King Kong Lives (1986)
DIRECTOR: John Guillermin CAST: Brian Kerwin, Linda Hamilton, John Ashton
With Godzilla vs Kong now hitting theaters and HBO Max to bring the first phase of the Monsterverse to an epic close, Awfully Good Movies is turning its focus from the King of the Monsters to the King of Skull Island, as we revisit Kong's lowest point in his 88 years on the big and small screens…King Kong Lives!
When the 1976 King Kong remake starring Jeff Bridges and Jessica Lange was met with huge box office and an Honorary Oscar for its special effects, famed producer Dino de Laurentiis was eager to find a way to have Kong survive his fall from atop the World Trade Center for a KONG sequel. But while the 1933 original got a sequel made in a mere nine months, the sequel for the 1976 KONG took an entire decade to make amidst a protracted legal battle over who owned the Kong franchise. And when Kong finally came back to life thanks to a mechanical heart transplant from a post-Terminator/pre-T2 Linda Hamilton as a dedicated surgeon, the results were as silly as you'd expect from a movie where King Kong survives a 1,300 foot fall thanks to a robot heart, as Kong gets a blood transfusion from another 60 foot ape that happens to be of the female persuasion, and the two lovestruck Kongs escape their captors to unleash carnage upon plenty of army tanks and stereotypical rednecks. It's a far cry from the epic grandeur of the other KONG remakes, but the cheap looking ape costumes and failed attempts at humor make King Kong Lives an enjoyably terrible attempt at bringing Kong back for the 1980s. And even better? It's a hour and a half shorter than the Peter Jackson version.
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