Plaza Classic Film Festival: King Kong (1976)

Plaza Classic Film Festival: King Kong (1976)

This remake of the 1933 classic stars Jeff Bridges (The Big Lebowski, Crazy Heart) as a paleontologist who sneaks onto an oil company ship headed for a hidden island believed to have a large oil reserve. Jessica Lange (Tootsie, Francis) plays an aspiring actress rescued from a shipwreck and taken on the expedition, where she is kidnapped by a local tribe and offered as a sacrifice to the gargantuan primate called Kong. The expedition team must rescue the actress and capture the monster. Chaos ensues once Kong makes landfall in New York. Director John Guillermin (The Towering Inferno, Death on the Nile) brings a humanistic touch to the beast, a special effects achievement that garnered the film a special Academy Award for visual effects by Carlo Rambaldi and Rick Baker. It was produced by Italian Dino de Laurentiis, who produced its 1986 sequel, King Kong Lives. — Jaime Mendez