After marveling at the remarkably rendered 1930s New York of Peter Jackson’s King Kong, I got a mad craving to go back and revisit my first Kong...not the 1933 classic, but the 1976 version I saw as part of a long-ago birthday field trip, sitting uncomfortably close to my grandmother while naked Skull Island native boobies bounced gloriously on one of the big, wide screens of the late, lamented Westgate Cinema in beautiful, balmy Brockton, Massachusetts.
Even more recently, my wife rented the original as part of her own private ongoing Netflix survey course of film history, allowing me to compare all three apes in a cinematic steel cage match. Which film is The King of Kong? Let’s check the scorecard!
THE BEAST:
It’s the eternal question: stop-motion, CGI or a guy in a monkey suit? The original Kong was groundbreaking and iconic. Peter Jackson’s ape was fearsome and expressive and goofed around on an icy pond. And, as Dino De Laurentiis promised vis-à-vis his bicentennial version: “When Jaws dies, nobody cries. When Kong dies, they all cry.” To be honest, this race is too close to call, so I’ll go with the chimp that started it all. Advantage: Original.
THE BEAUTY:
Jessica Lange, God bless her, is automatically disqualified for playing a character named “Dwan.” Naomi Watts delivered a charming, well-rounded performance as Ann Darrow, generating about a hundred times more chemistry with her simian co-star than she did with Sean Penn in 21 Grams. But as good as she was, Dr. Frank-N-Furter didn’t sing about Naomi Watts in The Rocky Horror Picture Show. He sang about the one-and-only iconic Fay Wray. Advantage: Original.
THE HERO:
A little Adrian Brody goes a long way for me, and I don’t remember much about Bruce Cabot’s performance as Jack Driscoll in the original (other than it was perfectly fine). But, c’mon...Jeff Bridges on Skull Island in a crazy Amish beard? The Dude abides. Advantage: 1976.
THE SHOWMAN:
Jack Black gave a fine, relatively understated performance as Carl Denham in the 2005 version, and Robert Armstrong totally owns the classic line, “It was beauty killed the beast.” But I have to say I’m partial to Charles Grodin’s oilman turned showman for providing the classic Kong story with a truly hissable villain...plus he’s the only one who gets squashed by a giant ape foot. Advantage: 1976.
SKULL ISLAND:
The 1976 version featured the aforementioned naked breastices, and Kong’s battle with the dinosaurs in Peter Jackson’s remake was insanely exciting, but the original directors Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack achieved the same level of wonder and excitement with a quarter of the technology. Bonus points for Noble Johnson’s portrayal of the Skull Island chief, the only truly dignified, humane and memorable “native” character in any version of Kong. Advantage: Original.
THE SHOWDOWN:
Kong’s original battle with the biplanes atop the Empire State Building is classic movie magic, and Kong’s battle with helicopters on and around the Twin Towers now sadly packs an emotional wallop it didn’t originally possess, but I could have spent hours drinking in Peter Jackson’s obsessively detailed CGI New York, even without the breathtaking action in the foreground. Advantage: 2005.
And so, after tallying the votes, the winner is...ORIGINAL!
Stay tuned for next week’s exciting Original vs. Remake smackdown (in honor of the release of The Rat Pack Ultimate Collector's Edition DVD box set): Sinatra's Eleven vs. Clooney's Eleven!