Though Dwan sets Kong's heart aflame, she's more likely to set everyone else's teeth on edge.This is no reflection on Miss Lange. Part of the appeal of "King Kong" today, as it was in 1933, is based on the wish to believe that there may still be places in this world unpenetrated by Petrox, Pepsico, General Motors, Sony and the Clubs Mediterranee.The film builds well to Kong's initial appearance, after we are almost an hour into the story, when he comes clomping out of the jungle to claim his monthly sacrifice, who is not, of course, Fay Wray, but Jessica Lange, a beautiful New York model who plays a would-be actress named Dwan.
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Having acknowledged these biases, one might as well relax and let it happen.John Guillermin, the director, and Lorenzo Semple Jr., the writer, display real affection for old-time movie magic and nonsense that come through in spite of a physical production only slightly less elaborate than that of Elizabeth Taylor's "Cleopatra."Especially effective are the opening sections of the film that lay out-with a respectful gravity that is truly comic-the scientific mumbo jumbo that softens us for the make-believe to come: a team of oil experts from a cartel named Petrox sets out to find a mysterious uncharted South Pacific island that is perpetually enclosed in a cloud of carbon dioxide, indicating that the earth beneath is a virtually bottomless reservoir of petroleum.There's talk about the worldwide energy crisis, and we are shown satellite photographs meant to allay suspicions that even if such an island could have remained undiscovered throughout all of World War II, our spy-in-the-sky system, which can apparently read the fine print on Kremlin documents, would certainly have chanced upon it long before this.It may well be that we don't need such explanations. Not this time.Why, I think we have a right to ask, would anyone want to remake it? "King Kong" is a classic, but it's not "Hamlet." There's only one way to do it, and that's been done. One could marvel at the wizardly special effects created by Willis O'Brien and not be overwhelmed by an awareness of the terrific time and expense that went into them. De Laurentiis did on this, you've got to have something for everybody, including the witless.The nicest thing about the 1933 "King Kong," made by Merian C. I suppose that when you spend as much as Mr. When it is played as a straight adventure-fantasy, Dino De Laurentiis's $25-million remake of "King Kong" is inoffensive, uncomplicated fun, as well as a dazzling display of what the special-effects people can do when commissioned to construct a 40-foot-tall ape who can walk, make fondling gestures, is slightly cross-eyed, and smiles a lot.It's something to make you cringe with embarrassment, though, when it attempts to disarm all criticism by kidding itself (proclaim the ads, "the most exciting original motion picture event of all time") in lines of dialogue that are intended as instant camp ("You goddamned male chauvinist ape!").