Producer Dino De Laurentiis pulled out all the stops for his modern day remake of the classic King Kong (1933). Several knock-offs, from the sublimely silly Queen Kong (1976) to the downright tacky A*P*E (1976), were able to ride on Kong's successful coattails. No one could have guessed that a decade later, De Laurentiis himself would produce the oddest homage to his own film. A sequel that some consider to be the most unnecessary in Hollywood History, which is saying a lot considering that Weekend at Bernie's II (1993) and Basic Instinct 2 (2006) were made.

King Kong Lives (1986) begins exactly where the 1976 film left off. Jessica Lange cries out for Kong as the great ape topples from the top of the World Trade Center. The footage remains the same, but a few changes have been made to the sound design. John Scott's bombastic new score replaces John Barry's sweeping love theme and an actor's simian grunts have replaced Kong's distinctive roar. As Kong lays lifeless at the foot of the twin towers, the sounds of the paparazzi and curious onlookers have been replaced with sirens and the voices of a panicked medical team.

At the Atlanta Institute, a comatose Kong has been kept on life support for ten long years. Dr. Amy Franklin (Linda Hamilton) breaks the bad news to the University staff. "There is simply no other species whose plasma will transfuse with Kong's." With grave sincerity, she gives her final diagnosis, "Only one thing can save Kong now… a miracle."

Adventurer Hank "Mitch" Mitchell (Brian Kerwin, a poor man's Robert Redford) discovers that miracle in the jungles of Borneo. "Lady" Kong is captured and flown to the states. Gallons of blood pump through a transfusion machine as Dr. Amy begins the operation that will save Kong's life. With the press and her support team looking on, she uses a series of comically oversized medical props during the procedure. The gigantic crane that lifts Kong's damaged heart out of his chest looks an awful lot like the arcade game that uses a mechanical claw to grab a prize. An artificial heart is lowered into place.

This scene perfectly encapsulates everything that is completely nuts about King Kong Lives. They're giving a 50-foot monkey a heart transplant. The notion is utterly ridiculous, yet they're doing it straight-faced and without a hint of irony.

The operation a success, Kong recovers while Lady Kong is chained up in a nearby warehouse. The proximity of a female gets Kong a little too worked up. His attempts to escape give him heart palpitations and Dr. Amy must sedate him. The threat to Kong's health is so great that she insists Lady Kong be moved to her permanent facility immediately.

As one might expect, moving the giant Lady proves to be more difficult than expected. Lady Kong cries out, angered by the restraining cargo nets. Kong hears her pleas and easily escapes his own captivity through a handy skylight.

Tearing through the warehouse walls, Kong finally catches sight of his beloved. Their eyes meet and they gaze at each other longingly. Be sure to savor the moment. This is the only instance in cinema history where you'll see two giant monkeys making goo-goo eyes at each other. Once the tender romantic moment has passed, mayhem ensues as extras and stuntmen try to prevent the apes from getting away. Many miniature trucks and bulldozers are destroyed in the process. Kong sweeps his new girlfriend into his big hairy arms and carries her away.

There have been many evil and corrupt military men in the history of cinema. But none have been as laughably two-dimensional a Col. Nevitt (John Ashton) the crass commander in charge of capturing the simian lovebirds. "We should have no trouble identifying the enemy," he tells his troops, "They're approximately 50-feet tall and wearing their birthday suits." Oh, brother. Subtle he ain't. Nevitt might as well have Villian stamped across his forehead.

New levels of absurdity are reached during the scene at Honeymoon Ridge. Kong and Lady Kong get to know one another on a soundstage filled with miniature trees and boulders. He desperately tries to get her attention, but she plays hard to get. Kong enlists her sympathy by playing up an injury he sustained during her escape. Like a teenage boy desperate for a grope, Kong pulls the "boy am I tired" arm stretch routine. It's so ridiculous that you'd swear the filmmakers were kidding. They're not. As with everything else in the movie, they're 100% serious.

Dr. Amy and Mitch head into the mountains in search of the apes. The budding romance between the human characters is handled just as ham-handedly as with the primates. A brief and unconvincing moment of jeopardy on a rickety bridge brings Mitch and Dr. Amy closer. Afterwards, she tends to a scrape that he received while saving her. Gee, anyone see any parallels here?

The humans set up camp and observe the courtship between Kong and Lady Long. As night wears on, Dr. Amy gives Mitch a come hither look, "We're primates too." Thankfully, the monkey business (human and primate) occurs offscreen.

In the morning, a squadron of helicopters close in on Lady Kong and disperse a gas that knocks the big gal off her feet. Despite the fact that the substance just neutralized a 30-ton animal, dozens of infantrymen breathe the gas without any ill affects. Kong arrives too late to save his girlfriend and watches as she is airlifted away. Grenades and flamethrowers drive Kong further into the mountains. As an unconvincing storm rages. Nevitt shouts out ridiculous orders like, "Get that hairy son of a bitch now!"

Dr. Amy monitors Kong's heartbeat with a portable EKG device. With nowhere else to turn, Kong makes the leap into the dangerous waters of a raging river. He bashes his head on a rock and slips beneath the surface. Dr. Amy loses his signal. Kong is dead.

However, since the movie is only half over, Kong's demise is rather unlikely.

Lady Kong is imprisoned in a military missile silo deep underground. After dealing with months worth of bureaucratic red tape, Dr. Amy is finally allowed to see her. Lady Kong isn't doing well. It seems she's suffering from the grand cinematic affliction that effects all lovelorn heroines… ennui.

"She feels something," Dr. Amy discerns. "Kong is alive." Not only is she a surgeon, but it seems she's an expert in animal psychology as well. Is there nothing this woman can't do?

Meanwhile, Kong has spent the past few months living in the wilderness. How a primate of his size could evade detection for so long is anybody's guess. We're supposed to believe that he's survived by eating fully grown gators, but the pet shop sized reptiles he plucks from the miniature bayou set are less than convincing. After hearing his mate's plaintive cries, Kong comes out of hiding and stirs up the redneck populace.

A group of hunters straight out of Deliverance use dynamite and an avalanche (don't ask) to trap Kong. Buried up to his neck in rubble, our hero is subjected to souvenir photos and forced to drink whiskey. When they burn him with campfire embers, Kong breaks free and graphically doles out his own brand of primate justice.

Before he can rejoin Lady Kong, he must endure some comic encounters with the local citizenry. This is the one time where the film purposefully tries to be comedic. The results are less than stellar. Kong gets hit with a line drive when he wanders onto a golf course and later crushes a brand new Ferrari. "My dad's gonna kill me," a teenage boy moans.

Nevitt and his troops have set up a line of defense between Kong and the military base where Lady Kong is being held. When night falls, Kong launches a surprise attack. Though at this point in the film, nothing should come as a shock. By tossing dirt and debris into the air, Kong creates a smoke screen and is able to lumber past the soldiers unscathed.

Dr. Amy and Mitch easily sneak onto the base. By the way Lady Kong clutches her swollen belly, they can see that she's "with child". They unlock the missile bay doors and a giant elevator begins to lift Lady Kong to freedom. Another moment of false jeopardy occurs when a guard tries to close the hatch. Kong comes to the rescue, rips the doors open, and pulls his wife to safety.

Unfortunately, they don't make it far. Lady Kong soon collapses on top of a barn and she goes into labor. The army arrives and Nevitt gives the order to attack. As rounds of mortar fire pepper Kong, he valiantly protects his wife and child. He tosses several tanks aside and more miniature trucks burst into flame. Nevitt himself tries to bring down the beast, but Kong tosses him and his tank into a country churchyard. Thankfully, Kong puts us all out of our misery and squashes Nevitt like a bug. When he removes his mighty fist, he reveals the comically dubious sight of Nevitt's legs sticking out of a hole in the ground.

All this exertion is just too much for Kong's bum ticker. Clutching his chest, he falls at the entrance of the barn where the cries of his newborn son can be heard. The orchestra on the soundtrack swells as the humans tearfully watch Kong reach for his baby boy. The moment, like everything else in the movie, is completely insane. Not only are they ripping off the end of Spartacus (1960), but Kong's tiny son is played by and average sized actor in an odd-looking ape suit. Kong Jr. grasps at his fathers giant mechanical hand as the mighty ape finally takes his last breath.

A prolog finds the surviving members of Kong's family living on a nature reserve. Lady Kong spends her days watching her son happily swing from vine to vine Tarzan-style. Presumably, it's in this remote patch of jungle that they'd quietly live until another adventure brought them back to the big screen. Dino De Laurentiis and his producing partners were no doubt looking forward to a remake of Son of Kong (1933), but the box office failure of King Kong Lives assured that mother ape and son would live undisturbed for many years to come.

Make-up effects expert Rick Baker deserved much of the credit for bringing Kong to life in the 1976 film version. Baker not only created the monkey costume, but performed the role of Kong as well. The costuming duties on King Kong Lives fell to Carlo Rambaldi, who worked on Kong '76 by constructing the giant mechanical hand and silly life-sized robot Kong. Rambaldi's Kong suit is serviceable, a more simian, looking but less sympathetic version than the Rick Baker design. In some scenes, the rubber suit tends to unrealistically buckle like the folds of a wetsuit.

The life-sized inarticulate model (which Rambaldi also built) seen at the end of Kong '76 is reused in several scenes of King Kong Lives. Despite the fact that it looked like nothing like the new Kong suit, the prop appears in the opening operation scene and stands in for Lady Kong when she is captured by the military.

It should be noted that Peter Elliott and George Yaisoumi played the roles of Kong and Lady Kong. Elliott might be considered a simian savant. If there was a monkey movie made in the past twenty years, chances are, he was involved. From Gorillas in the Mist (1988) to Congo (1995) and The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996), Elliott is on the short list of go-to guys for Hollywood primate performers.

The King Kong Lives DVD features a widescreen (2.35:1) presentation of the film and a new Dolby 5.1 sound mix. There are no special features.

CCT also recommends:

A*P*E

King Kong

The Mighty Peking Man

If renting movies is for you, try Netflix. They stock most of the movies CCT recommends.