Hubrisween 2016 :: Q is for Queen Kong (1976)

In the jungle, the suspicious looking jungle, a desperate explorer flees from a horde of buxom amazonian women. And as the soundtrack farts and burps along, our Not So Naked Prey dodges a few spears before he is eventually run down and strung up over a giant stewpot. But when all hope seems lost and the man is about to become lunch, someone yells “Cut!” from offscreen and the scene quickly breaks as the mincing male actor turns into a raging queen and goes bitchy bananas, calling the director, Lucy “Luce” Habit (Lenska), a “female chauvinist cow” before he quits and storms off the set.

Good riddance to worthless rubbish, says Habit, who gets even more bad news from her talent agent. With her reputation as a sadist preceding her, seems that bloke was her last shot as no other actor in his right mind will ever hire on to do the director’s next picture, set to shoot in the deepest darkest corners of Africa, and whose subject matter Habit is keeping under wraps.

And so -- and stop me if you’ve heard this before, Habit vows that if audiences want a male love interest in her feminist pictures, and no professional actor is tough enough for the job, then she’ll just have to go out and find an unprofessional one on her own. Hitting the streets of London, Habit soon becomes smitten with a blonde-haired vagabond as he tries and fails to steal a toffeed apple; and then she bemusedly lurks as he tries to pull another con on a pawn-shop owner, where he fakes an injury so he can steal an original King Kong poster. This leads to a merry chase of Habit chasing the shop owner who chases the blonde down the crowded street complete with faux Benny Hill muzak.

And once he’s caught, Habit steps in, pays for the poster, and offers to buy the blonde a drink, who introduces himself as -- wait for it -- Ray Fay (Askwith). And while he tries to bum some reefer off a fellow hipster twit, Habit spikes his drink and then bundles the unconscious Ray onto her boat, the Liberated Lady, where her all girl crew ... ah crap, I had completely forgotten this was also a musical ... break into a haphazard song as the ship weighs anchor and sails for Africa -- destination, the land of Lazinga Where They Do the Konga -- and would someone, anyone, just shoot me now, please and thank you?

When Ray wakes up Habit makes her pitch and, not being the most tuned in station on the radio dial, with delusions of stardom he agrees to be in her picture. And while we know what that entails, Ray doesn’t but he’s promised the romance of a lifetime and the biggest leading lady ever captured on film (-- wink, wink, nudge, nudge, and I am way, way, way too sober for this). Anyway, in short order Habit, her star, and her crew troop into the jungle, where they find a group of native Nabonga dancers doing, you guessed it, the Conga in front of a large gated wall -- not to mention the giant chair and table sitting nearby. 

And when the ceremony reaches its climax, they raise a giant cake, inside of which is leavened the ‘Husband of Kong’ but this sacrifice comes to a screeching halt as blah blah blah, the chieftess (Leon) wants to sacrifice Ray instead, Habit won’t let her, blah blah blah return to the boat, the natives nab Ray, stuff him inside a cake, and, oh, for dumb, bang the Kong Gong while bogarting some Conga Cola, summoning a great She-Ape -- well, more of a walking carpet sample with hardshell knockers, from the other side of the wall, who snatches up Ray and retreats before Habit can rescue him. Undaunted, Habit rallies her crew and leads the charge into the jungle to save Ray, where giant horny apes, cheeky plants, rubber dinosaurs, and even more asinine musical numbers and atrocious puns lurk...

I’m not so sure that Dino de Laurentiis didn’t do the whole world a huge favor by bringing a lawsuit against the producers of Queen Kong (1976), which prevented its release for several decades. A film conceived and executed to ride and cash-in on the ginormous publicity wave generated by Big Dino De’s much ballyhooed remake -- however, unlike the legendary Italian producer, not-so-legendary producer Keith Cavele and his Dexter Films Ltd. failed to get permission from RKO for the use of their copyrighted characters and property, which it, forgive me, apes mercilessly.

A German, Italian and British co-production, Queen Kong was intended as a bawdy gender-switched spoof of the Big Ape, with the ball-breaking Habit replacing Carl Denham and meat-head Ray replacing Fay Wray -- stress on the intended. Frankly, I think the biggest mistake Cavele made was trying to beat the King Kong (1976) remake into theaters, especially when you consider all the international cash-ins that followed that never got sued like Hong Kong’s The Mighty Peking Man (1977) and Korea’s A*P*E (1976). Or maybe, just maybe, Cavele’s film was just that bad, and no matter how skewed it still hewed a little too close to the original and could therefore actually be construed as detrimental and damaging to the legitimate remake’s release.

At least that’s how the plaintiffs (RKO General Inc. and Dino de Laurentiis Productions) laid it out in their complaint, saying they found the script to be “so appalling” it couldn’t do anything but “repercuss poorly on their client's’ reputation” if it was ever thought Queen Kong was associated with King Kong; and further investigation showed “in plot, events, and characters there was a close resemblance between the two films, and an analyzed sample of the screenplay showed a resemblance in details.” 

And so, they asked the judge to ban the distribution of Queen Kong based on potential damages and copyright infringement. The defendant (Dexter Films) countered, arguing there was no infringement of copyright, saying “King Kong was a horror movie concerning a male gorilla while their film was purely light-hearted and about a female ape, and that any similarities derived from the fact that Queen Kong was an affectionate pastiche or light-hearted satire."

However, the defendants did not deny that the timing of the film was chosen to take advantage of the big expenditure incurred by the Paramount’s publicity department for the King Kong remake but contended this was smart business to do so. And while the judge agreed that the film was different enough they still did not have permission to use the copyrighted material. And so, judgement came down in favor of the plaintiffs and Queen Kong was banned from being released in Britain and the United States. It did see a limited release in Italy and West Germany, and proved to be a big hit in Japan. The film eventually saw the light of day on DVD back in 2003 to cash-in on yet another announced remake, Peter Jackson’s King Kong (2005), which is where I first encountered it. A decision I still regret to this day.

As you watch this shit-hemorrhage of a movie, what strikes you the most, what with the soft-focus, oversaturated lighting, it’s star (-- more on this in a sec), and the loaded title twist, is how much Queen Kong comes off as the world’s worst/most incompetent pornographic movie -- because there’s no naughty bits to be found. (Lots of jiggling, and racial insensitivity, but no naughty bits.) 

No, what director Frank Agrama and co-screenwriter Ronald Dobrin were actually shooting for, I think, was a bawdy disco-era and feminist spin on tin-pan-alley burlesque -- again, without the benefit of any stripteases, leaving the audience with nothing but a series of broad comedic sketches, where everybody’s a ham, spewing gallons of creamed corniness, and filled to the brim with innuendo, double entendres and those atrocious puns I mentioned earlier -- all that was missing after each whiffed punchline was someone chiming in with “I’ll say she is.” Picture Carry On, Kaiju, and there ya go.

Is there anything worse than watching a comedy where all involved are so committed and feel so sure that what they’re doing is hilarious only it isn’t? -- quite the exact opposite actually. And as it played out, it is kind of amazing how closely the film stuck to the original version, getting sidetracked on a couple of occasions to take even broader potshots at JAWS and the Airport franchise. Granted, the one area that Queen Kong actually improves on Kong ‘76 is the dinosaur combat in the jungles of Lazinga. The gorilla suit is pretty awful, yes, and the efforts to chroma-key her into the action is even gawdawfuler, but that rubberized T-Rex and Pterodactyl were honestly pretty great and could’ve used more screen time.

Alas, we’re mostly stuck with the human element, and once Ray is rescued and the ape is captured, it’s off to London where she will be put on display -- only the slimy promoter won’t let them do it until they cover the lady ape’s bare boobies for reasons of standards and practices. By now, Ray has had a change of heart and has fallen for the old girl; and so, when Queen Kong inevitably escapes, shreds her bra, and manages to track him down after the requisite property damage, he realizes everyone hates her only because this Kong is a woman, and then rallies the women of London to come to their rescue, resulting in a riot of female liberation and eventual deportation of the lady Kong back to Lazinga.

A pox on this whole enterprise, says I. And I’m not alone. According to his memoir, star Robin Askwith said he and co-star Rula Lenska were also “aghast” at how bad the finished film turned out and were thankful for the lawsuit, hoping it would never see the light of day. A veteran of the Confessions… series, poor man’s Mick Jagger Askwith was no stranger to this kind of sexual farce, having done it as a window cleaner, a pop performer, a summer camp counselor, and now, a dudette in distress.

Feeling like one big inside joke that everyone is in on except you, as I struggle for anything nice to say about Queen Kong I will leave you with my theory on anti-comedy: You might not think there is anything worse than a bad comedy but there is such a thing as anti-comedy, which is essentially a volatile humor vacuum of biblical proportions. And like with matter and antimatter, if the two substances ever came into contact with each other, and if there is enough of each, we’re talking an extinction level explosive discharge. I think the same thing is theoretically possible if any actual comedy ever came into contact with anti-comedy. Thankfully, Queen Kong was consistently up to the task, leaving this hypotheses in the realm of the hypothetical. So, yay, for that.
 

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Queen Kong (1976) Cine-Art München :: Dexter Film London / EP: Keith Cavele / P: Virgilio De Blasi / D: Frank Agrama / W: Frank Agrama, Ronald Dobrin, Fabio Piccioni / C: Ian Wilson / E: David Campling / M: Pepper / S: Robin Askwith, Rula Lenska, Valerie Leon, Roger Hammond, John Clive, Carol Drinkwater

Favorites :: Behind the Scenes :: Nobody Cry When the Giant Robot Monkey Die: Damage Control and the Aftermath of King Kong '76.

As much grief as Dino De Laurentiis and Carlo Rambaldi got for the colossal failure of the much ballyhooed giant mechanical gorilla for the 1976 version of King Kong, the execution of those giant animatronic gorilla hands was actually quite good. A bona fide miracle, perhaps, for, as the legend goes, due to an accelerated production schedule (-- the reasons for which would take a whole ‘nother post to explain), the hydraulics to run them were so complicated, they weren't really finished when filming began. And when they finally got them kinda sorta working, the crew wanted to show them off to their producer. And when De Laurentiis walked into the studio, the giant arm extended toward him and flipped him the bird. And while De Laurentiss broke up over this, so did the arm. It seized up and the obscene gesture remained as is for almost a week.

But as erratic as the hands were, the full-sized mock-up proved even more temperamental than Bruce the mechano-shark did in JAWS (1975). In theory and design, it was an ambitious, technical marvel. In the execution, well...

Now, the arms and robot were designed by Rambaldi but were engineered and built under the supervision of Glen Robinson. Originally, De Laurentiss tried to commission some aerospace engineers to manufacture the robot but they required nearly a year and a half to complete it. Thus, it was up to Robinson, who had it built in less than five months. Built? Yes. Working? No. Well, not quite. When finished the contraption weighed in at nearly six tons, filled with some 3,100 feet of hydraulic hoses and 4,500 feet of electrical wire ensconced inside an aluminum skeleton, covered with an additional two tons of molded rubber and imported Argentinian horsehair, styled and stitched in by famed wig maker, Michael Dino.

In theory, the prop could walk, turn at the waist and move those attached arms (built separately) into sixteen unique positions as piloted by a half-dozen technicians manning twice that many levers each -- all of them Italians, who needed all instructions translated, which caused even more delays. And when it made its debut, in front of an anxious crowd at Shea Stadium, including several execs from Paramount, and they engaged those levers, Kong’s eyes started to move, then his mouth opened in a silent roar and the crowd went nuts. But this was soon followed by several screams and a lot of fingers pointing to one of the legs. (Other reports said it was toward the crotch.) Seems several hydraulic hoses had burst and Robo-Kong was hemorrhaging out gallons upon gallons of crimson-tinted fluid. Things never really improved from there, which explains why the contraption wound up with so little screen-time in the finished film – and most of that were just static long-shots. All told, a mere 25 seconds.

The animatronic hands fared a little better. They were six-feet across and weighed nearly a ton each. Again, the giant body was built to accommodate them but with all the added doodads and gizmos to run them, the main structure could barely support the weight -- so much so the technicians quickly nixed a series of  publicity photos of Robo-Kong holding Jessica Lange because of the stress factor of that much added weight and jostling on the tenuous joints.

In fact, after weathering that accelerated production schedule, including the widely circulated rumor that no one realized they had built two right hands until they were almost finished, causing even more delays while one of these was back-engineered into a southpaw (-- this apocryphal tale is sort of confirmed in Charles Grodin’s auto-biography), there were several close calls that could’ve led to a catastrophic injury.

Once the hands were unstuck and in nominal working order they decided to do another trial run. And so stuntwoman Sunny Woods crawled into the hand and braced herself while the contraption was engaged and the fingers slowly closed around her, and then started to lift her up into the air. But it had barely gotten more than 10 feet off the ground when the hand snapped at the wrist and several lines blew, causing the hand to lose pressure and to contract even further. Luckily, the safety bolts in the finger joints worked as designed and prevented the hand from crushing the girl, but left her dangling in mid-air. Thus the movie became a trial by fire for all involved, especially for Lange and Woods, who were essentially at the mercy of two pilot-less forklifts covered in foam rubber and horsehair for retake after retake for nearly 10 months of shooting. Lange would suffer much bruising and a pinched nerve in her heck when one of the fingers missed its mark and clobbered her in the head.

In the end, this glorified paper weight cost the studio nearly $2 million. To salvage the film they had to spend another half-million on the gorilla suit worn by Rick Baker for the majority of the picture. And then another $300,000 was spent on the giant Styrofoam corpse used for the final shots of the movie.

It’s really too bad this crew didn’t have more time to tinker and perfect the over-sized gizmos they’d made. Some of what they accomplished onscreen with those cumbersome appendages was really quite admirable. And who knows what they could’ve done with that year and half instead of the five months they got. As is, the film still won an Academy Award for Rambaldi, Robinson and Frank Van der Veer (opticals) for their efforts but even this didn’t happen without controversy when several Academy F/X board members resigned in protest (-- including Jim Danforth, who reportedly hated the film).

One of the biggest sins of King Kong ‘76, aside from the lack of dinosaurs on Skull Island, is that at no moment while watching do you, for a second, despite a valiant effort by Baker, believe that you are watching a real gorilla and not someone in a monkey-suit. Baker implored them for a better design and to allow him to walk on all fours like a real gorilla but these were all nixed to match their more anthropomorphic prop, which they were still harboring delusions of using for the majority of the picture during pre-production. As yet another legend goes, when they realized the robot might not work out and started advertising for a gorilla man in the trades, Baker said he was “the only one stupid enough to do it."

Again, you cannot blame Rambaldi, Robinson, or their crews, or Baker, for the perceived failure to light up the box-office. The film actually made a tidy profit but failed to generate ticket sales the way JAWS had the year before, sending its producer on a slightly embarrassing quest to try and top it -- ranging from Orca (1977) to The White Buffalo (1977), where he failed again and again. But you gotta admire De Laurentiis’ enthusiasm and chutzpah. Sure, his mouth wrote a check his butt couldn’t cash, but even in this failure he succeeded. For in a brash display of ballsy hucksterism that would’ve made P.T. Barnum proud, the producer promised audiences that he would deliver a giant robot Kong onscreen and he did just that. Barely.

And as I wrote this piece up, inspired by that picture way up at the top, I got to wondering as to whatever happened to the giant robot once filming was completed. I do know that when things wrapped in New York City, the thousands of gathered extras pretty much destroyed the Styrofoam replica in a wild souvenir hunt. As for the robot, well, that’s where things get a little sketchy. There are tales of it appearing at several premieres around the world. And after that, it allegedly spent some time in a circus, where it was part of an elaborate stunt-show. 

There is also solid documentation that the robot went on a barnstorming tour of South America, where it would spend weeks in a traveling circus tent, where a master of ceremonies would command it to move to a stunned audience before a blackout. But as the hydraulics kept breaking down and interest waned, the sideshow angle was abandoned and the automaton was moved one last time to stand a silent vigil in the city square of Mar del Plata, Argentina, where it apparently stood for several years.

Exposed to the elements, stripped of its hydraulic and electronic guts, as the hair and latex started to rot away, rumors spread that the prop was essentially written off and hauled to some anonymous Argentinian landfill. However, this myth is dispelled by an article that appeared in the April 29, 1985, issue of the Henderson Times-News, which stated what was left of the robot was recovered and brought home to Wilmington, North Carolina, where De Laurentiis had opened a studio (De Laurentiis Entertainment Group (DEG)), perhaps all in an effort to stir-up some publicity for his proposed sequel, King Kong Lives (1986), that was currently in pre-production and due to be released one year later.

Is it still there now some thirty years later? Well, the Magic 8-Ball says the answer is once more unclear. Apparently parts of it, the head and one of the arms, were prominently on display at the studio but have since disappeared under dubious circumstances when DEG went bankrupt a mere three years later after a few high profile flops and was taken over by Carolco Pictures before they in-turn sold the lot off to Screen Gems in 1996. So, odds are the Kong robot wound up in landfill, only in a North Carolina landfill. A sad ignominious end, really, to something so notorious that could’ve been something really great.