Kong's Bestest Girl

Took my kids to see the overwrought, overlong, overdone King Kong remake. It wasn't bad, until physics and logic and common sense and continuity and character consistency went completely out the window, about 30 minutes into it. I gotta admit, those Skull Island natives were some really, really well-done scary-creepy natives. That was the most intense part of the entire movie, both for me and the kids.

But the love interest, the over-young, over-thin Naomi Watts just didn't do it for me. The good-hearted girl from outta town who just wants to make good on the Great White Way and yadda yadda sugary garbage? And then she does that dumbass schtick on the prehistoric bat cliff for Kong's amusement? It was beyond stupid; it was sad. So, she was no Faye Wray.

But Faye Wray never did it for me. Maybe it was because even when I was 12 and saw the 1933 classic for the first time, in my mind she was already pushing 70. That and everything was so dark in that film, it was hard to really even tell what she looked like. She reminded me of pictures of my grandmother when she was young, fuzzy around the edges, in ridiculous clothing; after all, they were contemporaries.













For my money, the gratuitously sexist, racist, and gory 1975 King Kong has got Kong's bestest girl. Without a doubt, it's Jessica Lange. I'd cling to a 1000-foot building for her.

Yeah, the film is just an interconnected series of ridiculoulsy lingering shots of Lange. The at-sea find in the launch, wet and in a sexy evening gown, the half-t-shirt at the beach landing, even this cheeky shot from the jaunt (through Kauai) to the natives' pallisade.

The she meets Kong and things really get hot. I love this photo of Ms. Lange. That body is just about as perfect as they come. Look at that absolutely magnificent swell of calf and thigh. Of course, today she'd be called a fat cow by her contemporaries and the press. Our current magnificent examples of female form are the grotesquely thin Paris Hiltons and Lindsay Lohans, the dead-trashbag-walking, impossibly, unattractively thin. But this look, pure magic, absolute radiance.

And then Kong "got her wet" and pulled her top off.  And she seemed to enjoy it.  Cheeky monkeys.