The world needs more mad scientists. They may screw up once in a while and unleash some huge terror that rampages through a major metropolis, but it’s all worth it. Besides, who else could come up with a movie like Konga and label it entertainment besides the criminally insane? And what would we do without it?
With the added “a” at the end of the title to avoid phone calls from legal types, this England-produced disaster never stood a chance. Starring the excellent Michael Gough, this “mini ape run amok until he turns into a giant ape running amok” flick features some of the worst practical special effects you’ll ever lay eyes on. There’s little doubt the budget caused things to be stretched slightly.
Sadly, the build up isn’t that bad. Gough’s character undergoes a slow transformation into the insane, taking his soon to be wife down with him. His mental problems start after crash landing onto an island where giant plants grow. Staying there and studying them for a year, he tests the extracted chemicals when he finally makes it back home. Injected into a small chimp, it causes it to grow.
For 80-minutes of this film, the title creature stays a reasonable size, ignoring the rather jarring switch from real chimp to man-in-overly-baggy monkey suit. Given that the suit doesn’t resemble anything even remotely related to a chimp, even the scientific explanation doesn’t fly. Gough sends it to extract revenge in the name of science until his wife injects the creature with far too much of the growth serum.
These final 10-minutes provide good/bad movie fans with enough ammunition for a lifetime. Once Gough is picked up by the sometimes 20/sometimes 50 foot simian, it’s blatantly clear he’s actually standing up on a floor in a studio, and then very poorly pasted into the picture. Miniature work is brief, and it’s a tough call which is worse: the super-imposed shots of the creature walking past real locales or the weakly constructed buildings on set.
Article comments
1 - Aaman
Sounds like it was produced by the SciFi channel
2 - Me
Looks like it too