I was intensely curious to revisit the remake of King Kong (1976), the overwrought monster movie that was produced by Dino De Laurentiis and widely ridiculed upon its release (now available on DVD at Boîte Noire).

Actually, I think this one’s pretty funny. It’s certainly amusing in terms of the evolution of special effects; some may snicker, but though much of this is done via miniatures and a guy in an ape suit, I’ll take its ingeniousness over today’s CGI orgies hands down. Jessica Lange made her debut here - she’s very good, though it took her years to win credibility after Kong flopped.

Even the people who put this DVD together appeared to have mixed feelings about the movie. The cover blurb refers to the film as "ambitious" (that’s code for an expensive failure), going on to talk about the "camp" brought to its subject and finally referring to it as both "classic and classy." How ’bout those adjectives! (To my dismay, there are no making-of doc or commentary extras; I’d love to hear what some of these folks have to say about the film today.)

The eeriest part came for me in a bit of post-9/11 weirdness: Kong, of course, turns his nose up at his predessor’s choice of the Empire State Building and climbs the World Trade Center instead in the film’s final sequence. :

» Matthew Hays