BY HANK REINEKE
The best moments of John Lemont’s giant-ape movie Konga (1961) come courtesy via the manic
performance of the great Michael Gough. As the maddest of all crazed botanists, Gough’s deranged Charles Decker
is exactly what we B-movie enthusiasts want in our mad scientist – he’s nothing
if not completely batty and bonkers. The
actor was presumably a favorite of producer Herman Cohen, the Yank film executive
utilizing Gough’s services in such British thrillers as Horrors of the Black Museum (1959), Konga, and The Black Zoo
(1963). The aforementioned trio of
shockers are not, for all of their intermittent charms, representative of
Cohen’s best (read “schlockiestâ€) work. But they’re OK.
In association with A.I.P. in the U.S., Cohen had already
given us a number of iconic Silver-Age horror and sci-fi B-movie classics with I Was a Teenage Frankenstein and I Was a Teenage Werewolf (both
1957). While Konga is not among Cohen’s better efforts, the film certainly never
falls short of being dependably wacky and memorable in its unspooling. If you are the forgiving type who enjoys this
sort of entertainment, there’s still a lot of fun to be had. That is as long as you’re willing to
compromise your personal integrities and to shut down both your critical and
mental faculties for ninety-minutes or so.
In Konga, Michael
Gough plays Charles Decker, a preeminent British botanist and lecturer at
London’s prestigious Essex College. While on expedition in Africa, Decker’s biplane goes missing somewhere over
Uganda, the aerial crash killing the pilot upon impact. Decker somehow has managed to bail out of the
plane in the seconds preceding the crash. He even – quite improbably - has the wits about him to parachute to safety
while cradling a cumbersome 16mm film camera. The scientist is found broken and dazed in the jungle brush by a
chimpanzee named Konga. The simian kindly leads him to the
guardianship and protection of the Baganda’s, described here as a primitive,
mystical tribe distantly related to the Bantu. While this preamble sounds very much like an exciting jump start to the
film, we’re – disappointingly - not privy to witnessing any of it as it unfolds. The
preceding action is all explained to us second-hand during a cost-saving recount
delivered during one of Decker’s classroom sessions.
Though the scientific community presumed Decker had perished
in the Ugandan crash, the scientist actually used his time in the jungle studiously. Over the course of a year, he carefully absorbed
the methodologies of the tribal witchdoctor who mastered the mysteries of both serum-induced
hypnotism and of the insectivorous plant life that grew abundantly in the
region. When Decker finally returns with
great fanfare to London, he’s consumed by the belief that there’s an
as-of-yet-unexplored evolutionary link between plant and human life. The more sober Dean of Essex College
disagrees and demands that Decker stop embarrassing the institution with such witchdoctor-inspired
nonsense.
With a grudge, Decker is about to prove his skeptics
wrong. He converts his backyard
greenhouse into a monstrous habitat for flesh-eating plants. (There’s actually more of Roger Corman’s The Little Shop of Horrors (1960) than King Kong on display here in Konga). The botanist is assisted by his amorous if sexually frustrated assistant
Margaret (Margo Johns). She is tasked to
see that the environment of the glass-enclosed building is kept at exactly
ninety-degrees with the appropriate amount of humidity and moisture maintained. This is to best replicate the steamy Ugandan climate
so that his carnivorous plants can bloom healthfully.
Though Margaret has been a faithful “secretary, lab
assistant, and housekeeper†to Dr. Decker – even having kept up his basement
laboratory in the year-long absence when he was presumed dead – he seems little
interested in having her as a paramour or wife. “There’s very little room for sentiment in the life of a scientist,†he
tells her with a cold sniff. While we have
already been clued that Decker is a driven, uncompromising and humorless loner,
he nonetheless demonstrates little reserve in his creepy pursuit of Sandra (Claire
Gordon), one of his comely teenage students at Essex. This romance goes unrequited as well. Then again, it really had no chance to
blossom… especially following Decker’s clumsy attempt to sexually assault the
girl amidst his monstrous garden of flesh-eating plants. It would be fair to presume Decker’s teaching
career would surely not have survived the scrutiny and retribution of the
present #metoo movement.
But this is now and that was then. While this is a fun popcorn-munching movie
and a personal guilty pleasure to many, few would argue it’s a work of
cinematic art. Even among devotees of
this already odd “Giant Ape†genre, Konga
is often the subject of winking, good-natured ridicule. Attending a matinee double-bill of Konga and Master of the World upon its release in 1962, New York Times critic Eugene Archer noted the assembled audience of
ten-year-olds, “greeted Konga with
misplaced guffaws,†while according the Vincent Price film “a smattering of
applause.â€
The ballyhoo of producer Herman Cohen touted his film as
projected in “SpectaMation.†That sounded
pretty exciting, save for the fact that no one was quite certain exactly what eye-popping
spectacle SpectaMation actually promised. One assumes that it’s the not-so-visually-exciting horizontal radiating
waves that we see oscillating on-screen as little Konga transmutes from
chimpanzee into full-fledged gorilla… or rather, in this low-budget exercise, into
an endomorphic male wearing a rubber-faced gorilla suit.
For better or worse, there is a lot more fiction than
science present in this sci-fi extravaganza. One example… You need not be a schooled
zoologist/anthropologist on the order of Dian Fossey, Jane Goodall, or Mary
Leakey to note that while chimpanzees, gorillas and apes may all be classified
as Hominids, each is actually a separate species within that particular family
of primates. No matter what the
Darwinists might argue, it’s unlikely that a chimpanzee will change species –
as does Konga - in the course of his transformation. This absence of scientific reality doesn’t
necessarily ruin the film by any means – it’s still just a silly “giant apeâ€
movie after all - but it does make one wonder if anyone associated with the
project brought such insight to the attention of the producer.
Actually, “giant ape movie†is somewhat of a misnomer
anyway since we only get to see Konga at full size near the film’s denouement. It must also be said that the climax is
disappointing, especially considering our protracted wait through a series of declarative
classroom lectures, greenhouse gardening tutorials, and straight-laced British
teens dancing to jazz and early rock n’ roll on their transistor radios. In the
big finale, Konga romps ever-so-briefly through the streets of London before
standing parallel to an obvious model of the Big Ben clock tower at the Palace
of Westminster. The creature’s final bow
is somewhat disappointing as well. There
are no exciting aerial attacks or memorable battles. There’s not even a thoughtful, philosophical
comment offered on the nature of man and beast nor of the dangers of misguided
scientific experimentation by ruthless crazies. The film just sort of… ends. Much
like the greenhouse that Konga has crushed beneath his massive foot, the
enterprise simply runs out of steam.
This Blu-ray
edition of Konga from Kino Lorber
Studio Classics features a brand new 2K master of the film with a 1.66:1 aspect
ratio in 1920x 1080P and DTS sound. Bonus features include the original trailer, a radio spot for the film,
and an image gallery. There is also the
option of removable English subtitles.
CLICK HERE TO ORDER FROM AMAZON