Word: wray
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...anti-heroics of Deep Purple, Bad Company, et. al. and the Kong-ish comparatively well mannered Queen and various courtiers. Well, personally, I don't care much more for the sugary-coated spring-bolts of, say, Queen's music, than I do for the sight of a drooling Fay-Wray-hypnotised Kong. Give me Bad Company any day. But to get back to the unfortunately surnamed Mr. Bangs' image, I guess we're supposed to believe that somehow heavy metal has become deader than any dodo, or at least lost its teeth, claws and selfish-gene nastiness and become...
...green with envy at the profits, but he would have at least had the comfort of knowing that his version (the one he starred in) was better. Beyond a not-too-great over-all impression and a nostalgic haze, the only scenes that stick in this film are Fay Wray's screen test on the boat heading toward Kong's island and Kong's unveiling in New York before a black tie and monocle society crowd during the Depression. It does indeed best the current version, however, and an evening of applauding and mock sentimentalizing should be in store during...
There was something darkly enigmatic about the original Kong. Fay Wray had stirred the softer side of his nature and forced him, as it were, to re-examine some of his premises. But no matter how tenderly he picked her up, one never knew whether he would lose control of his enormous strength and destroy what he seemed to love. The very blankness of his expression reinforced the anxiety. When the old Kong breaks loose in New York, he is angry-no question about it. He will have his vengeance on his captors and on those who come to gawk...
Perhaps the most successful of Dino's last-minute improvisations was the casting of Jessica Lange in the old Fay Wray role. Streisand almost signed on, then backed away. Cher would have been acceptable, but was visibly pregnant when production started. Then began a search for an unknown, which followed another mythical pattern: the fashion model flown out from Manhattan for a test; a first meeting with an unimpressed producer; the discovery by the director that she had one of those faces the camera loves; the producer's quick reversal of opinion; a hasty contract signing...
Lange benefits from some of Semple's best lines. Unlike Fay Wray in the original, who was mostly called upon to scream and faint, Lange plays a sexually hip chick, a movie starlet who literally drifts into the picture as a castaway from a wrecked yacht on which she was cruising with a movie producer who had promised her a part. Once she gets over the shock of Kong's first spectacular pickup, she treats him like all the apelike movie moguls she has had to fend off. She tries helplessness ("I can't stand heights"), anger...