Nackt unter Affen

Nice and complex for a cheap 1968 movie. We have overlapping plots. What you may notice right off is there are no island and no Kong. However, there is an Eva, the savage girl (Esmeralda Barros) who exposes her uh talent. We have to put up with an Italian knockoff of a disco and even listen to cheap sci-fi sounds while a mad scientist Albert (Marc Lawrence) monkeys with remote brain control, not to mention the bongo background.

We start with the East Africa Trading Company's parole being pilfered and the head pilferer bumps into the others. Oops, co-pilferer Burt (Brad Harris) survives and intends to track Albert down. The plot thickens when we meat a bar owner, his wayward mistress, his blond "lights on, nobody home" daughter Diana (Ursula Davis), his puppy dog son, and a few mysterious characters.

The daughter wants to shoot the sacred monkey.

Mad scientist covets the monkey brain.

And Burt monkeys around.

Now quit looking for Kong! I told you there is no Kong!

Everyone double-crosses everyone else.

So, does the scientist get away?

Will we ever see the sacred monkey?

Who gets the blond?

Who gets the chimp?

Who gets to watch a ridicules movie?

KING OF KONG ISLAND is about Burt Dawson (Brad Harris), his incredible ordeal, and his ultimate quest to find a mad scientist named Muller (Marc Lawrence). This takes Dawson deep into the heart of dance clubs, where he dances like he's got spiders in his shirt.

Dawson also treks through the jungles of Africa, encountering things called "wild animals", as well as a woman known as the "Sacred Monkey" (Esmeralda Barros). Having lost her top, she runs free through the trees, her long, magic hair somehow covering her assets, no matter how she moves, or what she does!

For his part, Muller is building an army of remote-controlled go-rillas! He's definitely crackers, with only world conquest in mind.

Loaded to the gills with imbecilic characters and absurd dialogue, this is one of the few movies that can actually turn a brain to stone. So, be careful! Calling this movie "stupid" or "inane", is like calling a 5-lb. Cheeseburger with a shovel-full of fries... "fattening". It also has an extremely high boredom factor that only the hardiest of souls could possibly endure. As with all such hyper-sludge, it's best to simply go with it, for going against it could cause cranial collapse...

An Italian Spanish Co-production with America's own Dick Randall involved in the ‘presenting'- King of Kong Island mixes horror movie, nudie-cutie and jungle adventure with toppings of National Geographic stock footage- all set to a jungle beat of exotica. A mercenarie's life is a tough one- at least for Burt Dawson (Brad Harris) shot in the back by his ex-friend Albert Muller (Marc Lawrence) and left for dead. Albert retreats deep into the jungle where he performs brain operations on man sized gorillas and makes them his robot like slaves. Burt survives the shooting and vows vengeance, tracking down his ‘mad Doctor friend' in Nairobi. Reacquainting himself with his buddy Theodore, Burt is drawn back into Albert's orbit when Theodore's thrill seeking daughter Diana is kidnapped by the gorillas while on safari. Although forewarned that ‘you may find that it's actually dangerous to violate ancient taboos' macho Burt cannot be stopped and before you can say ‘let's grow a hairy chest, write books and shoot some elephants' Burt is venturing into the dark continent to put an end to Albert's monkey business. Amidst an almost comical amount of double crosses, secrets and revelations Burt has to fight off attacks from Albert's simian heavies, get his collar felt by a tribe of savages and also finds time to befriend Eva The Wild Woman (The Devil's Wedding Night's Esmeralda Barros). As Burt's guide explains ‘she is the daughter of the forest, she understands the language of the trees and the wild beasts, she appears in the morning with the sun who is her father, she has always existed like the forest itself with its ancient mysteries she is everywhere and nowhere'. And its the jungle woman with her power over the animals who proves to be the spanner in the works for Albert's plan to take over the world with his gorillas (as well as his kinky sideline in experimenting on women and locking them in cages). In the Sixties Italian cinema was going through a Golden Era and became a retreat for Americans and Brits who were either being kicked out or couldn't get a foot in the door of their native film industries. Dick Randall (1926- 1996) was no exception and by the time of King of Kong Island he was living La Dolce Vita in Rome. Randall a chubby, small guy with glasses, a pencil thin moustache and a penchant for huge cigars- is vividly remembered by friends and associates for his keen business sense matched by an equal sense of humour. Randall was never it seems above sending himself up either- witness his tour de force performance as a ‘pig with binoculars' in Bava's Four Times that Night or his cameo in 1986's Slaughter High where he lampoons his B-movie King image. As in The Bogeyman and the French Murders here Randall surrounds himself with a journeyman director hiding under a phony name, a memorable cast, and a crew well versed in the ways of them exploitation films including Bloody Pit of Horror's Ralph Zucker and Walter Brandt. If Italian horror films were the new rock n roll, Zucker and Brandt would have been the equivalent of first rate session musicians. The actual music itself by Roberto Pregadio is suitably ‘Congo Psychedelia', wildly inappropriate for any movie apart from one whose curious geography believes go-go discotheques can be found in the midst of a jungle (even today Pregadio's score still haunts the tracks of lounge music compilations). In retrospect King of Kong Island could be considered a throwback to jungle adventure movies of yore but perhaps only as Randall's doorman character in Four Times That Night might have remembered with every situation subverted to its sex-charged, exaggerated extreme. The introduction of Eva the Wild Woman is set to her running naked in the wilderness (in slow motion no less) to stress her ‘naturalness' a sequence reprised for the finale but not even this can match the priceless ‘va-va vroom' moment when the gorillas seemingly ogle Diana- watching her strip down to pea green underwear before letting their presence be known. Curiously many of these elements were downplayed on its Italian release which sold it on the value of matinee idol Harris with not a gorilla in sight, but as connoisseurs know all manner of insanity could and usually does happen in Italian movies of the period and King of Kong Island is hardly a sober exception to the rule. With its hodgepodge of oversexed women, Interpol agents, remote controlled primates, catfights and mad scientists conducting strange experiments in the jungle this was exactly the sort of ‘fantastique' escapism audiences would flock to in less cynical times. Today King of Kong Island is one of several Dick Randall productions just ripe for rediscovery. Fun, endearing and with as much God given trashyness as anything else Randall ever put his name to, King of Kong Island will have you mourning the era in the Italian film industry when vivid imaginations and spectacular traders ran amok.

...certainly not in the league of, say, "Manos - The Hands of Fate" or Coleman Francis' 'Unholy Trinity', but also not very good either. Maltin gives this a 'BOMB' rating, which for me automatically means that I must seek it out for viewing.

The music is very groovy, very Italian disco and that's a plus. Most of the women are not too bad-looking and Brad Harris (formerly Hercules from numerous films) is pretty damn cut. The 'Ape Girl' is cute and wears no top, but her hair is always covering her breasts, the effect being actually rather sexy (kind of like how you never actually see any of Catherine Deneuve's naughty bits in "Repulsion"). The gorilla costumes are AWFUL.

In a lot of ways this films is like a jungle serial from the '30s - but it was made forty years too late! Still, there are far worse ways to spend 85 minutes.

One of the things I've discovered as I make my way through a bunch of B (or C), movies, is that they seem to plod along forever. We enter this film with a group of crooks turning on each other over some stolen money. As things unwind, we are introduced to a mercenary who was wounded by a man he trusted during the opening scene. He obsesses over revenge. We have a couple of women. One a kind of Rita Hayworth type without the good looks (no offense), and a sixties kind of go go dancing looking type, who can handle a rifle. Her father, who is the Ernest Hemingway type, and her brother live with these people. Anyway, there is a subplot of a mad scientist (why are they always mad?) who has done things to affect the brains of gorillas. They can then be controlled by the scientist (the odd thing is that it also transforms them into upright creatures that look like skinny men in cheap monkey suits). Through a series of convoluted plot developments and some deaths, some tribal unrest, a few organized gorilla attacks, the young go go dancer girl ends up in the clutches of the mad scientist. Somehow she ends up with less clothes on than she used to. The scientist ogles her and has future plans which we can only imagine. There's also a native woman who is a kind of queen of the gorillas. They love and respect her, and she always was able to talk to them and get them to do what she wants. Unfortunately, the brain thing messes this up. Need I go on, There is some ridiculous finale with people exchanging the upper hand. The only thing missing is the word "Aha!" My poorly written explanation actually makes the movie sound better than it is. Sorry!