Charles Grodin, Jeff Bridges and Jessica Lange Make the Campy 1976 King Kong a Delight

Welcome friends, to the very first entry in Charles Grodin Month, an epic tribute to one of the funniest and most talented man ever to walk God’s green earth. 

We’re beginning the month with 1976’s King Kong, which could very well be the top-grossing film of Grodin’s career, particularly when inflation is factored in, if not necessarily his best-loved or most fondly remembered. 

From the vantage point of 2021 it can be easy to forget just how huge Dino DeLaurentis’ bicentennial monkey movie was at the time of its release. It was the third top grossing film of 1976, beaten only by Rocky and the Barbra Streisand/Kris Kristofferson remake of A Star is Born. 

It won a Special Achievement Academy Award for its creature effects and was nominated for Oscars for cinematography and sound. DeLaurentis made another fortune off King Kong and exposed it to an even bigger audience when he sold the television rights to just two showings over a period of five years for a record 19.5 million dollars.  

Yet when people talk about King Kong these days it’s not to discuss its incredible commercial success or popularity but rather the unfortunately central role the World Trade Centers play in its climax and some rather unfortunate attempts to make this epic tale of beauty and the beast more contemporary. 

To that end, the damsel in distress, played by Jessica Lange in her first major role, has re-christened herself “Dwan” for maximum zaniness, calls King Kong a chauvinist pig, to his face no less (it’s a good thing he doesn’t understand human speech!), asks her  big hairy suitor what his sign is and generally treats him like someone she’s on a bad computer date with rather than a beast beyond our power of imagining whose mere existence upends everything we think we know about the world and its possibilities. 

Oh, and Dwan has a fairly involved monologue about how she owes her life to the pornographic motion picture Deep Throat. Screenwriter Lorenzo Semple and director John Guillermin re-conceived the beauty who bewitches the beast as a dithering idiot, a vapid New Age bubblehead. 

Girl pretty!

The filmmakers set Lange up to fail by inviting the audience to laugh at her. Lange was so devastated by the critical response to her performance in King Kong that she spent years studying the craft of acting and did not appear in another film until 1979’s All That Jazz. 

King Kong is supposed to be the epic embarrassment Lange was lucky to survive but I am of the mindset that critics at the time should have gotten down on their hands and knees and thanked the good Lord that they were fortunate enough to spend two hours and fourteen minutes gazing at a beauty as extraordinary as Lange’s. 

At the risk of hyperbole, in King Kong, Jessica Lange is the single most beautiful person in the history of the universe. She’s magnetic. She’s luminous. She burns up the screen. The camera loves her. Her costars love her. God above loves her more than all of his other creatures, and has blessed her accordingly. 

I am too old and too married to develop crushes on actresses but I will happily concede that I fell deeply in love with Lange re-watching her star-making, Golden Globe-winning yet much maligned performance here. 

The second most beautiful person in the history of the universe, funnily enough, is Jeff Bridges in King Kong. When he was a young man, The Big Lebowski idol wasn’t just handsome: he was gorgeous, beautiful, a total babe. He’s also one of the greatest actors ever to grace the silver screen. That’s a potent combination. 

Factor in a mustachioed Charles Grodin in safari suits and neckerchiefs having a goddamned ball as King Kong’s outsized sleaze ball villain and you have an anomaly among creature features: a monster movie that belongs to the perfectly cast human beings in the cast more than it does the big monster in the title. 

King Kong begins with Grodin’s Fred S. Wilson setting course on a mission of adventure and greed to uncover the world’s largest untapped oil supply on an island shrouded in fog and mystery. 

The ship has a stowaway in the dashing form of Jack Prescott (Jeff Bridges), a ruggedly handsome, quietly charismatic, shaggy hippie primate paleontologist who knows that there is something very big on the island they’ll be exploring but it’s not the world’s largest supply of oil. 

Somewhere along the way they pick up Jessica Lange’s Dwan. Everyone falls instantly in love with the preposterously gorgeous young woman. Dwan and Jack bond over their shared attractiveness and concern for the earth and all of its inhabitants and Jack earns his passage by photographing the expedition for posterity. 

Kong proves just as enamored of Dwan as everyone else. Her appeal transcends species; Kong is instantly and deeply smitten, which is a little awkward, because he’s a monstrous figure out of mythology and Dwan is really more into human beings who look and act like Jack. 

As a King Kong connoisseur, I particularly dig scenes where apex predator Kong squares off against a wide variety of fantastical, dinosaur-like creatures in a land that time forgot filled with animals beyond our feeble imaginations. 

These special effects showcases speak powerfully to the kid in me even more than all of the other elements of King Kong movies so I was a little disappointed that the fantastical creatures Kong battles in his natural habitat are limited to a giant snake. It’s a big-ass snake, to be sure, but I sure wouldn’t mind a little more variety in my monsters. 

The creature effects here aren’t as beguiling or as magical as the stop-motion animation of the 1933 original or as emotionally affecting as Andy Serkis’ portrayal of the character in Peter Jackson’s 2003 remake but they nevertheless mark a triumph in practical, old-school practical effects. 

Through models, a forty foot mechanical Kong that proved surprisingly non-useful, Rick Baker in a Kong suit and movie magic, the filmmakers created a King Kong that was far more convincing than it has any right to be. 

Despite King Kong being anything but a critic’s favorite, Richard H. Kline’s cinematography was nominated for an Academy Award because of Kong, of course, but also because he gives the proceedings an epic scope. 

King Kong cost a fucking fortune to make but every last dollar is up onscreen. In its third act Fred makes a dramatic transformation from oily oil executive to theatrical showman when he hits upon the bright idea of bringing King Kong back to New York for an exclusive limited engagement opposite Kong’s leading lady of choice, Dwan. 

Things do not going according to plan! 

Grodin was a great actor but he was a great reactor as well. He was a peerless genius in the comedy of awkwardness who could induce belly laps just from a mortified expression or pained bit of body language. 

He’s a goddamn delight here but he’s never funnier or more poignantly, pathetically human than when his big, dumb, poorly conceived “King Kong Live!” stage show goes predictably awry. 

In a genius bit of overlooked social commentary, Fred conceives of King Kong’s live debut as a way to shamelessly promote Petrox Oil. Kong is hidden behind a 90 foot recreation of an oil pump with the Petrox Oil logo prominently featured. 

For that final bit of humiliation, the great god of Skull Island is reduced to wearing a silly little (or rather enormous) crown to signify that he’s not just Kong, eighth world of the world: he’s King Kong. 

With perfect schlemiel energy, Grodin’s demented showman insists that there’s no way the terrifying monster standing before them could ever get loose and run amok, bragging that Kong is in an “escape proof cage certified by the New York City government.” 

When Kong immediately sets about escaping his escape-proof cage, a clearly mortified Fred unconvincingly tries to convince the crowd that there’s nothing to worry about because “his feet are still chained!” mere seconds before Kong confidently rips off the chains on his feet and descends upon Manhattan. 

Fred is just asking for King Kong to step on him, which is just what happens. Fred meets a slapstick fate at the hands of his greatest, and certainly largest nemesis. Kong himself meets a similar fate with much more dignity when he dies after scaling the World Trade Center in a sequence that is, honestly, deeply offensive to the men and women who perished in the terrorist attacks of 9/11. 

They deserve better than to have survivors be reminded of the worst moment of their lives every time they watch this spectacularly silly movie. 

King Kong derives its surprising emotional resonance from the filmmakers, particularly Oscar-winning Kong designer Carlo Rambaldi and effects wiz Rick Baker, the man in the Kong suit, making the big ape a real character with real emotions and real pathos. 

But it also comes from King Kong dying, just another New York tourist who very quickly lost his way and met an unfortunate end. It’s also affecting because it devastates Bridges and Lange’s characters, and people that beautiful should never experience that kind of pain. 

I’ve seen this version of King Kong three or four times at this point and I like it more with each successive viewing. It feels weird to suggest such a popular movie as a nifty little sleeper but this is much better than its reputation as the dumb, campy King Kong movie suggests. That title aptly describes its misbegotten, poorly received sequel, King Kong Lives but the surprisingly gorgeous 1976 blockbuster is a whole lot of goofy fun and an excellent way to remember Grodin, who puts a knuckleballer’s kooky spin on every line and moment. 

Grodin found a way to be himself even in the biggest, most commercial productions and King Kong benefits tremendously from the all of the personality and star-power Grodin, Bridges and Lange bring to their roles. 

It’s no Clifford, of course, but King Kong is pretty damn entertaining and a terrific showcase for Grodin all the same.

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