NO ENCORES: The Mighty Kong (1998)

1. The Mighty Kong

Director: Art Scott

“King Kong” was considered so shocking in 1933 that it supposedly sent audience members fleeing from the theater in terror. Even from a modern perspective, there's a certain unnerving ferocity to the scenes of Kong chomping on people or crushing Skull Island natives under his feet. Despite that, people – and children especially – loved the enormous, murderous gorilla. Only thirty years after Marian C. Cooper's killer creation terrorized viewers, the big ape had been reconfigured into a fangless figure for youngsters. “The King Kong Show” was the simian star's debut in animation, a 1966 Saturday day morning cartoon that recast the killer ape as a hero that fought mad scientists, robots, and aliens at the command of a precocious kid. This was far from Kong's last appearance in animation either. In fact, a new “Kong” cartoon tends to appear just about any time the big monkey rampages across theater screens. 

This is not the case with “The Mighty Kong,” which appeared directly on video store shelves with little prompting in 1998. In fact, there's not much behind-the-scenes information on this obscure, usually forgotten motion picture. Which is frustrating because its mere existence raises a lot of question. Doing a cartoon based on “King Kong” is one thing but transforming the classic horror film into a low-budget, Disney-style animated musical is a bizarre idea. “The Mighty Kong” was the sole directorial feature of Art Scott, who got his start as a writer with Disney in the forties before working extensively with Hanna-Barbera Television from the sixties onward. I have no idea if “The Mighty Kong's” unlikely logline was Scott's idea. Maybe the project had its origin with producers Lyn Henderson and Denis deVallance, both of whom worked extensively in the music industry. Either way, it remains probably the oddest part of Kong's cinematic legacy. Known almost exclusively by animation nerds and kaiju obsessives nowadays, “The Mighty Kong” is usually regarded as the worst “Kong” movie in a world where “King Kong Lives” exists. 

Like most slightly off-brand versions of this story, “The Mighty Kong” is not based on the classic 1933 film. Instead, it's an adaptation on the novelization of Cooper's script by Delos W. Lovelace, which was published a year before the film and notoriously fell into the public domain some time later. This means “The Mighty Kong” still more-or-less follows the outline we're all familiar with. Even relatively minor scenes – like Denham directing Ann in a screen test on the boat's deck or the Skull Island locals climbing aboard via a chain – are maintained. However, there are some minor differences. Such as Carl Denham being named C.B. Denham, the boat being called something different, and Jack Driscoll encountering a triceratops on Skull Island, instead of a stegosaurus. 

However, the story we all know is here: In the thirties, stage producer and director C.B. Denhem plots a trip to the mysterious Skull Island for his next motion picture, which he promises will be an epic. He recruits struggling actress Ann Darrow off the street to star before the crew – which includes Jack Driscoll – pile onto the boat. They make the journey to Skull Island, which is a dangerous place inhabited by killer dinosaurs and savage natives. And, of course, an enormous gorilla god named Kong. Ann is abducted to be Kong's latest sacrifice, the ape falling in love with her. Denham and his team knock Kong out with sleeping gas and take him back to New York City, intending him to be the biggest star on Broadway. Instead, the gorilla breaks loose and goes on a rampage. 

Of course, “The Mighty Kong” also changes many details in order to make it suitable for young children. (And condensed the runtime down to 71 minutes.) Kong doesn't eat or kill anybody. Neither do the dinosaurs on Skull Island. The giant gorilla doesn't split the T-Rex's jaw open. Instead, he just bops it on the head and knocks it unconscious. A kid sidekick named Ricky is added to the boat's crew, who has his own sidekick in the form of a monkey named Chip. Most prominently, the ending is altered. Kong still grabs Ann Darrow and climbs the Empire State Building. However, he's not gunned down by biplanes and falls to his death. Instead, the huge ape is grabbed in a massive net hulled by a blimp, which breaks his fall enough for him to survive the climatic swan dive. 

Yes, “The Mighty Kong” has the audacity to rewrite the most famous tragic ending in monster movie history. However, by the time you get to that point, the cartoon has already sucked all the grandeur and terror out of the story. Quite a lot of extremely pedestrian slapstick is added to the premise. A large-nosed camera man stumbles and falls all across Skull Island. The natives of Skull Island are reduced to farcical figures, rotund bodies hidden behind clownish masks or face paint. When Kong escapes his shackles on Broadway, his rampage across Manhattan results in nothing but comedic set pieces. And, folks, let me tell ya, most of these gags are pretty fucking dire. The physical comedy is designed to be as toothless as possible. 

No decision robs the “Kong” story of its foreboding atmosphere or hair-raising adventure more so than turning it into a musical. It's not that people bursting into song and dance seems all that improbable in a story that already includes a giant gorilla and living dinosaurs. Instead, the quality of the music is more the issue. “The Mighty Kong” managed to lure in the Sherman Brothers, legendary Disney songwriters, to provide the songs. Needless to say, this does not represent their best work. The opening number, “Wild Animal Follies,” and the song Denham uses to lure Ann into his plan, “Lotusland (Hollywood),” are incessantly catchy in a very annoying manner because the sound and lyrics are so inane. The inanity reaches its peak with a number called “Dolly of Pa-Pali,” where Ann imagines herself as a Polynesian queen during questionable fantasies. As lame as these songs are – they are all repeated several times – the film's worst number is its love ballad. “I've Known You All My Life” is a warbling, discordant song full of romantic clichés. Worst, it forces Ann and Jack together into a romance that's never hinted at in any scenes before this one. 

The songs and presence of a cute animal sidekick makes “The Mighty Kong's” other main inspiration all the more apparent. Yes, this film is one of the many attempts to copy the Disney formula that flooded the market in the nineties. Unlike other coattail riders of the Disney Renaissance, “The Mighty Kong” couldn't afford much in the way of decent animation. The character designs are bland. Ann looks like a generic blonde Barbie heroine, Driscoll looks like a more hirsute version of Prince Eric. Some of the more minor characters, such as the Skull Islanders or that cameraman, are outright ugly. While the film is ostensibly set in the thirties, Ricky looks like a reject from “Wish Kid.”

There's one or two moments when the animation has something like a fluid quality to it, such as Kong's first appearance or when he escapes his shackles. Or when a duo of lobsters are dancing. (Don't ask for context.) However, the animation is mostly janky, the movements often stiff and weightless. The colors are bright but indistinct, the backgrounds lacking detail. The subpar quality of the animation is especially notable during the musical numbers, which sometimes resort to roughly drawn still images. The love ballad is devoted to weird, star-like images flashing on-screen. Animation of this quality would be about standard for a middling Saturday morning cartoon of the time, well below what you'd expect from a feature length film. 

I recall seeing advertisements for “The Mighty Kong” in Disney Adventures Magazine as a kid. Those paper ads highly promoted the presence of Dudley Moore and Jodi Benson in the voice cast. Benson's presence, as Ann, makes the movie's desperate attempt to emulate Disney's blockbusters all the more obvious. Benson is clearly not invested in the material. Moore, in what would be his final credit before his 2002 death, at least provides a little bit of pep and energy to the part of C.B. Denham. Not that the script gives any of the voice cast – most of which is not noteworthy – much of anything to work with. The dialogue ranges from prefunctory to asinine. 

I've long heard about how lackluster “The Mighty Kong” is. The film's many detractors are not wrong. This is cheaply assembled slop meant for the most undiscerning of kiddie audiences, a bastardization of a classic character and story. Still, the movie is not as totally wretched as it could've been. It doesn't reach the depths of even more pathetic direct-to-video animated schlock, like “Titanic: The Legend Goes On” or that Christopher Columbus cartoon. This is admittedly a very low bar indeed to clear. Morbid curiosity got the best of me with this one but I cannot recommend “The Mighty Kong” to anyone but the strictest of “Kong” completists. In the varied landscape of bizarre and dispiriting “King Kong” spin-offs – which includes at least one other attempt to turn the story into a musical – this definitely ranks somewhere near the bottom. [3/10]