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Our
Mad
Mammoth Monkey Marathon shakes off the rough
start of King
of Kong Island and picks up some much
needed steam in the Isle of Britain. (At
least this one has a giant monkey in it!) After
some nifty checkerboard credits,
accompanied by a rousing Gerard Schurman
score, our movie proper begins as we
open on a small plane flying over the
jungle. We can tell by the engine burps
and hiccups that it’s in trouble, and it
quickly goes into a nosedive and
explodes.
And
judging
by the size of the explosion and
fireball, the plane was carrying a load
of paint thinner, kerosene, dynamite and
some fulminator mercury.
We
cut to London's Piccadilly Circus where a
newsy informs us that famed botanist, Dr.
Charles Decker, was lost in the plane
crash in Uganda, Africa. And then we
immediately time warp to one year later
and the same newsy (and
the same costumers, including producer
Herman Cohen,) tells us that not
only did Decker survive the crash, but
after a year in the jungle, he's returning
home to London that very day. An impromptu
news conference is held at Heathrow to
welcome Dr. Becker
(Michael
Gough) back, and he’s brought a
friend back with him; a baby chimpanzee
he’s dubbed Konga. When a reporter asks
if he feels fortunate to be back in
civilization, we get the first inkling of
Decker’s all encompassing smugness when
he answers "it depends on what you
call civilization." Claiming the air
disaster was a lucky accident (and
I'll bet the pilot has a different
opinion), the marooned Decker made friends
with the natives and spent the year
studying plants with "animal
tendencies." Decker continues, saying
his discoveries in Africa will also
"rewrite a few textbooks" but
won’t go into specifics -- except that
he claims to have found the evolutionary
link between plants and man. (A
planet where men evolved from plants? Get
your stinking leaves off me you damn dirty
lilacs!)
Decker
returns home and finds his house and lab
in perfect order thanks to his loyal
assistant, Margaret (Margo
Johns). (Although I think
she wants to be a little more then just
his assistant.) And she’s a
little perturbed because Decker seems more
concerned about the arrangements made for
Konga instead of being happy to see her. (See
what I mean?) The
doctor calms her down, saying his
discovery might someday make them the
kings of the Earth. His excitement is
contagious, and he wants to start his new
experiments right away. They place little
Konga in his suspiciously spacious cage,
but Decker is concerned that it still
might not be big enough. (Uh-oh.)
Moving on to the greenhouse, Decker starts
tearing up all his flowers to make room
for the plants he’s brought back from
Africa. His megalomaniac behavior is
beginning to frighten Margaret a little,
and she begs him to slow down and get some
rest. He agrees to make a fresh start
tomorrow.
The
next morning, Margaret finds Decker hard
at work in the lab. While in Africa, he
observed the rituals of a tribal witch
doctor who experimented on animals with
extracts from carnivorous plant with
amazing results: the injected animals grew
at an amazing rate.
Also, the old doctor had some
"seeds of obedience" that he
gave to the animals that allowed him to
control them. (And at this point we
wonder if Decker might have been out in
the sun a little too long.) She
doesn’t believe him until his plant
extract bubbles over onto the floor where
the family cat pounces and begins to lap
it up. Horrified, Decker rummages for a
revolver and shoots the feline dead. Now
Margaret is horrified, but he says,
in all seriousness, that the world
isn’t ready for a cat the size of
leopard running loose in London.
(Oh, I don’t know, Hainesville
got along all right.) No, not a
giant feline, Decker
wants Konga to be the subject of his
experiments.
A
week passes and the monster plants have
reached maturity in the greenhouse. (Some
resemble giant Venus flytraps while others
resemble a cobra, complete with flicking
tongue.) Decker does some pruning
and takes
the leafs back to the lab where he distils
them into a liquid. While Margaret
watches, Decker then injects the extract
into Konga and the baby chimp grows
quickly to adult size. Decker’s manic
glee at this point is almost palpable.
This
growing sequence is accomplished by
matte effect with the screen going all
psycho-wavy while the monkey grows
larger. I've affectionately dubbed this
the Dramamine Effect.
We
abruptly change venues. Remember,
Decker is a professor of botany, and he
has
resumed teaching his classes while he
experiments at home. Class ends and we
meet his prize pupil, Sondra (Claire
Gordon). Decker ogles the full
figured girl and comments on how much
she’s *ahem* matured while he was
away. She seems very interested in the new
discoveries he’s alluded to, while
he’s only interested in her very tight
sweater. (The creep.) Promising
her fortune and glory if she becomes his
special assistant, she agrees -- much to
the dismay of her boyfriend, Bob (Jess
Conrad).
Decker
holds a meeting with Dean Foster (Austin
Trevor) who
is none too happy about these claims
Decker made about plant evolution to the
newspapers. Believing these theories to be
utter nonsense, and that it reflects badly
on the college, their conversation quickly
turns ugly. When Decker stands
by his theories, Foster claims he’s
"gone mad" and wants him to cool
it. Decker refuses, and Foster signs his
own death warrant when he proclaims "As
long as I’m Dean of this college,
you’ll do as I say!" (Poor
guy, ain’t he ever seen one of these
B-movie potboilers?)
Returning
home, Decker finds Margaret teaching Konga
a few parlor tricks. He asks to be left
alone, and after she’s gone, he gives
the chimp another injection -- and Konga
grows to about the size of a George
Barrows. Using a penlight, the mad doctor
hypnotizes the ape and orders him to do
his bidding. Later that night, Konga
breaks into Foster’s office and kills
him.
The
next morning, at Scotland Yard, the
inspectors are baffled by the homicide.
All the evidence says a large primate
killed the murder victim but the zoo had
no animals running loose. Meanwhile,
Decker is strangely unaffected by the
headlines proclaiming Foster’s death.
Margaret isn't stupid; she knows that he
had Konga kill him. Decker doesn't deny
it, and claims it’s all part of his
grand experiment to test Konga’s
obedience. He
compares Foster's death to all the lab
rats killed in scientific experiments; it’s
all worth it for the advancement of
knowledge. (Wow this guy is cold.) This
pushes her blind devotion to him to its
limits, so he turns the tables on her and
points out that, technically, she’s an
accessory to the murder. Still fearing she
might crack, he promises to marry her if
she’ll keep quiet. (A
similar tactic used by Whit Bissel in
Cohen's I
Was A Teenage Frankenstein.)
The
Dean’s secretary comes forward and tells
the police that he had a heated argument
with Decker the day he was killed. When the
inspectors interrogate Decker, he keeps
his cool saying that he is a scientist --
and scientists don’t resort to violence;
they just talk things out. Their argument
was over purely philosophical differences
on certain subjects, and that's all there
was to it.
Later
at a faculty gathering, a visiting professor
corners Decker. Tagore (George
Pastell) has read about Decker's
theories on using the extracts of
carnivorous plants to accelerate growth in
animals. He, too, has experimented along
the same lines with the same startling
results, but Tagore is about to
go public with his discoveries. (Thus
stealing Decker’s thunder.) Asking
if they might join forces and pursue the
research together, Tagore says no. He has
the proof and doesn’t need to share the
spotlight. (So we know he won’t
be around much longer.) Decker
coyly asks to see his results and they
agree to meet in Tagore’s lab later that
evening. When
Decker arrives at the lab, he isn’t
alone. And while Konga strangles the other
scientist, Decker confiscates his notes
and taunts the dying Tagore that he’s
earned the right to all the glory of the
growth experiments. He then orders Konga
to destroy the lab, leaving no evidence of
Tagore’s experiments.
A
few days later, Decker’s class piles
into a van for a field trip. He tells
Sondra to ride in front with him, and the
other students rib Bob about the new
teacher’s pet. They reach the forest and
Decker instructs them to team up and
collect some ferns. It’s threatening to
rain, so they're all to meet in the
Ranger’s cabin over yonder if the
weather worsens. Bob
wants to team up with Sondra, but she’s
supposed to help Decker. They have a
fight. Bob thinks Decker is abusing his
position and taking advantage of Sondra (He
blinded me with science!), but she
counters, saying he's just being jealous.
The other
students continue to ride Bob until the
rain finally comes. They head for the
cabin -- except for Decker and Sondra,
adding more fuel to the potshots. When
Decker and Sondra finally show up, he
orders everyone back to the van while he
puts out the fire they started. Bob stays
behind and confronts Decker. He tells him
to leave Sondra alone, but Decker says to
mind his own business. It comes to blows
and the younger Bob has the upper hand.
With the older man in a deadly
stranglehold, Bob manages to come to his
senses and lets him go. Begging for
forgiveness, Decker makes him promise that
if he can keep his emotions under control,
before he kills someone, he will tell no
one about the incident.
That
evening, on his way to apologize to
Sondra, Bob says goodbye to his family,
and he
doesn’t even get out of the front yard
before Konga strikes.
The
police inspectors aren’t getting any
closer to their killer. Convinced that all
three murders are related, they can’t
find a common motive. Throwing a canvas
over the school, they question everyone
and also recheck the zoos and every
private monkey owner in London. Reading
all of this in the dailies, Margaret is at
her wits end. She scolds Decker for
killing the boy but he won’t tell her
why. He also says that, technically, he
didn’t kill him -- Konga did. Accusing
him of hiding behind technicalities, he
counters saying these experiments are just
beyond her normal comprehension. (The
man is smuggest S.O.B.) However,
he does think it's time to destroy Konga
and start over before they’re caught. He
wants to return to Africa, and continue
his experiments there, but they can’t
leave right away or they’ll rouse
suspicion. Besides, there are other
experiments that need concluding before
they go -- namely Sondra.
Decker
tells Margaret to invite the girl over for
supper. While they eat, Margaret is
beginning to feel like a third wheel. When
Decker offers to show Sondra his giant
plant collection in the greenhouse,
Margaret stays behind to do the dishes --
but she secretly follows them instead. Sondra
is fascinated by the meat eating plants,
and Decker promises her more if she will
come to Africa with him and be his new
assistant. She isn’t sure, so he
assaults her (rather
clumsily) in an attempt to steal a
kiss. She rejects him but the assault
continues. Margaret has seen enough and
heads to the lab.
Using the penlight to re-hypnotize Konga
to obey her, she then gives him another
injection. The ape grows larger -- a lot
larger. Maybe too large. Margaret
tries to order him around but Konga goes
berserk and kills her. (Well,
he kills a doll that kind of looks like
her.) He also appears to still be
growing as he trashes the lab and
accidentally sets it on fire. To escape
the flames, he busts his way outside.
In
the greenhouse --
seemingly unable to hear a fifty-foot
gorilla destroy his house a few feet away,
Decker is still trying to have his way
with Sondra. Konga jealously watches them
through the glass roof and then breaks in.
While seizing Decker (well, a doll
that kind of looks like Decker),
Sondra is knocked into the mutant plants,
and when last seen was up to her armpit in
a giant Venus flytrap.
The
Fire Department shows up to put out the
fire, but spy Konga with Decker clasped in
his hand. He orders Konga to put him down
but the monkey isn’t listening. As the
gorilla wrecks his way into London proper,
it's obvious he’s too much to handle for
the local police so the army is called in.
Surrounding the beast near Big Ben, and
even though he’s still holding on to
Decker, the order to fire is given. The
night lights up with tracers as the army strafes
Konga. Wounded badly, the only weapon he
has is Decker -- so he throws him at the
soldiers. But the mad scientist doesn't
make for a good and sturdy projectile and
is killed on impact. The army keeps on
firing until the giant ape collapses. (But
according to the tracers, I don’t think
they ever actually hit him.) Before
he dies, Konga reverts back to his
original form, and as Big
Ben strikes midnight on our monkey, and
Schurman's syrupy score crescendos and
slowly fades away, everyone
gathered looks around solemnly.
Awww,
poor little monkey.
The
end
Konga
is surprisingly good until it’s, for a
lack of better word, silly slam-bang
conclusion. The ending isn’t terrible,
it just isn’t executed very well and
spoils a pretty decent set-up. But damn if
it isn’t hilarious.
Michael
Gough makes a wonderful screen villain and
is great as the mad scientist in this
piece. He also turns in another similar
performance in Horrors
of the Black Museum.
The special-effects run the gambit from
wonderfully mediocre to hysterically
inept. I loved the killer plants in the
greenhouse. (And
we never do find out what happened to poor
Sondra.) Konga’s monkey suit
origins are forgivable as there are no
zippers spotted and the face is quite
articulate. Things just get goofy after
the last injection and he becomes a giant
gorilla. The
miniatures are really quite good, but the
problem occurs when the try to matte Konga
together with the live actors. There are
several hilarious reoccurring scenes where
the giant Konga stands stiffly erect to
match up with the fake giant hand holding
Gough. And as silly as those scenes are,
they pale in comparison to the scenes
where Konga holds the Barbie and Ken
dolls.
Konga
also marked the last film that producer
Herman Cohen did for American
International Pictures.
Filmed in England, it was a co-production
with his brother Nat Cohen's
Anglo-Amalgamated. Cohen produced the hits
I
Was A Teenage Werewolf
and Teenage
Frankenstein.
He also did Blood
of Dracula
-- that might as well have been called I
Was a Teenage Dracula. In fact, the
working title for Konga
was I Was A Teenage Gorilla. Cohen
had to pay RKO to use the name Konga;
a name derivative that was a little too
close to the studios own big monkey, King
Kong. In his book, Fast and
Furious: The Story of A.I.P.,
author Mark Thomas McGee talks about
filming the conclusion of Konga
in the streets of London:
"They
waited until the last night to film
Konga’s death scene which necessitated
the use of guns and bazookas. The
citizens thought the city was under
attack. The phones jumped off the hook
at Scotland Yard. Herman was very
apologetic but he had known all along
that if he had told them what he
intended to do he would never have been
given permission to shoot in the
streets."
It
also should be noted that Konga
was turned into one of those seamy novelizations
put out by Monarch Books. They also
did Gorgo
and Brides
of Dracula,
but the most notorious one, of course, was
Reptilicus
with the infamous line "He took her
with his savage lance of manhood." (I
don’t remember any savage lancing in
that movie?)
All
in all, Konga
makes for good entertainment. It’s got
everything a mad scientist movie needs: A
truly loony mad doctor. Man eating plants.
Seedy experiments with icky side effects
that go horribly, horribly wrong. And said
horribly gone wrong experiment breaks
loose and runs amok. And, of course, the
evil mad scientist gets hoisted with his
own patootie in the end. (I
have no idea what that means.)
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