Konga

U.K. - U.S.A. / 1961 Directed by John Lemont Starring Michael Gough Margo Johns Claire Gordon Color / 90 Minutes / Not Rated Format: DVD (R1 - NTSC) MGM Home Entertainment

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2007 Midnite Movies edition

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6     5   10 = Highest Rating

SEE Michael Gough obsessively touch his monkey!     Okay — so it's not really a monkey, but rather an ape. (Monkeys have tails.) But Gough does darn near rub the fur off a baby chimpanzee in one scene... Holding the animal while reciting a long passage of expositionary dialog, he was probably just trying to keep it mollified until the end of the take. At any moment I expected the chimp to finally grab Gough's hand and bark, "Dammit, would you please just stop that?" (What can I say? I grew up watching Planet Of The Apes and Lancelot Link.)     This isn't even the worst of the indignities endured by the cute little fella... or Gough, for that matter. Konga is doubtless the only film in the venerable actor's career in which he's shown giving a chimpanzee hypodermic injections in the butt.     Thought to have perished in a fiery plane crash in the African jungle, botanist Dr. Charles Decker (Gough) returns to England a year later with a miraculous tale of survival — and a baby chimp named Konga in tow. He's also brought with him seedlings from varieties of strange plants totally unknown to modern science. While living among the Buganda people, Decker was shown the incredible secrets of these plants by the tribe's witchdoctor. Extracts from the plants can be made into a potion that causes incredible growth spurts in animals that ingest it. This potion has the additional fantastical property of rendering such animals totally obedient to their handlers — a form of botanically-induced mind control. Decker plans to secretly grow specimens of the plants in his greenhouse, then reproduce and refine the witchdoctor's potion into a serum. Pet chimp Konga has a big role to play in these experiments...     Konga's producer, American Herman Cohen, struck gold in the late '50s with drive-in favorites such as I Was A Teenage Werewolf and Blood Of Dracula, then moved to England where his pictures could be shot in color for less money. (Konga was originally to be entitled I Was A Teenage Gorilla.) Michael Gough appeared in five of Cohen's U.K.-based productions; he's given free rein to ham it up in all of them. A fine character actor, Gough probably decided to just have fun and go balls-to-the-wall with these roles due to the inherently silly nature of the scripts. Thank goodness, too, since his histrionics are easily the most entertaining aspect of these lurid, pulp comic book horrors.     Like 1935's The Raven, Konga is one of those rare films that actually benefits from a super-hammy performance rather than being undermined by it. Gough may not be quite as apoplectic a scenery chewer here as in Horrors Of The Black Museum (also produced by Cohen), but — even when only cruising in fourth gear — he still gives Bela Lugosi a stiff challenge for the winner's cup. This is only fitting given that, until the final 20 minutes, the film plays exactly like one of those 1940s Poverty Row cheapies Lugosi so often headlined: a mad scientist resorts to murder, using a gorilla he's experimenting on (i.e., a guy in a crappy ape costume) to eliminate rivals and enemies. Notice I said "gorilla"... Our title character starts out as a baby chimp, morphing into an adult chimpanzee after Decker administers the first injection, but with the second dose of the formula Konga is magically transformed into a man in a gorilla suit (supposedly played by Robot Monster's "Ro-Man" himself, George Barrows). Logically, shouldn't Konga be a six foot chimpanzee? Doc Decker didn't say nuthin' 'bout no species change! (Why create a brand new chimp costume when you've got that ratty old gorilla suit in the back of the closet?)     Fortunately the abject ludicrousness of this film doesn't end there. The special plants Decker grows are all carnivorous man-eaters ("There's danger in that hungry plant... It thrives on meat!" he declares in almost lascivious tones); one particularly phallic-looking variety resembles an enormous, throbbing black dildo — complete with veins! While we wait for Konga to get that final booster shot propelling him to truly gargantuan size, an amusingly turgid soap opera plays out with Decker going cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs over a buxom, bubbleheaded blonde college girl (Claire Gordon). Naturally it's this retroactive onset of puberty that proves to be the mad doc's downfall. Jilted, his fortyish assistant Margaret (Margo Johns) — who for some inexplicable reason carries an unrequited torch for this obnoxious nutter — takes revenge by injecting Konga with an overdose of the formula. Much unintentional hilarity ensues.     Laughable dialog, pathetic special effects and (especially) Gough's deliciously hammy turn make Konga a recommended experience for all true cheese lovers.

Issued by MGM to coincide with the release of Peter Jackson's über-hyped modern version of King Kong, the Konga DVD would've been an ideal addition to the label's beloved Midnite Movie line — after all, the film was originally distributed by AIP and its now out-of-print VHS incarnation bore the Midnite Movie logo. But with the imprint currently in limbo after Sony's acquisition of MGM, the disc has instead been released as a standard bargain-priced title. (Either way there'd be no difference in cost to the consumer; I just think the disc naturally belongs on my special "Midnite Movie" shelf!)     The film itself is presented in non-anamorphic 1.66:1 which the packaging erroneously states is fullframe. The print, while not flawless, looks very, very good; I certainly don't recall TV broadcasts of Konga being this colorful. (Check out the funky lime and lavender interior paint scheme of Decker's house.) The mono audio track is clean and clear. A trio of trailers — including one for Godzilla: Final Wars — is tossed in as an extra, but Konga's isn't one of them. 12/13/05

UPDATE This disc went OOP about a year after our review was posted. In September 2007 MGM reissued Konga on a double feature "Midnite Movies" DVD, pairing it with the South Korean-made Godzilla wannabe Yongary, Monster From The Deep (1967).

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