King Kong Lives: A Review

 

KING KONG LIVES

The 1976 King Kong remake has been, in my opinion, unfairly bashed as terrible. It is not a good film, but I find it oddly entertaining and much better than the second remake. I had heard of King Kong Lives but was too young at the time to see it. Moreover, what little I knew was due to Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert's extremely negative review. Now, through the magic of streaming, I have seen King Kong Lives. Living up to its reputation, King Kong Lives is a mix of the 1976 and 2005 versions. It is terrible (2005) but oddly entertaining (1976). 

A decade after King Kong fell to his apparent death from the World Trade Center, we find that he is not dead. He is in a coma, kept alive artificially at the Atlanta Institute, a rival to MIT and Harvard. Dr. Amy Franklin (Linda Hamilton) has an artificial heart ready for Kong, but due to his decade-long coma, he needs a blood transfusion to have the artificial heart work. It is not, however, like there are giant apes running around somewhere, right?

Of course, wrong. Explorer Hank Mitchell (Brian Kerwin) just happened to stumble onto a giant monkey in Borneo. He offers "Lady Kong" to the institute for a price. Price met, Mitch flies Lady Kong to what I presume is Atlanta so Mr. Kong can have transfusion and his new heart.

It gets sillier from here. 

Unsurprisingly, Dr. Franklin strongly objects to having a female Kong so close to a male Kong, fearing they will go ape for each other. Unsurprisingly, Dr. Franklin and white hunter Mitchell also go ape for each other. King Kong is so aroused by Lady Kong's scent that he storms his way to her. The search for this ape allows Franklin and Mitchell to storm their way to each other. Lady Kong is recaptured, King Kong hides out in the Georgia swamps, is captured by rednecks whom he devours, then they are reunited in time for Lady Kong to give birth to Son of Kong. Will the family Kong (King, Lady and Donkey) manage to escape?

King Kong Lives and the 1976 King Kong have one thing in common: both are blessed with a musical score that is so far above the film itself. John Scott's score is wonderful, flowing and enjoyable. He created luxurious romantic music when we see scenes of romance. It is not his fault, though, that the romantic music played when King and Lady Kong finally set eyes on each other.

There is something absolutely and oddly hilarious about lush music when you see two adults in ape costumes making googly-eyes at each other. That director John Guillermin never saw just how odd to laughable the mix of music and images come across makes one wonder whether he and everyone involved in King Kong Lives was bonkers. These love scenes between the Kongs are just weird. The love scene between Franklin and Mitchell are not far behind. The dialogue by Ronald Shusett and Steven Pressfield does not help. Just as Mitchell is to start making love to Amy, he says, "Are you sure about this?". Her response? "We're primates too", she whispers.

Why these two fell so suddenly in love King Kong Lives does not bother explaining. How King Kong lives all these years King Kong Lives does not bother explaining. Why King Kong lives at all King Kong Lives does not bother explaining. What is the plan once the heart transplant goes? What are they going to do with Kong after he recovers from surgery? There's no setup, so there are no stakes. It is all very strange to idiotic. 

About the only moment of wit is when the Army comes to the Georgian backwaters to find dozens of rednecks with their shotguns looking for a giant ape that has managed to hide in various swamps. "What the hell is this: Deliverance?" one of them says. 

Over and over again, the strange blending of music and imagery makes King Kong Lives look bad and unintentionally funny. At least, I think it was not meant to be funny. Late in the film, there's a scene where Kong is rampaging through a small town. There is an old man with a shotgun apparently just shooting around in random. Everything here is hilarious. A later scene at a family reunion hoedown is equally bizarre. We see the Kongs walking towards them, the hootenanny oblivious to these giant creatures coming their way. "You never know who's going to show up in our of these family reunions, do you?" one of them says to the other as we see the Kongs coming closer and closer.

I get what King Kong Lives was going for. I also get that they were too obvious and forced about it to make it funny. Funny is when Lady Kong grabs Mitchell. I almost expected her to say how she would hug him and squeeze him and call him "George". The scene where King Kong chomps down on an alligator while a frog looks on is inexplicable to me. Throwing in gruesome endings for some of the rednecks is appalling.  

King Kong Lives was made after The Terminator. As such, why Linda Hamilton opted to use what cache she earned from The Terminator to star in this rubbish I can only guess at. She looks blank throughout, making the idea that she is a brilliant physician frankly ludicrous. Kerwin is no better, attempting "brash and daring" and ending up looking desperate, confused and embarrassed. John Ashton as barking Lt. Col. Nevitt was a stereotype, almost always yelling out his lines and chomping the scenery with crazed abandon.

The 1976 King Kong won a special Academy Award for its Visual Effects, which I find strange given how poor the VFX were in King Kong. They are Lord of the Rings quality compared to the simply awful VFX in King Kong Lives. Even 1940's B-pictures had better rear screen projections than King Kong Lives. The two people playing Kong and Lady Kong (Peter Elliot and George Yiasomo respectively) running around in what are meant to be mountains look so idiotically fake that even children would say it was a set. When Nevitt meets his end, everything about it is bad: the acting, the look, the end results. 

There is no reason for King Kong Lives. Minus the music everything in King Kong Lives is dreadful. Despite that, I did not hate King Kong Lives. It is just short of being so bad that it's good. It is more "so bad that it's watchable if you want to laugh at how bad it all is". King Kong Lives, but one wishes he had stayed most sincerely dead. 

DECISION: D-