Beauty didn’t kill the beast, she only broke his heart. After a year in a coma, grumpy, ape-heart surgeon Amy Franklin (Linda Hamilton) is ready to replace King Kong’s damaged pump with an artificial one, but needs plasma. Coincidently, adventurer Hank Mitchell (Brian Kerwin) finds a giant female gorilla in Borneo, and soon the recuperating Kong and Lady Kong have run off into the Georgia woods. The military, led by ape-hating Col. Nevitt, chase after, as does Hank and Amy, because it wouldn’t be much of a movie if they didn’t.
“Only one thing can save Kong…a miracle,” says Doctor Franklin, expert in giant mechanical hearts and animal behavior. Not exactly the statement you want from your doctor. But she’s wrong. Even a miracle couldn’t do it. It just wasn’t in the script.
Dino De Laurentiis’s 1976 remake of King Kong is generally referred to as an artistic and financial failure, but it actually made money, enough money to justify this uneven and unnecessary sequel. In case you missed the ’76 film, it was also unnecessary, on that special level shared by the remake of Psycho. It had few moments worth seeing, and most of those were related to Jessica Lange. The majority of its changes warred between the absurd and the pointless. But it had the good graces not to change the ending. Kong was dead, a big hairy corpse on the pavement of New York. He’d been shot more times than I can count and plummeted from the top of the World Trade Center. That’s a flattened gorilla.
So, if you’re going to make a movie where the great ape only had a flesh wound, then you really ought to understand you’ve entered the realm of the ridiculous, and go for some laughs. And so they did, sometimes. At other times, the tale of the not-quite-dead-yet Kong is presented with the solemness of a church service. Perhaps there was a disconnect between the writers and director. Ronald Shusett (best known for the story for Alien) and Steven Pressfield (best known for writing…ummm, well, I guess this) filled their script with ludicrous gags. I can’t see how it could be interpreted as anything but a spoof. Open heart surgery with a giant pizza cutter. Bulldozers used to calm an agitated forty foot monster. Natives with blowguns suddenly jumping out of the bushes and taking down Lady Kong, but later machine guns do nothing. A cigar chomping military officer, who, for no explained reason, is willing to disregard orders, even from the Secretary of Defense, just so he can hurt the giant creatures. Backwater hicks who wan’na hunt’dem some big ape. And of course, monkey lovin’. This is funny stuff.
But director John Guillermin didn’t see it that way. Perhaps working on King Kong had broken his spirit, and he was now perpetually confused. Whatever the cause, he set a serious tone, thinking he was making a inspirational, romantic, adventure film…with two men in furry suits. Can you think of anything less romantic? Time after time, comedy situations are presented as deeply meaningful. Apparently I am supposed to be touched by gorilla courtship (which includes sly smiles, deep gazes, the old yawn trick, and Kong lifting Lady Kong like Scarlet O’Hara) and moved to tears at the wonder of the birth of Baby Kong (another guy in a furry costume).
I had lots of time to think while not being entertained by King Kong Lives. I thought about the career of Linda Hamilton, and that perhaps she only makes good films if they also star Arnold Schwarzenegger (which is odd any way you look at it). I also thought about the geography of the Atlanta area. Both Dr. Amy, the giant monster surgeon of the Atlanta Institute, and I, live in Georgia. For those of you who don’t realize there’s a lower right portion of the United States, Atlanta is a metropolitan area, a good hour’s worth of speeding up the interstate from the foothills of some not too overwhelming mountains. So, think as I might, I couldn’t map out a location where tall mountains, deep ravines, and wet lands (filled with alligators) come within a humongous gorilla-jog of the city. Do I expect filmmakers to be familiar with Northern Georgia? Nope. It’s just strange. Since the scenery looks like Tennessee, and the movie was shot in Tennessee, I can’t come up with a good reason not to say it’s taking place in Tennessee. Strange. Oh, it’s not as strange as natives using blow guns with darts that expand to several yards when striking Lady Kong, but strange none the less.