Eva, la Venere selvaggia

While there's something for everyone (almost) in this action sci-fi, it's unlikely to be your most memorable movie experience. Amiable he-man Brad Harris stars as a mercenary soldier who's double crossed by his medic companion (Lawrence) in a bungled heist, but survives to seek revenge upon the mad doctor now experimenting on gorillas with mind control programming.

Aside from the shirtless Harris, flexing his body-built physique as he cavorts in a jungle pool, Tarzan style, there's also the scantily clad trio Esmerelda Barros (as a fabled native girl accompanied by the ubiquitous cheeky chimp), Adriana Alben (as Harris' sultry, former flame) and Ursula Davis as the short-shorts wearing pawn in Lawrence's diabolical plan to lure Harris to his lair for the purposes of programming him for mind control.

There's a great dancing scene to showcase Harris' moves, a couple of violent ape attacks, some safari wildlife-spotting, and the promise of much more that never really eventuates. Like an early James Bond film meets "King Kong" or "Planet of the Apes", it has camp moments, but is mostly just clichéd and boring with an anti climax that's disappointing and uninspired.

The Italian title for this film was EVE, THE WILD WOMAN which makes a lot better sense than the one attached to it for foreign distribution, KING OF KONG ISLAND. There is no king, no kong, and no island! This is the sort of plot that Republic might have made a 12 chapter serial about. A mad scientist is performing brain operations on gorillas deep in the jungle (NOT on an island) to create an army of simian slaves. Why is he doing this? Because he is a MAD scientist and that is what mad scientists do! Enter the hero (Brad Harris from several muscleman movies) and the heroine (Esmeralda Barros as the Eve, the title character) to defeat the madman and restore the natural balance to the jungle.

Eve the jungle girl is topless for the whole picture but her long flowing hair is strategically arranged except at certain dramatic moments. Those gorillas with the stitches in their heads don't look like gorillas at all to me, they look like stuntmen in costumes! It takes forever for the plot to get going; in fact it starts like an action adventure with Harris' character as a mercenary looking for revenge against the guy who double crossed him. The science fiction element and the jungle girl subplot are introduced to wake the audience up later on.

Perhaps if they had thrown in a dinosaur or two and a nice big explosion at the end. Oh well. I am off to watch the old 1944 serial THE MONSTER AND THE APE . . at least that one delivered what the title promised!

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...

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!

...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.