Bovie Movie

Famed producer Dino De Laurentiis tries to steal the thunder from Jaws, then the top-grossing film of all-time, in this big budget remake of King Kong. (De Laurentiis related his tactics to Tom Snyder: “When Jaws dies, nobody cries. When Kong dies, they all cry.”) Updated to the 1970s, the original Robert Armstrong character is now Fred Wilson (Charles Grodin), a big-shot oil magnate from Petrox Oil, looking for new petroleum deposits on a recently discovered Pacific island. Jack Prescott (Jeff Bridges) is a counter-culture paleontologist, stowing away on Wilson’s ship, who warns that they are headed for “Skull Island,” where prehistoric monsters still live and roam free. Also along for the ride is Dwan (Jessica Lange, in her film debut), a down-on-her-luck starlet, shipwrecked in the ocean after the sinking of a yacht. She really becomes down-on-her-luck when the group lands on the island and a giant ape, Kong, takes a shine to her. Kong kidnaps her and Dwan takes umbrage when the ape tries to remove her clothes by shouting, “You male chauvinist ape!” But Prescott comes to her aid and rescues her from the gorilla’s big mits. Wilson, seeing money to be made on Kong, locks him in the cargo hold of his ship and transports him to New York City. Once there, Kong manages to escape and wreak havoc upon the beleaguered town, before being compelled to climb up the World Trade Center for sanctuary.

The true story of a man who never gave up on his dreams of doing something big — and doing it very, very fast — provides the basis for this engaging comedy drama. Burt Munro (Anthony Hopkins) was born in 1899 in Invercargill, New Zealand. From childhood, Munro had a passion for machines that moved fast, and when he was 21 he bought his first motorcycle, an Indian model with a 600 cc engine. Motorcycles became an obsession that stayed with Munro for the rest of his life, as he constantly tinkered with his beloved Indian machine, modifying the engine and frame, determined to see just how fast he could make it run. In 1967, Munro decided it was high time he proved to himself and the world just what he and his machine could do, and he booked passage for the United States, with the goal of breaking the world’s land speed record at Utah’s Bonneville Salt Flats. As Munro made his way across America to Utah, he discovered not everyone took his dream seriously, but some did, and he made a handful of friends along the way, including Ada (Diane Ladd), a widow who fell for Munro’s rough charm, and Fernando (Paul Rodriguez), a car dealer who offered to help him. However, when he finally arrived at Bonneville, Munro was told his machine was unsafe to participate in the time trials, and — far worse — he was too old to ride. It took some intervention from a ranking American driver, Jim Moffett (Chris Lawford), before Munro was given his chance to ride the famous Salt Flats. The World’s Fastest Indian was written and directed by Roger Donaldson, who early in his career made a documentary about the real Burt Munro, Offerings to the Gods of Speed.