King Kong Lives (1986) - Newspaper Ad

Oakland Tribune - December 18, 1986

General audiences were not all that happy with this campy, goofy, and nutty sequel to 1976's only slightly less campy, much less goofy, and nowhere near as nutty King Kong. This thing left a smoking crater at the box office during the 1986 holiday movie season and, most likely, drove the final nail into the coffin of the short-lived DEG production company.

I was working at the Empire Cinema in San Francisco at the time, which is one of the theaters it opened to to empty seats at on the west side of the Bay Area, so I got to see it on the big screen.

Truth be told, I do not think the movie is that bad. If it had been made 20 years earlier, and in Japan, I think it might be a tad more beloved in giant monster movie circles. Maybe. But in the United States in 1986, King Kong Lives was woefully out of touch and out of place for what for audiences wanted and expected from a movie of this kind. So it goes.