Konga

When I was a kid Famous Monsters of Filmland touted KONGA as the new King Kong so I layed down my 35 cent sat in the air conditioned comfort of the local theater where you got two movie's and normally a couple cartoons thrown in for good measure. Got thru the first film it could of been Attack of the giant leeches since A.I.P like to re release films to go as a second to save money it was good but I'd seen it a couple years before at the same theatre. Well Konga sure wasn't any King Kong by any stretch of the imagination Hell the only Jungle we get too see is fleeting and is in the very beginning but I think we all knew as kids who loved giant monsters, small monsters, robots,etc. and we always wanted to believe the studios and their posters that this time they would really spend some money on the effects and they would be great!!!and the creature would be fantastic and......... Well you know. No what I liked about the movie was Michael Goughs over the top performance as the Mad Scientist like the mad man of letters in Horrors of the Black Museum or the uptight landlord that yearns for a young female tenet in the Boys from Brazil. Hes always wonderful and makes these performance's his own. And if people only remember him from Batman thats.....somewhat a pity. Id have liked Konga for Gough's performance alone but the lurid plot, the not tooo bad effects didn't hurt ( I knew they wasn't going to be any animation) while its no great film its fun and sometimes thats enough...........

Even though the story is fairly interesting, I can't help but look at this film as a cheap rip off of the classic King Kong. Michael Gough does a decent job playing the crazed Doctor Decker who wants to eliminate everyone who he feels has wronged him. He also is obsessed with one of his young, voluptuous students. His obsessions lead him to the breaking point and this helps to make this a fairly interesting story. Too bad it is undone by the horrible effects, especially the old "man in the cheap gorilla suit" gimmick. I guess the budget didn't allow for decent effects like stop motion animation. However, despite cheapness of it, this film will always remain a guilty pleasure of mine.

Konga is a film about a giant gorilla. It was obviously trying to emulate an earlier film by the name of King Kong but the two films are so different.

Michael Gough plays a mad scientist who gives Konga a growth serum. He gets Konga to do his bidding throughout the film but things spiral out of control eventually.

The film is totally crazy and it's fun seeing the actors so straight faced. Michael Gough as Doctor Decker is so obviously a nutter but no-one (even the police who question him) seems to notice much. Eventually, Konga becomes uncontrollable and goes on a rampage. So what does London do? Does it call in fighter jets? No. It calls in the local police and a few dozen soldiers. If it was up to me I'd clear the city and send the fighter jets in.

The film is an absolute lesson in buffoonry. It's also not very scientifically accurate. Now I'm no scientist but I have learned a bit in my long life. Michael Gough brings a CHIMPANZEE from the jungle and injects him with growth serum but instead of the CHIMPANZEE becoming a bigger CHIMPANZEE, he actually becomes a GORILLA. So for all his bravado, Doctor Decker didn't realise that his serum actually caused the chimp to become a different animal entirely.

But, that's what I like about films like this. Don't you just love a film that is scientifically inaccurate and crazy. Check it out.

I love this underrated little gem starring a Michael Gough in great shape, as good as he was in HORROR IN BLACK MUSEUM or even THE BLACK ZOO, another Herman Cohen production. Some kind of a poor man's Peter Cushing or even Christopher Lee, I nevertheless love this actor in such lousy but so good looking psychotronic stuff from the early sixties. The inspiration from KING KONG is so obvious that I won't insist on it. It is fun, amazingly entertaining, the perfect non intellectual time waster that you can wait for; but of course the new generation of movie buffs will hardly appreciate. Me, on the contrary, am always a bit attached to this poor chimp, this innocent little animal who will become some kind of evil beast.... The contrast between both of those images move me, it is so sad, despite the quality of this assumed B movie.

This film is incredible in many ways. It has an outlandish story about a scientist who returns from Africa having been presumed lost who has found a botanical secret to growth in humans and other animals through injections of serums made from seedlings brought back from the jungle which he injects into a small chimp he also brings back from Africa that he uses as his primate guinea pig which after several injections(and murders of people standing in the scientist's way) grows to epic proportions and brings an end to his creator's dreams. Whew! It has one of the cruelest, unsympathetic protagonists in film, played with aplomb and panache by an overlooked Michael Gough. This man is on cruise control along his evil highway to glory and sexual satisfaction, at one point shooting his house cat at close range rather than have it possibly ruining his scientific discovery. Gough is incredible and his performance is worth a look at the film alone. The other actors are credible and the guy in the ape suit is believable till the last act. Wait till you see this King-Kong sized ape holding Gough and his assistant. When he throws the assistant to the ground, you can tell it is nothing more than a doll! Camp...camp and more camp!