Konga (1961) features a chimpanzee that is artificially mutated into a highlands gorilla, and then again to something the size of King Kong. The chimp was brought out of the jungle by a British biology researcher who hungers for the fame that goes with a major discovery, and the chimp is his research subject, once the carnivorous plants have been exhausted.
Yeah, in case you wondered, it’s a slapdash, the hell with science, shambling wreck of a movie; in fact, it swarms with problems. There’s this student that tries to strangle the researcher, and yet isn’t in therapy for anger management. Worse yet, the middle-aged research assistant is so in love with the researcher that she disregards his several murders; only when he chases after a young student with lust in his eyes does she finally break free of his … invisible … charms. The researcher himself takes offense so easily I’m surprised he doesn’t slit his own throat when he looks in a mirror and doesn’t admire himself. While the chimp really is a chimp, the gorilla is clearly just a guy in a gorilla suit, and when he mutates the second time into the faux King Kong, the special effects are terribly awful. The story might have been interesting, but the characters do nothing and do not engage in a whit of interesting thought. Hell, we don’t even get to know if the carnivorous plant that has its, er, teeth in the blond student (let’s see, her boyfriend had his neck snapped by the gorilla, her professor has sexually assaulted her – or at least tried – and now she’s stumbled into a nest of carnivorous plants – as you can see, it’s not been a tip-top day for her) … where was I? Oh, yes – we never find out if she survives the attack from the carnivorous vegetation, or if her piercing shrieks were not enough to cause the protein-craving prepubescent pod-person to grow pedals and skedaddle out of what soon became an EasyBake oven.
About the only good thing is a bit of jazz on a student’s radio, despite Michael Gough’s efforts to bring the researcher’s character to life. Sadly, I think that would be the subject of yet another horror movie.
Don’t go near this monkey.
