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 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 very much enjoyed Konga when I first saw it in a theatre at about the age of nine, and surprisingly enjoyed it almost as much on television. The plot is the standard issue mad scientist who comes up with a growth serum that makes a creature large which then goes on a rampage formula, set in England this time. The creature here is an ape who just happens to be called Konga (hint..hint), which gives one a sense of the degree of subtlety in the film.

If one can call scenery chewing magisterial I think it's fair to say that Michael Gough, as the mad scientist in this one, does it with an authority worthy of at the very least a knighthood, if not a lordship. The special effects are, alas, dreadful even for a modestly budgeted film such as this, but no matter. Gough is the whole show, and his performance is of such profligacy as to bring a round of applause from Messrs. Zucco and Atwill, were they still with us.

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.

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!