One would think the term "bad giant monkey movie" would be redundant. Making a movie that focuses on a fifty foot ape is a tricky piece of work; the film needs to be very carefully balanced or the whole concept will fall apart. That, or you could make a movie that is so disconnected from reality that it doesn't matter what you put on the screen. This second path is the route that the producers of King Kong Lives appear to of taken.
When you think about it there's only so much you can do with a giant monkey movie. Have a monkey meet a girl, bring the monkey to civilization, have the monkey run wild, shoot the monkey - it's all pretty cut and dried. Other ideas can be added to the mix -have the monkey fight a big robot monkey or whatever- but King Kong Lives is the first time I've ever seen a movie that tries to make the ape's love interest be another giant monkey.
King Kong Lives picks up ten years after the 1977 remake of King Kong. Being a sequel to a movie as wildly bad as that means that King Kong Lives has it's work cut out for it even before it starts. My guess is that Dino De Laurentiis' license for Kong was about to run out so he decided to make some sort of sequel -any sort of sequel- before his contract ran out. Surely it would of been better to of let the license expire instead of making this flick but De Laurentiis has an Oscar and I don't so who am I to question his movie making practices?
It seems that after Kong was shot to hash and took his tumble off of the World Trade Center he somehow survived and has been on life support for the past ten years. Mending from his wounds at a research facility in a university somewhere in North Carolina, Kong is waiting to have open heart surgery. Just curious, but what university specializes in giant ape research? At one point one of the administrators complains that they had already spent millions of dollars on Kong already- your tuition money at work. The university students would never be able to live down the fact that their university had a giant, bed-ridden monkey in storage. Rival universities would have a field day with Kong; every sporting event would feature the rival fans mocking the university team by running around in gorilla masks. Plus, would the university be financially liable for any subsequent rampaging that Kong might do after they patched him up? Sadly, none of these questions are answered in the film.
Kong has been in dry dock for so long because he hasn't a blood donor for his surgery. In a lucky plot twist an adventuring type guy [played by Brian Kerwin] just happens to run across another big monkey in Borneo, captures it, and sells it to the university. There was some debate as to whether the university should buy a second giant ape, but it was ultimately decided that they should make the investment as a precaution in case Kong didn't make it through the surgery. What self-respecting university would want to fall behind in the field of giant monkey research, or, even worse, let another university have access to a giant monkey if they didn't have their own big ape? Thanks to a ridiculous operating scene involving doctors wielding giant prop scapels Kong gets his new artificial ticker installed while a facility is being constructed for the other giant gorilla. All good so far, except the other gorilla is female and when Kong wakes up and catches her scent he's raring to go. Not letting the fact that he's been immobile for a decade slow him down, Kong busts out of his hospital, makes fast friends with the female gorilla, and the two of them run off to an amazingly deserted section of the American South.
Even though the Army is out in force looking for them, the two monkeys find the opportunity to get in some quality flirt time. Words fail me when it comes to describing this scene. Kong and Lady Kong [honest, that's how the female monkey is billed] don't act like primates, instead they make cow eyes at each other, bashfully offer each other treats, and generally behave like two guys in monkey suits trying to be romantic. It's the damnedest thing. There's even a King Kong love theme that would periodically swell up for important moments in the lives of the big monkey couple. The love of the Kongs is paralleled to a certain extent by the tryst between the head monkey surgeon [Linda Hamilton, who can't seem to star in a normal movie to save her life] and adventuring guy, but that plot line is pretty boring compared to the big monkey love found in the main story line.
It seems that Kong has finally found the perfect girl for him -or at least one that isn't 45 feet shorter than him- but Kong can't seem to shake his tragic trappings. Before the inevitable happens there are hillbilly battles to be fought, trailer parks to be trampled, golf courses to lope through, trucks to be tossed, and all sorts of other monkey mischief that leads up to a conclusion that's every bit as silly as the rest of the movie, and that's saying something. As of this writing Kong has yet to show up in another movie, and after seeing this flick I can understand why the owners of the Kong license aren't too keen to shop it out again.
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