King Kong (1976) on Netflix
A Petrox Oil expedition sails for an island in the Indian Ocean. Stowaway paleontologist Jack Prescott warns that the islanders worship a beast, and the crew rescues Dwan from a life raft.
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Trailer
Plot summary
Fred Wilson, of the Petrox Oil Company, mounts an expedition after satellite photographs reveal an island hidden behind a permanent cloud bank in the Indian Ocean, and he is convinced the island holds a vast oil deposit. The primate paleontologist Jack Prescott stows away on the ship, claiming that a huge beast the islanders worship as a god lives there. At sea the crew pulls Dwan from a life raft; she is the only survivor of a yacht fire. The expedition lands near a giant timber wall and finds a tribe mid-ceremony, and the priest demands Dwan in trade for six village women.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about King Kong (1976)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Carlo Rambaldi's full-scale mechanical Kong cost £500,000, but it proved impossible to operate convincingly: a hydraulic pipe inside the gorilla burst during the August 1976 filming of Kong's escape in New York. The full-size ape appears for less than 15 seconds, and the ape suit was used for most of the film.
SPOILER
On one night of filming Kong's death at the World Trade Center, over 30,000 people turned up as extras. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey feared the crowd's weight would collapse the plaza and ordered filming shut down, but the crew had already got the shot they wanted.- Meryl Streep was considered for the role of Dwan but producer Dino De Laurentiis deemed her too unattractive, and Barbra Streisand turned the part down. It went to the unknown New York fashion model Jessica Lange, who had no prior acting experience.
- RKO-General countersued Universal for $5 million over Universal's planned The Legend of King Kong, and De Laurentiis countersued for $90 million on copyright and unfair-competition charges. In January 1976 both studios withdrew their suits, and Universal canceled The Legend of King Kong.
- NBC paid De Laurentiis $19.5 million for the television rights, the highest amount any network had ever paid for a film at that time. Its two-night television debut in September 1978 added around 60 minutes of extra footage.
- Jessica Lange won the Golden Globe Award for Best Acting Debut for King Kong, but she did not appear in another film for three years afterwards, spending that time training intensively in acting.
- Director John Guillermin, known for on-set outbursts, got into a public shouting match with executive producer Federico De Laurentiis, the producer's son. Dino De Laurentiis was reported to have threatened to fire Guillermin unless he started treating the cast and crew better.
- Kong's roar was not created for the remake: it was taken from the 1957 science-fiction film The Land Unknown.
