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...........

Konga scared the hell out of me when I saw it on TV at age eight! I had nightmares for several weeks... I've seen Konga since then as an adult and Michael Gough's over-the-top performance makes the film. Plus there's a very attractive English "blonde in distress" who comes to a gruesome end. An "8."

Konga is one heck of a movie. Basically it's Frankenstein and King Kong with some cheesy special effects and a truly wonderful performance from Michael (Now Alfred the Butler of Batman Movies) Gough.

Thought to be dead in a plane crash while doing research in Africa, a brilliant botanist/scientist returns home to his teaching post while continuing experiments on his little monkey with the help of his assistant/lover.

A breakthrough occurs and the chimpanzee is transformed into a man in a gorilla suit.

When our scientist starts falling for a sexy co-ed, the woman he's promised to marry gives Konga an extra dose of stuff and voila, he grows right through the roof of the house and becomes an Attack of a Fifty Foot Man in a Gorilla Suit named Konga. Throw in some very large carniverous plants, some priceless dialogue, surprisingly good acting, lots of cliches and you've got a campy delight. Not to be missed. In Glorious color too!

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.

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.