Dino then engineered success for his massive deal by manufacturing a bogus ‘Event Movie Phenomenon,’ promoting effects designer Carlo Rambaldi’s giant mechanical Kong as the new cinematic Eighth Wonder of the World. The Italian producer had already shut down a competing Kong project at Universal, planned as a period picture using advanced stop-motion techniques. I’ll get to those superfluous personal stories a bit later.ĭe Laurentiis’s King Kong was not popular among film students and aspiring effects artisans it represented everything wrong with Hollywood. Earlier in the summer, other friends had crashed the call for extras to be part of the audience to witness in action the filmic debut of the colossal mechanical Kong constructed by Carlo Rambaldi. When the 1976 King Kong arrived I was working for a company aligned with Dino De Laurentiis’s distributor, Paramount, so we were all invited to a Saturday morning pre-release screening. So far there have been two major remakes of the beyond-stupendous 1933 original King Kong, not to mention scores of imitations, homages, and other random sacrilegious oversized monkey monsters. based on 1933 screenplay by James Creelman, Ruth Rose from an idea by Merian C. Production design: Mario Chiari, Dale Hennesy Starring: Jeff Bridges, Charles Grodin, Jessica Lange, Rick Baker, Rene Auberjonois, Julius Harris, Jack O’Halloran, Ed Lauter, John Agar. Street Date Novem/ Available at Umbrella Enertainment 19.95 (au) An honest ad campaign would have leaned on two points: SEE Jeff Bridges and Charles Grodin carry an insultingly ugly production like real stars! SEE ‘newcomer’ Jessica Lange play a sexualized ditz so well that she retains her dignity! …and most importantly, SEE the biggest special effects fraud ever perpetrated on movie screens! Umbrella Entertainment from Australia puts this one back in print, on Blu-ray.ġ976 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 134 min. Nothing could eclipse the original but the good casting still appeals. Dino De Laurentiis took a lot of flack for his underwhelming remake of the incomparable 1933 horror classic, which he promoted into a monster-sized hit.
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