King Kong

King Kong (1976) is a fantasy adventure with a streak of horror you can watch online on iFILM. An oil company sails to an uncharted Pacific island and wakes something the locals have walled off for generations: a giant ape the natives call Kong.

Director John Guillermin drags the 1933 classic into the disco era. A stowaway paleontologist, Jack Prescott (Jeff Bridges), tags along, and the crew fishes a shipwrecked actress named Dwan out of the sea — Jessica Lange's first film role. Kong snatches her, and what grows between them is oddly tender. When the island yields no oil, the suits decide the beast itself is the payday and haul him back to Manhattan. Anyone who knows the ending knows it does not stay a spectacle for long.

This remake won an Oscar for its visual effects and split audiences ever since: a man in an ape suit standing in for the promised full-size animatronic, camp colliding with grandeur. Watch it now as a monument to 1970s studio excess, or as a beauty-and-the-beast romance. Lange is just starting here — a real acting Oscar comes a few years later. Stream King Kong (1976) online on iFILM.