysterious god known as Kong. The team finds a large oil deposit, but it is so low quality that it is unusable. Later, while Dwan is on the ship's raft, the natives kidnap her and take her back to the island, where they offer her as a sacrifice to Kong. The giant ape grabs Dwan from the altar and returns to the jungle.
Although an awesome and terrifying sight, Kong quickly becomes tamed by Dwan, whose rambling monologue calms and fascinates him. After falling into the mud while trying to escape, Kong takes Dwan to a waterfall to wash herself, and then uses great gusts of his breath to dry her. This ordeal leaves her exhausted and she falls asleep in Kong's hand. Meanwhile, Prescott and First Mate Carnahan lead a rescue mission to save Dwan, who awakens later that night after Kong leaves her alone in a tree.
The rescue party encounters Kong while crossing a log bridge over a ravine; Kong rolls the log, killing Carnahan and the rest of the sailors. Prescott and crewman Boan survive on opposite sides of the ravine. Kong takes Dwan to his lair followed by Prescott as Boan returns to the ship. That night, Prescott rescues Dwan while Kong battles a giant snake to protect her. Kong chases them back to the native village, only to fall into a pit trap and knocked unconscious with chloroform.
With no oil, Wilson decides to transport Kong to America as promotion for his company. When they finally reach New York City, he puts Kong on display in a Beauty and the Beast show, chained with a large crown on his head. When Kong sees a group of reporters crowding around Dwan, the ape thinks they are assaulting Dwan, breaks free of his bonds, and goes on a rampage throughout the city. In the commotion, Wilson is killed when Kong steps on him. Prescott and Dwan flee across the Queensboro Bridge to Manhattan while Kong pursues them. While Dwan hides in a bar, Prescott calls the military and asks them to capture for Kong unharmed. Using his keen sense of smell, Kong discovers Dwan and snatches her from the bar. He begins to make his way to the World Trade Center, with Jack and the military in pursuit.
Kong climbs the South Tower. The military ignores Jack's plea and uses deadly force against Kong. After being attacked by Marines with flamethrowers while standing on the roof, Kong leaps across to the North Tower. There, he is shot hundreds of times by military helicopters while Dwan futilely tries to stop them. The fatally injured Kong falls from the roof to the plaza. As Dwan makes it to the ground, she watches as Kong dies from his injuries. A sea of photographers swarms the hysterical Dwan, keeping Jack from her. Traumatized, she stands still as she is photographed relentlessly by reporters while Kong lies dead in a pool of blood and broken concrete.
Cast
Production
There are two different accounts of how the remake of King Kong came about. In December 1974, Michael Eisner, then an executive for ABC, watched the original film on television and struck on the idea for a remake. He pitched the idea to Barry Diller, the chairman and CEO of Paramount Pictures, who then enlisted veteran producer Dino De Laurentiis to work on the project. However, De Laurentiis claimed the idea to remake King Kong was solely his own when he saw a Kong poster in his daughter Francesca's bedroom as he woke her up every morning. When Diller suggested doing a monster film with him, De Laurentiis proposed the idea to remake King Kong. Diller and De Laurentiis provisionally agreed that Paramount would pay half of the film's proposed $12 million budget in return for the distribution rights in the United States and Canada if the former could purchase the film rights of the original film.
De Laurentiis later contacted his friend Thomas F. O'Neil, president of General Tire and RKO-General, who informed him that the film rights were indeed available. Later, De Laurentiis and company executive Frederic Sidewater entered formal negotiations with Daniel O'Shea, a semi-retired attorney for RKO-General, who requested a percentage of the film's gross. On May 6, 1975, De Laurentiis paid RKO-General $200,000 plus a percentage of the film's gross. After finalizing the agreement with Paramount, De Laurentiis and Sidewater began meeting with foreign distributors and set the film's release for Christmas 1976.
Writing
After moving his production company to Beverly Hills, De Laurentiis first met with screenwriter Lorenzo Semple Jr., who at the time was writing Three Days of the Condor. Impressed with his work on the film, De Laurentiis contacted Semple about writing King Kong, and Semple immediately signed on. During their collaboration on the project, De Laurentiis already had two ideas in mind: that the film would be set in the present-day, and the climax would be set on top of the newly constructed World Trade Center.
Because he felt audiences had grown more sophisticated since the original film, Semple sought to maintain a realistic tone, but infuse the script with a sly, ironic sense of humor that the audiences could laugh at. Having settled on the mood, Semple retained the basic plotline and set pieces from the original film, but updated and reworked other elements of the story. Inspired by the then-ongoing energy crisis and a suggestion from his friend Jerry Brick, Semple had the expedition mounted not by a filmmaker but by the Petrox Corporation, a giant petroleum conglomerate which suspects that Kong's island has unrefined oil reserves. In his original story outline, Petrox would discover Kong's island from a map hidden in the secret archives at the Vatican Library.
In a notable departure from the original film, Semple dropped the dinosaurs that are present with Kong on the island in order to devote increased attention to Kong and Dwan's love story, and to keep costs low: De Laurentiis did not want to use stop-motion animation in the film. Nevertheless, a giant boa constrictor was incorporated into the film.
A fast writer, Semple completed a forty-page outline within a few days and delivered it in August 1975. While De Laurentiis was pleased with Semple's outline, he expressed displeasure with the Vatican Library subplot, which was immediately dropped. It would later be replaced with Petrox discovering the island from classified photos taken by a United States spy satellite. Within a month, the 140-page first draft incorporated the character of Dwan (who according to the script was originally named Dawn until she switched the two middle letters to make it more memorable), the updated rendition of Ann Darrow from the 1933 film. For its second draft, the script was reduced to 110 pages. The final draft was completed by December 1975.
Casting Meryl Streep has said that she was considered for the role of Dwan, but was deemed too unattractive by producer Dino De Laurentiis. Dwan was also proposed to Barbra Streisand but she turned it down.Medved, Michael, and Harry Medved. The Golden Turkey Awards. 1980, Putnam. . The role eventually went to the unknown Jessica Lange, then a New York fashion model with no prior acting experience.
Filming and special effects
De Laurentiis first approached Roman Polanski to direct the picture, but he wasn't interested. De Laurentiis's next choice was director John Guillermin, who had just finished directing The Towering Inferno (1974). Guillermin had been developing a version of The Hurricane when offered the job of King Kong.
Guillermin, who was known to have had outbursts from time to time on the set, got into a public shouting match with executive producer Federico De Laurentiis (son of producer Dino De Laurentiis). After the incident, De Laurentiis was reported to have threatened to fire Guillermin if he did not start treating the cast and crew better.
As part of the $16 million budget, De Laurentiis had his mind set on building a full-scale animatronic Kong. Italian special effect artist Carlo Rambaldi designed and built the mechanical Kong, which was 40 ft (12.2 m) tall and weighed 6 tons; he would later compare building it to "the United States space program" during the race to the moon. Glen Robinson oversaw the construction of Kong and the amalgam of aluminium, latex, horse tails and hydraulics. Rambaldi had also to devise separate mechanical hands with working fingers, which could be used to scoop up Jessica Lange in close-ups, and a man-sized ape suit for long shots. For the ape suit, Rambaldi collaborated with Rick Baker, who also wore it during the filming. According to Bahrenburg, five different masks were created by Rambaldi to convey various emotions. Separate masks were necessary, as there were too many cables and mechanics required for all the expressions to fit in one single mask. To complete the look of a gorilla, Baker wore contact lenses so his eyes would resemble those of a gorilla.
Rambaldi's giant mechanical Kong cost £500,000 to create. Despite months of preparation, the final device proved to be impossible to operate convincingly, and during the August 1976 filming of Kong's escape in New York, a hydraulic pipe inside the gorilla burst. As a result, it is only seen in a series of brief shots totaling less than 15 seconds, and the ape suit was used in most of the filming.