Konga (1961)
Directed by: John Lemant
Written by: Abel Kandel, Herman Cohen
Starring: Claire Gordon, Jess Conran, Margo Johns, Michael Gough
HCF REWIND NO. 127: KONGA [UK 1961]
AVAILABLE ON DVD: Now
RUNNING TIME: 90 min
REVIEWED BY: Dr Lenera, Official HCF Critic
A plane crashes in Uganda and famous biologist Dr. Charles Decker is thought killed. A year later, he re-appears back to London, safe and with a pet baby chimpanzee called Konga, telling everyone that he stayed with a tribe and discovered something fantastic while recovering there. With his assistant Margaret, he begins work and starts off by planting some carnivorous plants. Taking some of the leaves of the carnivorous plants, he perfects a serum which he then gives to Konga, who grows to an adult chimpanzee. A further dose turns him into a gorilla, which could come in handy since the Doctor has some enemies…….
The great Michael Gough and a murderous primate that grows in size. Sounds like B-movie heaven, especially for a guy like me, and actually Konga is one of those movies that I have known about, and wanted to see, for over two decades but never got around to doing so. It has a reputation as a classic ‘so bad it’s good’ film, and I really thought I was in for a good time. Well, the film certainly does have its entertainment value, and some bits and pieces of almost inspired unintentional hilarity, but in the end winds up as a bit of a disappointment. There’s fun to be had, but it’s interspersed with much tedium, and doesn’t really give you enough of the silly thrills and laughs you would expect. It’s as if, in trying to take it seriously, they took out much of what a viewer would reasonably expect to see, I mean the ape is barely on-screen until the climax.
Konga was produced by Herman Cohen who has just had great commercial success with Horrors Of The Black Museum, which, though not a great movie, is memorably sadistic [during a brief period where British horror was pushing the boundaries more than US horror] and blackly comic, and I recommend all horror fans to check it out if they haven’t. Konga reunited Cohen with star Michael Gough, though the aim here was for a less horrific, more family-orientated picture that still got an ‘X’ certificate in the UK [they really were strict then, with for instance The 7th Voyage Of Sinbad losing its living skeleton to get a ‘U’]. Cohen claims that the film’s special effects took a year and a half to complete, something I would debate. He wanted to hire top ape ‘actor’ George Barrows to play the gorilla, but balked at Barrows’ price so just hired his costume instead. Barrows was none too happy when His costume was returned damaged. Konga was a bigger hit in the US [release by AIP] than in the UK, and even led to a series of comic books on which the co-creator of Spiderman worked on.
Konga begins with one of those laughably bad superimposed explosions, here pasted on to a plane in flight, though at least it’s a real explosion and not fake CGI. I’ve certainly seen worse in recent years. It then flashes forward a year and has Michael Gough constantly spout gobbly gook for what seems like ages. I lost count of the number of times he went on about linking plants and animals. This is one of the most ridiculous things about this movie; there’s a huge amount of chat about what Decker is trying to do, usually by Decker himself, yet we barely learn a thing. The general idea I think is that a juice from carnivorous African plants can make animals grow. Perhaps they can even speed up evolution, and I assume Decker knows this, otherwise why else would he not be at all surprised when, in giving the serum [which he has conveniently mixed with drops of another potion found in Uganda which can make people subservient] to his chimpanzee a second time, the primate then turns into a gorilla?
Now Gough is awesome throughout, he plays his part with such wonderful relish, making the most of lines like, after his housekeeper has discovered Decker has had the gorilla kill someone:
“Eventually, Konga would have to kill in order to prove that my experiment was a success.”
Huh? There are chuckles like this throughout, and downright bizarre situations like Margaret the housekeeper asking to marry Decker after realising he’s a murderer. Unfortunately, only Gough seems to be getting into the real spirit of things, and the pace is extremely slow. The latter need not be a bad thing, but a certain amount of building tension is required in a story like this, and Konga mostly lacks it even while you can get some laughs from things like some typically dumb cops and the most badly drawn British teenagers [though lookout for Steven Berkoff] this side of Dracula A.D.1972. Despite the absurdity, too much of it is played in an overly serious manner, while the gorilla only appears to commit three mostly off-screen murders and be hypnotised, until we get a King Kong-inspired climax where Konga is giant-sized and stomps towards Big Ben [something another monster Gorgo would also do a few months later]. Despite what the poster may suggest, Konga doesn’t really do much, and the effects are quite limited [one and a half years, really?], with the gorilla hardly ever being shown in the same shot as the people, but this means that jarring matting is avoided, and actually the whole sequence works fairly well considering the low budget.
The gorilla suit is not the most convincing one but at least looks quite cool and is a masterpiece if compared to the two atrocities made by Toho Studios for their two Kong films this writer has recently viewed. Unfortunately, the guy inside the suit rarely acts like an actual gorilla and never once gives one the impression that we are watching one. There are visual pleasures elsewhere though. The opening titles are joyously 60’s in their bright, almost psychedelic manner, and we really are on the verge of 60’s cool with the garish interior design. Decker’s greenhouse is both funny and startling in the way it seems to be an output of Decker’s sexual feelings, with some plants that look for all the world like huge penises and others that look rather vaginal and may have come from the same plant species that Audrey 2 originated from. Konga really does look good in Network’s DVD of the film, upon which this review is based.
The direction is lackadaisical and the acting, apart from the wonderful Gough, usually either passable or downright shoddy. Claire Jordan as Sandra is so awful you will wonder what the hell Decker sees in her. At least the film has an effective and quite avant garde score from Gerard Schurmann, an interesting composer who never really got the movie projects his skills deserved. Konga is just as ridiculous as it sounds, and it certainly has enough to please some fans of old ‘mad scientist’ and monster movies, but, having waiting an eternity to see the movie, I was rather let down by it. Expectation can be a bad thing.
Rating: 
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