King Kong Lives

Here’s a cinematic f**king travesty for you – King Kong Lives.

It seems that at the end of the Dino De Laurentis crapfest (which we all secretly loved), King Kong didn’t die a sad and bloody death in the gutters filled with bullet holes. No, he was whisked away to a secret place where they got his heart started again (using the world's second largest set of defibrillators, I guess) and stabilised so they could keep him alive for some reason.

That’s the selfish Americans for you. They should have just left him dead and carved him up to feed the starving masses in Africa, or somewhere. He could have kept the hungry nations satisfied with Kong Burgers for years.

But a humanitarian death was not to be. Instead, Kong has been waiting for a heart transplant for ten years (and you think our hospital waiting lists are bad). Just when they were ready to give him one (using the world's second largest artificial heart, no less), they discover that it can only go ahead with a blood transfusion from a similar big ape. As they say in the movie “Only one thing can save Kong – a miracle!� Or more appropriately, “Only one thing can save Kong – a f**king big co-incidence!�

"Chief! ...the other monkey’s gone apeshit!"

That co-incidence? At that very moment, some doofus in a jungle discovers another Kong-sized ape. Said ape is brought to save Kong, and wouldn’t you know it, they fall in love and go on the run.

Okay, what the hell is going on here? A movie about two huge gorillas in love and on the run? What demented idiot wants to see two apes stare lovingly at each other? You? Is it you? Do you want to see a big monkey love story? Is that what you’re after? Do zoological Danielle Steel movies excite you? You sick puppy!

For everyone else after model destroying mayhem, you get to see men in ape suits smash up Tonka trucks, and step on a model Lamborghini. And that’s about it, really. But it would be unforgivable of me if I didn’t mention the men in the ape suits. Through the use of some amazing camerawork, stunning costumes, elaborate models, detailed sets and marvelous trick photography, the men in the ape suits like AMAZINGLY just like real men in ape suits. Gee, it really wasn’t worth the effort, was it?

In fact, let’s end on that thought, as it equally applies not just to the effects, but to the acting, the storyline, heck, the whole film really.

All complaints about the mere existence of the story pushed to one side, I’m hard pressed to really find much to take issue with concerning the picture. A big cinematic spectacle needs a big image to properly convey the grandness of the proceedings, so this film was shot and transferred here at 2.35:1, and is 16:9 enhanced.

Like many movies on DVD which utilise scale models for the effects, the clarity of DVD is less forgiving and more revealing than VHS, where the lower resolution and blurry picture actually assist blending the two together. Here though, the clarity just serves to show how fake things are, which is a glowing testament to the transfer, but a big negative for the film's attempt at realism. It looks pretty good, with just constant specks and such peppering the print to highlight, but otherwise the colour's fine, the detail okay and the clarity is reasonable for a picture of this age and status.

The cover slick only indicates a stereo mix on disc, so imagine the surprise in finding that this monkey turd of a film has a DD 5.1 mix as well. Naturally, this was the one I tried first, eager to hear the lovely sound of giant apes having sex in discrete surround sound. I don’t have much good news to report, however. Much too often, the rear channels were just annoying wraparounds of the front channels, expanding the soundstage but giving no real sense of an expanded environment or directional movements. For example, a particular scene has the character coming from behind you with the footsteps beginning in the rear speakers. Then the character is in front of you, but the footsteps are still in the rear channels. At other times the rears are just copies of the front effects. This kind of problem occurs a few times, and the effect is shoddy. On the other hand, the sound itself is mostly very clear and dialogue is fairly bright sounding, so if you really must understand the lame script you won't have any problems, which is a good thing because there aren’t any subtitles on disc.

As for the DD 2.0 mix, there was no way I was going to watch the whole film a second time to listen to it, so I sampled bits here and there and found it to be much duller and far less spacious sounding, and most of all suffering from the lack of a dedicated LFE channel which gave much more life and impact to Kong’s footsteps in the 5.1 mix.

There aren’t any extras to be found on this disc, but I think everyone will agree that being able to turn the movie off whenever you feel like it is the only extra feature you’ll ever need.

Have I been too harsh in my assessment of this film? I don't think so. King Kong Lives is a perfect case to support filmmaking euthanasia. The plug should have been pulled on this flick long before it made it into production. The worst part is that the makers clearly were arrogant enough to leave the way open for yet another follow up. If there is any sort of Supreme Being, hopefully he/she/it will prevent that from ever happening.

However, if you are one of the few who eagerly look forward to catching this little example of the effects of cocaine on the film industry, then other than the lack of extras to enhance your experience, the DVD is so-so and might give you a thrill. But I doubt it.