10 King Kong Movies Ranked Worst To Best

As needless (and needlessly stupid) as this 1976 remake is, it serves as a prime example of what happens when filmmakers take a camp approach to epic material. Maybe Lorenzo Semple Jr, who’d written for the Batman TV series in the 1960s, wasn’t the right screenwriter for the project.

Fay Wray’s character in the original was no feminist icon, but Jessica Lange has even less to work with, portraying a bimbo named Dwan (“You know, like Dawn, except I switched two letters”) whose life was saved by Deep Throat.

It gets worse: whisked away by Kong, she discusses horoscopes with the big guy (“I bet you’re an Aries, aren’t you?”) and tells him his habit of knocking down trees is a sign of insecurity. Then comes a line that should never be uttered in a monster movie: “Put me down you male chauvinist pig ape!”

The film’s highly touted special effects (which won an Oscar for “Special Achievement”) amount to Rick Baker in a gorilla suit and some obvious back projection. A 40-foot tall mechanical Kong was constructed especially for the production, but when the filmmakers got it in front of the cameras they quickly realized how fake it looked and resorted to cheaper trickery.

Remember that. It’s more interesting than the movie.