' Kong falls from the twin towers and he appears to be alive. However, his heart is failing, so it's replaced with an artificial one. All is well until he senses that there's a female Kong somewhere out there and escapes wreaking havoc.'
Almost everything about 1986's King Kong Lives was misguided. The sequel to the 1976 picks up from the ending of the first film, with footage of Kong lying on the street, after being shot down from the World Trade Center. This was the start of the movie's many mistakes.
The emotional punch of the first film was it's ending. Kong's trip to New York and his tragic ending, trying to save Dwan, (Jessica Lange) until the end. Even the tagline, 'It was beauty that killed the beast', doesn't make sense with Kong being revived from his death from the fall.
Bad decisions continue, with Kong now put into a coma for the next 10 years. When he's revived, he needs a heart transplant, so another giant gorilla, a lady Kong, is created and brought to the lab where Kong's being kept. The Kongs in this film are laughably silly, with the director and special effects team seemingly not even trying to hide that it's just a man in a gorilla suit.
The special effects in 1986 should have advanced a bit from ten years earlier, yet they appear much worse than in the 1976 version. I'm guessing it was about money, but it was also about story. I cared about the love story in the previous version, so suspending belief was easy. The story was so bad in the 86 version, viewers were continually reminded that everything they were watching was fake.
The only plus to me was the casting, as I like both of the leads, actor Linda Hamilton and Brian Kerwin. They also pulled a bit of surprise by having the hot man lifted and held by Kong, (but only briefly) and not the female heroine. As a little kid, seeing the hot guy in Kong's huge hands made an impact, and one of the only redeeming feature of this really bad film. I did an Actors & SKIN feature on Brian Kerwin back in 2017, but decided it needed a major update with some new images and video clips. Check it out on FH HERE:
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