Hamilton/ Ape Watch: King Kong Lives (1986)

Watched:  09/20/2024

Format:  Amazon

Viewing;  4th?

Director:  John Guillermin/ Charles McCracken

After watching Dante's Peak, I was wanting to see another Linda Hamilton film and talked Dug and K into watching King Kong Lives (1986), a move I am certain they regret.  

As a sort of low-level monster-kid of the 1980's, I was thrilled to get a chance to see a *new* King Kong movie, and so went to see the flick in the theater.  I loved the *idea* of King Kong, but had only seen pieces of the 1976 movie and none of the original.  But read a Kong book to two and had the basic idea down.  

And, this movie was part of my realization that not all movies are good.  Like, you go to the movies as a kid, and if you can follow the plot, it feels like a winner.*  But around this time, I was starting to understand not every movie is "good" or was made because it was a work of art.  And, right about the time I saw Kong and Lady Kong making goo-goo eyes at each other, I began realizing this movie was not destined to be the classic its predecessors had been.

It's unlikely I had seen Terminator yet as I was 11, but probably within the next two years.  And Beauty and the Beast hadn't aired yet on TV, so this was likely where I first saw Linda Hamilton, whom I'd become a fan of before the 80's were out.  I thought then, and think now, Hamilton is not bad in this, and can now recognize the split personality the movies of this era had as a major defect.  

Hamilton plays the surgeon in charge of Kong and his heart replacement at a made-up Georgia-based higher ed institution (it seems to be Georgia Tech, but in the woods?).  She's head of this team at, like, maybe 32 if she's playing older?  She's telling her bosses what to do.  She's got the plan for tracking Kong.  And then... at the half-way point, she's "the girl" again, taking a bit of a backseat to our male lead, whose only credentials seem to be "generally okay guy".  She has to get emotional and lean on him, she has to be "the bait" for some soldiers.  It's... as the kids would say, cringe.  But this was *progress* in mainstream film at this point.  

Hamilton looking spunky with the full-sized ape they seemed to have

I do wonder if the primary reasons this movie was made were because (a) Dino De Laurentiis loves money and (b) they still had apes in storage from the 1976 film. I'm not sure that's true, but... it seems likely as one was constructed and basically unused from the first movie.  

The movie's plot essentially starts at the point of nonsense and carries on that way.  Kong fell from the WTC in the 1976 film under the horrified eye of Jessica Lange (who shows up only in re-used footage), and has apparently been stored at an institute in Georgia for the past ten years, somehow kept alive despite the fact he apparently can't stand, eat or drink.  His heart is failing, and so they have built a giant, cartoon heart for him.   He's receiving blood in giant, cartoon blood bags, etc..  it is wild.  And one wonders what the end game is for someone going to such great expense and effort.

Meanwhile, a female Kong is found in South America?  And so she's brought to North America as a donor.  But hormones are crazy, and so our recent heart-transplant patient escapes and helps his lady escape, and they run off into the lovely rolling hills and valleys of late-fall Tennessee doubling as Georgia, I guess.  They're tracked by Hamilton and Brian Kerwin.  No one can find the two giant apes because, apparently, no planes or helicopters exist.  

The army shows up, and at this point, you know how this movie will end.  And, yeah, everyone in the army in this movie is a mean moron for no reason.

Anyway, it's... not the best movie.  But if you wanted to see two giant apes about to do the deed, this is the movie for you, I suppose.  I know there's at least one of you out there.

Watching it alone is a slog, but with other people, it's fun.  Recommended.

Things the movie does well:  The ape-suits and make-up are great.  Not as good as what would happen by the time I saw Congo, which was equally as stupid in its own way, but these apes look really great, minus the weird teats they unnecessarily put on Lady Kong.    They do, also struggle with scale.  The miniature sets aren't bad!  It's impressive.  They're certainly good enough to blend in with the wide shots of actual nature from time to time.  

I won't get into all the things that could have been less dumb because life is short, but the movie is also exceptionally lazy in places and doesn't know how anything in real life works.  

I feel bad for folks involved.  Apparently the director suffered a family tragedy just before this movie and was basically a wreck, abandoning the complicated film to a documentary filmmaking young man who had no practical experience.  Hamilton didn't really know how this would look, I mean - Terminator probably seemed stupid, too, when she was running from a slow-moving Austrian.  And, upon release, the movie had horrible reviews and made only $5 million on an $18 million budget. Of which I assume Jason and I contributed about $6.  But now I've seen it a few times, and own a DVD of it, so... hopefully I've purchased Linda Hamilton a pack of gum by now.

We did talk many Kong movies a few years ago when we were podcasting. I tried to set it to the Kong Lives discussion, but it around 55:20.

*a core memory for me as a kid was seeing The Natural, a movie about adult melodrama and baseball, two things I did not understand at all, and then getting in trouble for saying I didn't understand the movie as we left the theater.  Childhood is a wild ride, y'all.