A Disappointing Continuation

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

It took a long time to make a sequel to the remake of King Kong from 1979... and I can see why... lack of a decent story. And it's the story and ropy special effects that hurt this film.So the movie opens with the ending of the 1979 remake; Kong's fall from the tower. However, he doesn't die. As the years pass the doctors realise his heart is failing and his blood is poisoned. They could fit an artificial heart but without a transfusion, Kong will die. Enter Hank Mitchell (Kerwin), who whilst exploring the African continent comes across a second giant gorilla... phew, just in time to save the plotline... Even better for the plot, the ape is female. Against the lead doctor's advice, Amy Franklin (Hamilton), the college assigned to study Kong ship the female across, instead of just taking her blood. Of course, when you put two giant apes together, of different genders, things are bound to get amorous and frisky. As with humans, love and lust can drive apes to do desperate deeds. However, instead of running amuck, the apes settle down to domestic bliss... which totally upsets Lt Col Nevitt as he has some really expensive weapons to play with... and Goddamnit, he's gonna play with them and so sets out to destroy the happy couple.Okay, so I'm making light of the story plot, but hey, that, in a nutshell, is the story. For a creature feature, there's way too many scenes of Mr & Mrs K sitting around picking racoons off of each other. Also, the fact that it's two men in Gorilla costumes is so evident it's laughable, especially today. This section of the film doesn't wear well after an age. However, it's the other effects that add strength to the action sequences of the film. The fight scenes between apes and army are well done and are paced so well as to actually be exciting.The other thing that carries the film is the acting. Though the leads, Brian Kerwin and Linda Hamilton are very good in their roles, it was John Ashton as Nevitt that made this film for me.I'd not really recommend this film to anybody. To be truthful, the original movie is still superb and better than this, let alone the Peter Jackson Remake and the latest action flick Kong: Skull Island, both of which are superior in every way. Though if you like your monster movies with a heavy dose of cheesiness then maybe you can give this a go... it does have it's good points.

Well people, this is it! The worst movie for Giant Monster Month! I can't imagine any of the others being worse. Many people didn't know that there was a sequel to "King Kong" (the 1976 version at least) and it ended up being one of the dumbest monster movies of all time. Everything about this plot and story is so idiotic. It features King Kong who has been in a coma for the past ten years being cared for by a science institute. It's downright cartoonish to see all these giant surgical instruments being used. They give him a giant artificial heart but it ends up breaking him out of his coma.He gets a blood transfusion from another giant gorilla, this one a female. This is where the main idiocy kicks in. Why exactly where they keeping Kong alive? When he wakes up, they try to kill him. Why did they keep him alive all those years if they never wanted him to wake up? That's very stupid. Kong apparently develops some sort of psychic link with the female ape and it's as stupid as it sounds. They fall in love and it's disturbing how the female Kong was designed with boobs, somewhat. We get pointless scenes where these other people fall in love and it's all pointless.The female Kong is pregnant, even though we see no signs of pregnancy. Maybe I'm just ignorant of gorilla gestation. There's one scene where Kong is hit with a rock and blood is everywhere. Then we see him again with no visible wounds. That's very dumb too. The characters, even the side ones are annoying and useless. Why is the military chasing after these gorillas if they just want to go back to the wild? What did they think would happen by keeping Kong alive for a decade? It looks like Kong's eating giant crocodile toys at one point. This movie is dumb and ridiculous. *

Laughably bad sequel to the Dino de Laurentiis 1976 version of King Kong, itself an epic ape turd. The ridiculous plot has Kong, having survived the fall at the end of the last film, comatose for ten years needing a heart operation. Problem is they need blood and he's the only giant gorilla around. That is until a female Kong is conveniently discovered by a wannabe Indiana Jones (Brian Kerwin). So he captures it and surgeon Linda Hamilton uses its blood to save Kong. Then Kong and his new girlfriend break free and go on the run together, stopping to eat snakes and moss and have sex. I can't even believe I'm typing this nonsense. This is a movie someone paid to make. What a world.This is awful stuff but it does have some so-bad-it's-good qualities. I can only imagine the room in which the screenwriters wrote this was filled with ganja smoke. Who wants to see a King Kong movie for heart transplants or giant apes falling in love and having babies? Sadly the romance between the apes isn't half as bland as the romance between the humans. Hamilton is fine in her role. She manages to keep a straight face throughout, which I imagine took some doing. She does have a couple of truly pitiful lines, though. Like when she is about to have sex with Brian Kerwin, she says "It's what primates do." For his part playing the man-child love interest who discovers Lady Kong, Kerwin doesn't impress but with the way the part is written he never really could have. The bad guy is Taggart from Beverly Hills Cop. He's really good at playing hard asses. His character's fate is hilarious.Because it's the 80s there are lots of vehicle flips. The special (ha!) effects, courtesy of Carlo Rambaldi, are pathetic. More guy-in-ape-suit silliness. The best things I can say about this stinker are that (1) It has quite a bit of unintended comedy (2) John Scott's score isn't half-bad and (3) Linda Hamilton looks stunning. The cinematographer obviously knew it as his camera lingers on her in every close-up. Best moment? Kong steps on a DeLorean. This is objectively not a good movie. How much enjoyment you will get out of it depends on your tolerance for movies so bad you can only find joy in making fun of them.

When I was reading scripts and pitching story ideas to Alex De Benedetti (Dino's son-in-law although I wasn't aware of it at the time and future producer of "Evil Dead II", "Pumpkinhead"), I was asked by Alex to pitch a story idea for a sequel to "King Kong". My story had a similar type of resurrection to the one that is used in this movie but from there it changed sharply. The only way I could figure to make a sequel to "Kong" was to include a strong element of satire (which was, to some degree, in the 1976 film as well)and I also wanted to do a bit of a homage to the Japanese monster movies (like "Godzilla" and even the original "King Kong"). They went in a different direction-a horrible different direction."King Kong Lives" has a cheesy charm but the actors look like they are trapped in a film and looking for a way out. It seems Kong didn't die when he fell from the Twin Towers (wow, that's a miracle!); he's in a coma, needs a new heart (yep, they have a giant mechanical heart but Kong needs plasma--of course they find a Lady Kong for a blood transfusion and Kong, naturally, has big ape sex with the lady. Aside from setting up the potential for a family franchise (which didn't happen--"Lives" was a big flop), the ending could only have come from Dino (RIP)who dreamed big even if sometimes big wasn't better.I didn't see "King Kong Lives" until years after it was released (I had no desire really--it sounded kind of dumb)but when I finally did I couldn't believe how bad the film was. Luckily, the writer of this film went on to bigger, better and bolder things (Steven Pressfield who penned the script for "Above the Law" and the novel The Legend of Bagger Vance)but it seemed like this was a career ender for the director John Guillerman.For a chuckle you could watch "King Kong Lives" and you'll realize that what really lives in this film is the spirit of 50's cheesy B-movies on an "A" budget.