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Happy birthday, you hairy beast! Forty-three years ago, the greatest ape to appear on the silver screen was reimagined. Forty-three years before that, King Kong appeared with Fay Wray’s Anne Darrow, Robert Armstrong’s Carl Denham, and Bruce Cabot’s John Driscoll. The reimagining was the first update for King Kong since the original 1933 black and white masterpiece. We’re not going to count the Muppet-styled gorilla that fought Godzilla. This Skull Island resident costarred with a different cast of mains in Jessica Lange as Dwan, the replacement character for Anne Darrow, Jeff Bridges as Jack Prescott, and Charles Grodin as Fred Wilson. This King Kong climbed the World Trade Center instead of the Empire State Building. This King Kong was the icon of my childhood a half year before we’d become obsessed with a more man-sized hairy beast, Chewbacca of Star Wars. This King Kong is a post-hippie comment on capitalism and man’s desire to control nature. This King Kong (1976) is forty three years old.

Dad bod sets in, but we still love this ape. A more lean and youthful monkey monster made its way into our hearts in King Kong (2005) when Peter Jackson brought the pop culture star back to the silver screen in an authentic attempt to recapture the feel of the original. We’ve even seen the new guy in a spin-off, and soon we’ll see him face off against, and probably team up with Godzilla. But the King Kong that stands out as one of the last “man-in-a-monkey-suit” monsters is the one designed and worn by special effects legend Rick Baker, and voiced by Peter Cullen.

As a young boy, the producer’s name was a mouthful, but I felt proud when I could roll Dino De Laurentiis’s name off my tongue. He’s credited as producer of a mile long list of staples in the film world before and since King Kong, but this one has to be my favorite. His King Kong, as directed by John Guillermin, ages with you. It’s a kid’s awesome fantasy, and an adult’s awesome fantasy at the same time.

But even as adults, we know that King Kong is tailor-made for a ten-year-old. Age appropriate, and simultaneously a hero and a fearsome monster. In the 1976 version, when Kong is toying with Dwan, Jessica Lange’s character is picked up in the giant robotic ape hand. She screams, “I can’t stand heights! Honest I can’t. When I was ten-years-old, they took me up in the Empire State Building and I got sick in an elevator.” I’m certain screen writer, Lorenzo Semple Jr., incidentally born in 1923, was probably alluding to his own experience seeing the original King Kong on the screen for the first time as a ten year old in 1933.

The team that put together the 1976 version of King Kong grew up on the giant ape and must have been thrilled with its revolutionary production. They did our guy justice. Unfortunately, Kong’s second trip to New York City would be a fatal one again. That is until we reached the medical age of the artificial heart. It was the perfect joining of science and science fiction. Kong would receive a new ticker in the forgettable King Kong Lives. How appropriate that we’d have little love for the version of Kong who had a fake heart. Still, the substandard becomes endearing with age. We can put the terrible sequel aside, or we can enjoy it as silly and campy. But there’s no denying our monkey-suited friend from the 1976 remake. No CGI ape can ever replace the love we have for the super-sized simian from Paramount Pictures.

Happy birthday, big guy.

King Kong 1976
Theatrical release poster by John Berkey / Paramount Pictures

Related Article: See Rambo vs. Godzilla in Amazing Mashup Trailer

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