1976’s King Kong (1976) brings our prehistoric primate bang up to date in a then-contemporary reimagining

There’s more than a hint of opportunistic JAWS cash-in the Dino De Laurentiis’ ambitious remake of the 1933 classic. With a script by then go-to screenwriter Lorenzo Semple Jr (best known, perhaps, for TV’s BATMAN), the 1976 KING KONG is, to date, the only telling of the original Kong story to have an entirely contemporary setting.

With the oil crisis in full swing, Petrox Oil Company executive Fred Wilson (Charles Grodin) mounts an expedition to an as-yet unexplored island in the Indian Ocean which has been detected by infrared imagery which suggests its permanent fog bank is, in fact, the gaseous outpourings of significant oil and gas deposits. Stowing away on the voyage is Jack Prescott (Jeff Bridges), a primatologist and environmental acitivte who opposes the exploration of the island btu eventually joins the party as an official photographer. En route to the island, they come across a life raft with a single occupant: Dwan (Jessica Lange in her screen debut), an aspiring actress who was aboard her director’s yacht which suddenly exploded. When the crew eventually arrive at the island, they find that the fog bank isn’t hiding vast energy reserves but rather a hostile tribe of natives and a jungle full of colossal creatures.

There’s little doubt that this contemporary KONG is a Dino De Laurentiis production, in fact it may be the quintessential De Laurentiis production because he doesn’t seem to have denied himself a single one of his usual impulses. It’s as sexy and violent as he can possibly get away with for a PG rating and it sure doesn’t skimp on the blood when Kong’s inevitable end arrives. The production design is, admittedly, fantastic – Kong’s island looks wonderful and modernising tweaks aside, the core of the original story survives pretty much intact and, if anything, has its environmental man versus nature themes brought further into the foreground. The lavish score by John Barry is another huge plus.

Grodin is good value in a largely straight role – possibly inspiring Peter Jackson to cast a similarly comedic Jack Black in his 2005 reimagining some thirty years later – and Jeff Bridges seems fully committed to his role as dashing hero/ cautionary conservationist and lays down a template that would be picked up and perfected by Jeff Goldblum in THE LOST WORLD: JURASSIC PARK. Lange may be a two-time Oscar winner now but here, in her first role, her performance is decent if unremarkable – until, that is, you take into account some of the atrocious dialogue she has to deal with.

The special effects are impressive for their time, although a much-heralded full-size robotic Kong ended up being used for only a few seconds of footage. The majority of the Kong scenes are a mix of man-in-suit action (a vast improvement on the costume from KING KONG vs GODZILLA) and a full-sized mock-up of Kong’s hand.

The World Trade Centre-based finale may feel somewhat blasphemous against both the original movie’s iconic Empire State Building and, of course, more recent real-world events but it caps off a better-than-its-reputation-suggests retelling of the famous story and while it doesn’t – and couldn’t – hit the same astonishing technical heights of its illustrious predecessor or its technologically blessed successor, 1976’s KING KONG remains an eminently watchable and wonderfully of-its-time version of the classic story.