Rating: 
Summary: A Travesty
Review: This remake of the 1933 all time classic is a travesty that Dino Delaurentis (producer) will never live down.
First of all, there is no stop motion animation. Almost all of the effects consist of Rick Baker in a gorilla suit stomping on miniature sets. This is hi-tech???? The budget was $25 million?
So much was made of the giant robot kong built by Carlo Rambaldi. It is literally in the film for about 10 seconds (truthfully). It is as convincing as a Cigar Store Indian on roller skates. The robot hand that lifts Jessica Lange is about the only decent effect, and this scene is short as well. Rick Baker builds the best gorilla suits in the business, but this was early on in his career, and he had a way to go. The classic beauty and the beast story is played tongue in cheek this time, destroying any suspension of disbelief despite the ho hum effects. I believe this will be the year Warner Bros. finally releases the classic Kong on DVD. I hope the package has plenty of specials. Fay Wray is still alive, let's have a new documentary. For kids that refuse to watch black and white, there is a colorized version of Kong that is not bad. It is certainly better than Dino's Kong. Direct quote from Dino:"When Jaws die, nobody cry. When Kong die, people gonna cry." How right you are Dino. I cried from frame one!
Rating:
Summary: lots of footage missing
Review: When NBC ran this in two 2-hour time slots, the film had additional scenese added to it to fill up the 4 hours -- i'm guessing at least an hour of extra footage not in the theatrical release. I remember Jack at the beginning getting the t-shirt and a badge. Sailors peeping Dwan through a window. Fred being threatened by his boss when Kong escapes (which is why he runs blindly under Kong's foot). And so on. Sadly, NONE of this footage is on the DVD, so buyer beware.
Rating: 
Summary: I am now very thankful that this movie was made
Review: First off, the movie itself is stupid. It is a very, very bad remake all around, the FX, the dialog, the actors..uck.
The only good reason to buy this flop is it's beautiful shots of the World Trade Center inside and out.
I think that I will forever feel a cold hand grip my heart when I catch a glimpse of them in their too short glory on film.
This movie showed me things that I will now never be able to see: the inside, the (I quess) courtyard where the Sphere was located, the lobby in one of them.
When Jeff Bridges dashes out of that elevator on one of the upper floors and you see how spacious it is and all of the large windows... I cannot help it but to see people at the windows trying to breathe through the smoke, to see them in their last moments.
The only reason I keep this flop is for the WTC, not at all for the story.
Rating:
Summary: What was the budget for the gorilla costume????
Review: Why on earth would actors of the calibur of Jessica Lange and Jeff Bridges agree to this poorly conceived remake of a classic. Enough close-ups of anguished faces. Jessica looks great, too bad it's such a waste. Jeff should never have made a movie with that scuffy growth on his face and the long hair. I could go on but I have better things to do. I want you to know that I only saw the last 15" of this film. But that was more than enough.
Rating:
Summary: Perhaps the Worst Remake of All Time
Review: Like the animated "Lord of the Rings," the remake of King Kong starts out bad...then substantially gets worse, and worse, and worse...and then your head explodes. Surprisingly, the delay-figure animation King Kong can be sorely missed as the King Kong in this is so blatantly a guy in a suit its not that funny. There's nothing ape-like about him, its just a big dope walking around in a costume! Things really stink by the time the film hits New York, though. King Kong, like the original, goes insane and breaks out of his cage. He kills the guy that wanted to capture him, which is easy because the guy runs right up to him... Then the army gets involved. Three cars, five soldiers, and one helicopter search through out all of New York (well...the Brooklyn Bridge) to find King Kong. By the way, New York City only has ten people in it, as King Kong can easily walk through out the entire city with out causing the commotion he did in the original. Any who, Kong finds Jessica Lange and then climbs the World Trade Center. Jeff Bridges is all mad at the military because they're going to kill Kong and Bridges thinks Kong should live...despite his killing of thousands of innocent people. Besides Bridges' pleas, the military sends three huge helicopter models that are misproportioned to the actual ones, and they shoot up Kong like no one's business. Kong knocks one down, but only because it rams right into him. Then finally...Kong falls off the WTC... ...check out the awful special affects and editing in that scene: 1. Picture of WTC from an angle.
2. BAM! Kong appears out of thin air, falling alongside it.
3. Kong lands on the ground.
4. Jessica Lange immedately teleports from the top of the WTC to the ground where King Kong is. It is then that a sad(?) ending is presented. Oh yeah, and then the film makers thank the special affects crew, which is like the German people thanking Hitler for World War II. Seriously, give me a month and I could have made better special affects than this. The original is a classic, and ends with the story with "Twas beauty that killed the beast!" This one just gives you a headache and ends with you wishing Kong had brought Jessica Lange down with him and landed on Jeff Bridges. That would have at least been poetic justice.
Rating:
Summary: Good for Its Camp Value
Review: While I never quite understood the whole fascination with King Kong in the first place, I could at least see that the 1933 film had charm and, for its time, cutting-edge special effects. This big budget remake manages to simultaneously mock and pay homage to the original, which, I suppose, is no mean feat. Part of the problem involves the miscasting of Jeff Bridges as the hippie zoologist--in his younger days, he wasn't much of a presence on the screen, and here he would fade away if not for the fact that viewers can amuse themselves by comparing his look and mannerisms to those of "The Dude" in the underrated "The Big Lebowski." The other problem is the script itself, which meanders between being "adult," with its often grotesque attempts at sexuality (though it is rather nice to see the lovely Jessica Lange in various states of undress), and being pure camp. And even with Charles Grodin chewing up scenery as an oil company's Snidely Whiplash, exactly the sort of parasite everyone loved to hate during the energy crisis of the 1970s, and a production that is sufficiently big, the film never quite lives up to the original. Despite John Barry's tragic score and a climax that tries to supplant the goofiness of the rest of the story with social commentary, Kong is reduced to being a misunderstood stalker in a gorilla suit. In the end, it hardly seems worth the effort.
Rating: 
Summary: KING KONG
Review: Dear readers,
King Kong not only has a great story but the special FX are amazing for a 1976 movie. It stars: Jeff Bridges as Jack Prescott a heroic environmental hippie, Charles Grodin as Fred Willson who is a kind of "bad guy" by bringing Kong to New York City, and the very beautifull Jessica Lange as Dwan the only survivor of a boat that sank.( My dad sailed a boat with the same name as the one Dwan was on to Jamaica wich also sunk a year before the movie came out!) Well basicly they go looking for oil on some strange island. The natives capture Dwan to be a BRIDE for King Kong, a giant ape! So Jack rescues her and Fred captured kong and takes him to New York were he goes and runs a muck in the city. I hope you injoyed this review.
Michael howell
Rating:
Summary: Underrated but Great!
Review: I don't know why some great movies get so much negative press.I saw this movie in 1976 when I was a kid and I have watched it many times since. I think it's better than the 30's king kong movie. It's romanic and exciting with lots of twist and turns in the story. I also like the 70's feel to the movie. It's a sad ending when Kong climbs to top of the "Twin Towers" in New York. It's very enjojable to watch and I love it!!
Rating:
Summary: Terrible, Terrible, Terrible.
Review: Well their approach to King Kong was quite different then the 1933 movie. The 1933 movie was a good mix of drama/science fiction/great cast/great story/and effects work that has made it age well. This 1976 remake bears almost no similarity to it at all. It's really a paraody of a paraody. It's told more for the jokes. Their is humor here when it should be more serious. The Kong in this film was a cheap looking ape suit designed by someone who worked for Roger Corman. It looks cheap. It looks like a bad ape suit. The Kong roars were really the sounds of a T-Rex from an old B-Dinosaur picture. You can clearly tell when the actors were superimposed into the large scences when they are standing close to Kong, using very poor photography. You also see a lot of actors in this movie who got better roles later on. Rene Auberjoins in this movie (He would play Odo on Star Trek and other roles). Later on in better roles, Jessica Lange and Jeff Bridges would become better more believable actors, but in this movie, they look so patheic. It makes you wonder why James Bond composer, John Barry scored this movie. The music sounds like it belongs in a better film. Kong's death at the climax of this picture is quite violent and surprisingly bloody for a PG picture. But that only kept him down for ten years, he later returned in a worse movie, King Kong Lives, made in 1986, which was just as bad as this film was. I'll take Godzilla any day of the week.
Rating: 
Summary: Worth a second look
Review: To remake arguably the greatest monster movie of all-time (King King 1933) is maybe something that never should have been done because of the inevitable comparisons. If the 1933 film did not exist, this movie would not appear that bad. Certainly there are problems, particularly the portrayal of the islanders. In a realistic setting, dark-skinned natives would have found white people horribly ugly. But what saves it is the relationship between Lange and the giant ape. He cares for her, and she, in the end, cares for him. She tries to save his life, and King ends up saving her life twice, possibly three times. The ape in the 1933 movie is a much more savage and brutal beast, whereas this movie portrays Kong with much more humanity. He is still a large monstrocity that regards itself as a god, but he also has a tender side to him that is not as apparent in the 1933 movie.
And Jeff Bridges character is the ape's only spokesman who seems to understand the ape's life and his relationship with the islanders. But if the 1933 movie is your favorite monster movie, this one won't change your opinion.
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