Our Mad Mammoth Monkey Marathon stumbles out of the blocks in Africa -- at least that’s what the sign on the jeep rambling by says, so there won’t be any confusion. The four men piled into said jeep run into an ambush and are blown away. When the three ambushers reveal themselves, Burt (Brad Harris), disgusted by the carnage, isn't too happy with what just transpired. But Albert (Marc Lawrence) tells him not to worry, the $300000 payroll they've just seized can appease anyone's conscience. Except his, because as soon as Burt lets his guard down Albert shoots him in the back, and then kills the other man, too. Taking the money and the jeep, he vacates the scene while Bert's world spins into darkness and the credits roll...

Okay, three minutes of screen time and five dead bodies. Well, this could prove interesting, right? HA! Don't hold your breath. The credits also claim that this film is just plain old Kong Island, and we, as an audience, grow suspicious about the change in title. More on this later.

The credits end and leave us in some kind of cavern laboratory where Albert and his assistant perform some kind of dubious experimental surgery on what passes for a gorilla in this type of film. Making an incision into the creature’s brain, they insert an electrode into the tissue. The surgery complete (and apparently a success), the scene shifts while Albert laughs sinisterly.

Back in civilization, we find ourselves at what I believe is some kind of resort hotel. Theodore, the owner, returns to his room and finds his wife, Ursula, deep in conversation with Burt. (So...I guess he survived the gunshot wound.) Ted is happy to see him again, and we find out that Burt is a former mercenary for hire. Out of the country since "the incident", now he’s back and looking for Albert and a little payback. Neither have seen him, so Burt moves on. After he leaves, we see all is not well with the married couple because Burt and Ursula used to have a thing for each other. In another room, Burt finds Ted's children, Robert and Diana. (I think Ursula is their stepmother. Stress on the "think". And what’s with every single character having a derivative of Bert as a name?) They’re both preparing to go on safari and want Burt to come along. He declines and asks if they’ve seen Albert. Robert says no, but Albert's top henchman, Turk, has been hanging around.

At the mere mention of Turk’s name, Burt’s blood starts to boil. Diana calms him down and invites him to join them at the club for some drinks and dancing. He agrees and we get an embarrassingly long go-go dancing sequence. In between dances, Ursula warns Burt that a mystery man has been watching him closely all night. Suddenly, Burt spots Turk on the dance floor, and when they make eye contact, Turk quickly splits. (And we recognize him as the assistant during the monkey brain surgery.) Burt chases him outside where Turk’s goon squad attacks. Burt manages to fight them off, but, during the melee, Turk gets away. One of the goons recovers and almost kills Burt, but then the mystery surveillance man intervenes and saves him.

And who is this man? Sorry, the film won’t tell us.

The next morning, Robert and Diana don their pith helmets and set out on safari. Along the way, amongst all the stock-footage shots of jungle terrain and animals, we find out that they’re heading to the forbidden part of the jungle to see if they can sack the fabled "Sacred Monkey." Occasionally, they run into some real live animals, including a lion and cheetah cub playing with each other. Diana thinks they’re too cute to shoot but has no reservations about blasting away at the mommy and daddy cats.

That night, after they make camp, a pack of the unfortunate looking gorillas attack. They kill all the native levies, then knock Robert out and carry Diana off into the jungle. When Robert comes around, he finds Turk standing over him. Turk says if he ever wants to see Diana alive again, there are a few ransom demands to be met.

And what are these ransom demands? Again, the film is being annoyingly coy with us. E'yup. I'm sensing a pattern here.

Robert goes back to the hotel and tries to recruit Burt to help find Diana. He tells him about the gorilla attack, and how he feels there wasn’t something quite right about it: the apes didn’t act like apes at all, and it was like they had a plan of attack. Burt wasn't going to help until he finds out that Turk is somehow involved. The film then gets even more cryptic as Ursula warns him against violating ancient taboos.

And we, as the audience, give up and pop open another cold one, hoping less sobriety will somehow help this film make more sense.

When Burt and Robert return to the destroyed campsite, they’re unaware that they're being tailed by the mystery man from earlier in the film. Nope, we still don’t know who he is -- and how they cannot spot him is another mystery. (He’s only about a foot and half behind them down the jungle path.) They’re also under surveillance from a native jungle girl and her pet chimpanzee. After turning in for the night, Robert sneaks off and has a secret rendezvous with Turk. And we find out that the only ransom demand was to bring Burt into the jungle so Turk can kill him. (I do believe there are easier ways to bump somebody off. Oh, well. Back to the film.) Meanwhile, Jungle Girl (Esmeralda Barros) -- sans top, but her flowing hair strategically covers her naughty bits --  stealths her way into Burt’s tent, but he awakens and frightens her off. 

The next morning, the expedition presses on to find Diana. Two-feet behind them, the mystery man is attacked by the zombie gorillas. Burt hears the commotion, investigates, and then comes to the man's rescue, killing one of the apes while the other runs off. The mystery man finally reveals himself to be an Interpol agent, investigating the original payroll robbery. That isn’t Interpol’s biggest concern, though. It’s rumored that Albert is a mad genius whose experimenting diabolically with "condition brain reflexes in animals" and will somehow use this to take over the world. (YES, Pinky!)

Unfortunately, the apes have circled back and wipe out the rest of Burt and Bert's safari. Again, Robert manages to survive the attack and he begins to spill his guts about his father’s involvement with Albert’s experiments; but he is felled by a sniper’s bullet before he can reveal too much. (It was Turk.) Burt and the Interpol man can’t go after the assassin because they’re quickly attacked, overrun, and subdued by some jungle natives. And as the film suddenly turns into The Naked Prey, the natives quickly set them free -- only so they can hunt them down again!

And while we’re on that subject: The Naked Prey is one of the most brutal movies I’ve ever seen. Watch it, and try to sit still as the captured safari men are tortured to death. I know most of them were evil white capitalists out raping the jungle -- but still! That ain't right.

The Interpol man is killed with a spear (and nice knowing ya! Thanks for stopping buy and expositioning the plot for us), but Burt manages to get away. He spots jungle girl again, and although she’s still a little skittish, he uses the Wild Bill Shatner technique to calm her down. (He takes his shirt off, etc. etc.) Despite the language barrier, he manages to find out that she’s the "Sacred Monkey" that Diana was looking for. (Now that’s MORE than a little disturbing.) Dubbing her Eve, Burt discovers that she’s wearing Diana’s bracelet and convinces her to show him where she found it.

Then the scene shifts back to the cavern laboratory for some more plot exposition. Albert removes Diana from her cage and goes into the standard bad guy gloating routine by explaining how he is able to control the apes: After implanting the reception antennae into the ape, he uses his atomic transmitter to control them. This transmitter is a large picture of a monkey brain with a red light bulb right in the center, and it also appears to be his burglar alarm as it goes off when someone invades the perimeter. Tuning in a monitor, Albert sees Burt and Eve approaching the cave. He sends Turk and an ape to take care of them, while he throws Diana back in her cage and gloats some more and reveals that he’s been doing the same kind of mind control experiments on women, too. And if she doesn’t capitulate to him, she's next on the patient list.

The trap is sprung, scattering the invaders. Turk chases Burt, while the ape goes after Eve. Calling the ape by name, she is surprised when the ape won’t listen to her. (Think Tarzan here. "Unk, mangahni! Bondalo!") Under Albert's control, the ape captures her and takes her back to his new master. Meanwhile, Burt uses the old "stick your shoe in a rock to fool the bad guy" trick and kills Turk, then takes the bad guy's rifle and heads deeper into the cavern.

Back at the lab, Albert is ecstatic to finally get his hands on the "Sacred Monkey." (Okay, that’s just wrong. Someone really blew it in the translation and dubbing here.) Then, out of the blue, Ted and Ursula show up armed to the teeth, demanding that Diana be released immediately. And then the film makes another violent u-turn when Ursula turns on Ted and shoots him in the head. Seems she's been having an affair with Albert all along. (The hell?) She turns on Diana, too, and tries to kill her, but Eve jumps in and a royal catfight ensues. This display of feminine feistiness rouses the male apes caged nearby. And as it builds into frenzy, a shot rings out and Ursula slumps over. She's dead. Burt enters the lab with the smoking gun, and takes aim at Albert. His revenge is almost complete, but the apes, so wound up over the frenzied female fight, managed to break out of their cage and attack him. Diana yells at Burt to shoot at the transmitter. He does, and manages to hit the light bulb with the second shot with two monkeys hanging on his back!

With the apes now back under Eve’s control, she sics them on Albert. After they chase him down and kill him (I think), we cut back to his equipment and it explodes, causing everyone to flee the cave. Burt and Diana jump in a handy boat and head back toward civilization, while Eve and her chimp wave goodbye and then head back into the jungle.

The End

First off, I only have one thing to say about King of Kong Island.

SHENANIGANS!

That's right. I call shenanigans on our good friends at VCI video. Why? Well, the box art for this video is adorned with a large gorilla and what appears to be a rocket ship clasped in its paw. There was no plot description on the back of the box, at all, and I honestly thought I was renting a version of King Kong Escapes. So, the first time I watched it, I knew something was fishy when the credits only called the film Kong Island. And within the first ten minutes I knew I'd been had. Needless to say, there are no giant monkeys, no rocket ships, and, in fact, there is no mention of the word Kong during the entire film.

Kong Island, or La Venere Selveggia Eva in it's native Italian, has bad acting, bad dialogue, bad special-effects, bad plotting, and is just a plain bad idea. Now normally this kind of craptacular royal flush is good for laughs but this film can't quite get over that cinematic hump.

However, this Italian mish-mash isn’t without its merit. As a jungle safari movie, it covers all it’s bases as proven with this handy chart:

I could go on but you get the general idea.

There is another subplot that I didn’t go into much detail in the synopsis which involves the domestic disputes between Ursula and Ted. I left it alone because they’re the most disturbing thing in the movie. Every time they’d fight, Ted would wind up slapping her, and then he’d "attack" her. It really didn’t belong in this movie (or any movie for that matter.)

All the double-crossing that goes on in this movie is a little contrived. It’s maddening how often a character is introduced to help explain the plot, but then, as soon as they do, they’re dead within minutes. (So, if you do know something. Keep it under your pith helmet.) And another thing, what is it with the Italians where everybody has to die in their films except the hero and the heroine. I chuckled when Ted and Ursula showed up out of nowhere at the end, and then were both dead in less than two minutes.

As with most foreign imports, something gets lost in the translation. Albert is always complaining about headaches, and I think he is supposed to be in direct psychic control of the apes and is having some kind of feedback problems. This plays out in the end, when Bert destroys his equipment, and Albert’s brain overloads. As the apes close in on him, he clutches his head in agony and drops out of frame; so maybe he died of a cerebral hemorrhage? I don't know. (For more info, check out the IMDB entry and check the user comments for more history on the making of this film.)

Actor Marc Lawrence had quite a career in Hollywood but ran into trouble with the communist witch hunts in the 1950s. Naming names, he was blackballed into acting exile in Europe where he wound up in films like this one. But he would return to America in the '70s with his own dastardly opus Daddy's Deadly Darling. And as they say, payback is a bitch.

Admittedly, King of Kong Island is an inauspicious start to our look at the world of big bad monkey movies. We can only hope it gets better -- or it’s gonna be a long couple of weeks.

More Monkey See, Monkey Doo-Doo!

Posted: 03/20/01. Copy and paste at your own legal risk.

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