Michael_Elliott Konga (1961) ** (out of 4)Dr. Decker (Michael Gough) goes down with his plane in Africa and is believed dead but a year later he returns from the jungle. He begins working on an experiment that can cause things to grow in size and after trying it on various plants he injects Konga, a chimp that he brought back with him. Soon he's using the now gorilla to kill off his enemies but eventually the killer grows to the size of, well, King Kong.KONGA is a fairly loved British film that manages to not only rip off KING KONG but also MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE. I'm sure mixing those two films could have made for a good movie but sadly this thing here isn't it. There are some fun ideas scattered throughout the movie but in the end there are just way too many flaws. The biggest problem being the fact that the 90 minutes drag by at times and there are moments when the film comes to a complete stand still.Another problem is that the special effects are quite laughable. This includes the early scenes where the small chimp grows a little bit bigger. These transformation sequences are downright awful with the wavy screen doing very little. Things don't fair much better once the man-in-the-outfit happens. Once we get into KING KONG territory things really don't do anything because the budget is so low that the large gorilla really can't do anything. I will admit that the MURDER IN THE RUE MORGUE pieces are quite effective and I did enjoy the creature stalking around and killing for the doctor.Gough turns in a good performance in the lead as does Margo Johns but neither are great enough to make the film work. KONGA has a few good ideas but there are far too many logical issues and the lack of any good special effects keep this from being more than a cheap "C" movie.

mark.waltz A cute baby chimp becomes the pawn in a mad scientist's game, turning larger and larger with assistance from the greenery of meat-eating plants. As the chimp grows, so does his species, as by the time he's man-sized, he looks more like a gorilla. Even the cutest baby gorilla looks nothing like a chimpanzee baby, no matter how close they are in relation. That is my only complaint in this above average science fiction thriller that has some genuine frights and some truly wonderfully over-the-top performances.Michael Gough is the mad scientist/professor, having been somehow mentally changed after a plane crash in Africa stranded him in the jungle for a year. Learning about man-eating plants and rescuing the baby chimp, Gough returns to his old job at the London England college and immediately makes waves with the dean who meets a violent end at the hands of the enlarged primate. His aging but beautiful assistant/lover (Marjo Johns) is at first horrified by what he's doing, but desperate to be in love, she stands by him, ultimately going mad by his interest in a young student assistant (Claire Gordon) who gets her own little introduction to one of Gough's experiments while fighting him off after he makes an unwanted pass. Of course, like "King Kong" (which utilized in different versions the Empire State Building and original World Trade Centers), there's a last minute interruption with the giant creature hanging outside the Tower of London looking on almost child-like at the gathering crowd.There's almost a sadness towards the treatment of the baby chimpanzee, obviously dependent on both Gough and Johns for affection and life's necessities, and the final moment is almost tear-jerking. The frights don't come from the chimp/gorilla's attacks on the victims (audiences were used to those from such films as "White Pongo", "Bride of the Gorilla" and "Gorilla at Large") but from the scenes in Gough's lab with the meat-eating plants. For that matter, there's no revelation of what happened with Gordon at the end of the film, so the audience is left wondering if she turned into Ellen Greene from "Little Shop of Horrors" or one of the arriving firemen managed to rescue her from a certain fate worse than death. Still, this does remain consistently entertaining even though the special effects showing Konga's sudden growths are less than adequate.

Spikeopath Konga is directed by John Lemont and written by Herman Cohen and Aben Kandel. It stars Michael Gough, Margo Johns, Jess Conrad, Claire Gordon and Austin Trevor. A SpectaMation/Eastman Color production, with music by Gerard Schurmann and cinematography by Desmond Dickinson.Doctor Decker (Gough) returns from Uganda after a year having been presumed killed in an aeroplane crash. During his time in the jungle he befriended a young chimpanzee he named Konga, who he has brought back to London with him. Oh and he also discovered a serum that grows plants and animals to enormous sizes...Some Konga fans want you to believe it's a fun movie, that sometimes you got to just run with these things and enjoy an exploitation cinematic lobotomy. The trouble is is that there simply is nothing fun about Konga, if you take away Gough's mental Mr. Angry performance and Schurmann's rambunctious score, the rest of the film is insultingly bad. Giving The Phantom from 10,000 Leagues a run for its money as most pointless sci-fi horror schlocker going.Man in monkey suit tears through a cardboard erected London and throws dolls about. Now it could have worked, many a creature feature from the 50s got by using minimal props and budget, but those films had directors who knew how to film certain scenes and kept the phony shots to a minimum. But as the matte madness approaches, in a whirl of bad acting and bad dialogue that's scented with a whiff of misogyny, it's too painful to even laugh at. 2/10

JoeB131 This film is unintentionally funny.The plot is that Alfred from the Batman movies comes back from Africa with some insect eating plants and a baby Chimp, and uses the extract from the plant to cause the Chimp to grow into a man in a bad gorilla suit. The gorilla then proceeds to kill the mad scientists enemies, as he makes a play for a young co-ed. His jilted spinster housekeeper then give the ape another dose of the extract, causing it to grow to giant size and rampage about the city. The co-ed gets her hand caught in a Venus Fly trap, and we never really find out what happened to her. (Seriously, did the Fly trap spend the next five days munching on her, or did she chew her arm off like a coyote and get away.)What I love about British horror from the 1950's is how totally nonchalant everyone is. Oh, a giant monster is rampaging in downtown London. Well, no need to get excited like the Japanese would. The professor is obviously completely nuts? Well, no cause for alarm.