Konga

Plot synopsis:
A plane crashes somewhere in Africa and a famous biologist Dr. Charles Decker (Michael Gough) is thought killed. A year later, he re-appears back to London, safe and sound with a pet monkey. He tells everyone that he stayed with a tribe and discovered something fantastic while recovering there.Not one to rest and wait around, the Doctor tells his assistant Margaret (Margo Johns) that he wants to start working on his new idea right away. They begin by planting carnivorous plants in their laboratory, for his experiments.The doctor goes back to teaching and hires one of his students to help him in class, Sandra Banks (Claire Gordon), but Sandras would be boyfriend is a bit jealous.Taking some of the leaves of the carnivorous plants, the doctor perfects a serum. He gives it to his monkey pet Konga. The small monkey grows as big as a chimpanzee.The dean of the college (Austin Trevor) is not happy with what the doctor told the press. It infuriates the doctor. He goes back to his lab and gives Konga another dose, this time turning him into a gorilla. He hypnotizes Konga and has him kill Dean Foster.Margaret puts two and two together and for his love, she agrees to keep things quiet.Another professor was on the brink of publishing the same theory to the world and for refusing to have a join venture, Konga kills the professor.On a field trip, Sandras boyfriend tells the professor how he feels and later Konga kills him too. To help cope with what happened to her boyfriend, the Doctor invites Sandra for sinner. He later tells her how he feels about her and he wants her to come to Africa with him. Margaret hears and sees what is happening and gives Konga another dose. She tries to hypnotize him and fails. Konga grows into a 25-foot gorilla and kills her.While the doctor is trying to persuade Sandra and she's trying to get away from him, Konga grabs the doctor and leaves toward the center of London. Sandra tries to escape, but a carnivorous plant grabs her arm and begins eating her.The police and the army are frantic to get the large beast out of London. They kill the beast, but not before Konga kills the doctor. Konga reverts to what he was and both he and the doctor are dead on the streets of London.

Tags: murder

Review:
Basically it's Frankenstein and King Kong with some cheesy special effects and a truly wonderful performance from Michael (Now Alfred the Butler of Batman Movies) Gough.Thought to be dead in a plane crash while doing research in Africa, a brilliant botanist/scientist returns home to his teaching post while continuing experiments on his little monkey with the help of his assistant/lover.A breakthrough occurs and the chimpanzee is transformed into a man in a gorilla suit.When our scientist starts falling for a sexy co-ed, the woman he's promised to marry gives Konga an extra dose of stuff and voila, he grows right through the roof of the house and becomes an Attack of a Fifty Foot Man in a Gorilla Suit named Konga.
It has an outlandish story about a scientist who returns from Africa having been presumed lost who has found a botanical secret to growth in humans and other animals through injections of serums made from seedlings brought back from the jungle which he injects into a small chimp he also brings back from Africa that he uses as his primate guinea pig which after several injections(and murders of people standing in the scientist's way) grows to epic proportions and brings an end to his creator's dreams.
It was obviously trying to emulate an earlier film by the name of King Kong but the two films are so different.Michael Gough plays a mad scientist who gives Konga a growth serum.
When I was a kid Famous Monsters of Filmland touted KONGA as the new King Kong so I layed down my 35 cent sat in the air conditioned comfort of the local theater where you got two movie's and normally a couple cartoons thrown in for good measure.
Id have liked Konga for Gough's performance alone but the lurid plot, the not tooo bad effects didn't hurt ( I knew they wasn't going to be any animation) while its no great film its fun and sometimes thats enough............
Oh the horror of it all!For most of this film, when the wicked Dr. Decker, played with a giant side order of ham by Michael Gough, injects that poor Chimpanzee with his nasty super grow essence of hulk formula, it is just plain stupid, boring, ridiculous, and dumb.
Herman Cohen has done a lot of good movies fir American international pictures like i was a teenage werewolf.teenage Frankenstein,the black museum.and konga is one of those campy movies thats pretty good.even if some of the special effects are below par.Micheal gough plays the professor who returns home from Uganda Africa with a chimp named konga and carnivorous plant bulbs,he uses the plant extract to turn his playful chimp into a ferocious gorilla to get revenge on those who crossed his path and upset him.he makes advances on a busty blonde college student,his jealous companion doesn't like how things are going and things turn ugly.the music on the soundtrack is very good and memorable.konga was filmed in great Britain and imported by American international pictures.yes i did hear that George barrows the Hollywood gorilla expert played konga.konga is no classic but its much better then the mighty gorga and a*p*e*.Micheal gough went on to play Alfred in the batman movies from 1989 to 1997.i give konga 8 out of 10..
Konga is, for the majority of its running time, a mundane mad scientist movie; only in its closing moments does the film become the desperate King Kong rip-off that its derivative title suggests.
But that doesn't improve matters much.The deranged doctor in question is botanist Charles Decker (Michael Gough), who, having been lost in the jungles of Uganda for over a year, finally returns home to England with Konga, his pet chimpanzee (UK quarantine regulations clearly non-existent back in the '60s), plus several specimens of rare insectivorous plant-life.
Using these plants, Decker concocts a formula designed to generate rapid growth in animals and tests his serum on Konga, with incredible results: the chimp not only increases in size, but also turns into a gorilla!Having added a little something to his concoction to ensure obedience, Decker then proceeds to use Konga to remove anyone who has been getting in his way, starting with the troublesome dean at his university, followed by a rival scientist, and then Bob, jealous boyfriend of Sandra (Claire Gordon), the pretty student that the dirty old doctor has designs on (can't say I blame him though: she definitely stands out from the other girls in his class!).When Decker informs his besotted assistant Margaret (Margo Johns) of his plans to dispose of Konga, and she subsequently overhears him telling Sandra that he has no more use for her, she releases Konga, giving him one last blast in the arm of Decker's serum.
After wasting much of their ammo shooting at Big Ben, the soldiers adjust their sights and bring Konga crashing to the ground (but only after he has thrown Decker to his death).Not only does Konga suffer from a dreadfully dull and derivative script, but this utterly abysmal monster movie doesn't even compensate by delivering a half decent creature, it's over-sized ape being nothing more than a man in a really bad gorilla suit (which, incidentally, is the same one used in several other dreadful films, including z-grade sci-fi clunker Robot Monster).
Fans of very bad movies might get a kick out of the wonderfully daft carnivorous plants in Decker's greenhouse, the dated scenes where the groovy students get down to some cool tunes on their transistor, and Sandra's rather dangerous looking bra, but most viewers will find little to go ape over..
The creature here is an ape who just happens to be called Konga (hint..hint), which gives one a sense of the degree of subtlety in the film.If one can call scenery chewing magisterial I think it's fair to say that Michael Gough, as the mad scientist in this one, does it with an authority worthy of at the very least a knighthood, if not a lordship.
The result is a great big man-in-a-gorilla-suit monster that eventually goes insane with rage.This *could* have been more of a campy delight, but too often it gets bogged down in story and becomes dull.
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.
Story is about a scientist and teacher named Charles Decker (Michael Gough) who was in a plane that crashed in Africa and it takes a year for him to make it back to civilization.
Whether its Kong or Konga, Mighty Joe Young or The Ape, I love gorilla movies, especially the kind where men in cloddish hairy suits lunge around the streets terrifying entire populations.
This is one of those--a totally inept mad scientist movie that maintains momentum through sheer foolishness, complete with foaming beakers in the lab, human dreams of world domination, strange murders late at night, and best of all, a gorilla that just gets larger with every injection.
Hokey story, ridiculous special effects, and absolutely wild performance by Michael Gough make this one a must-see for horror/sci-fi/"bad" movie fans.
Silly, but sadly dull, story about a mad scientist who performs growth experiments on plants and animals, and eventually on his chimpanzee, Konga (you know, Konga/Kong, as in King Kong), who then grows to an enormous size to kill the scientist's enemies and eventually wreaking havoc on London.
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 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.
Dr Decker is dead too.Konga as a giant is played by a man in a gorilla suit and I found this sequence quite amusing.The cast includes a great performance by Michael Gough (Horrors of the Black Museum) and is joined by Margo Johns as his partner, pop star Jess Conrad and Claire Gordon.This movie is worth seeing, just for Michael Gough's performance and Konga as a giant.
Konga is set in London where Dr. Charles Decker (Michael Gough) has returned after his plane crashed in Uganda & was missing presumed dead there for over a year, during that year Decker was living with native tribes in the jungle & learning about new species of plants & the scientific & medical possibilities they held.
Bring back a serum that local tribes developed & a Chimpanzee named Konga he intends to carry out experiments into the link between animal & plant life, injecting Konga with the serum the Chimp grow's to human size in a matter of minutes & Decker concludes his experiments are a success although much more work still needs to be done with help of his assistant Margaret (Margot Johns).
Margaret becomes aware that she is also to be killed by Konga after she discovers too much & tries to use Konga herself to kill Decker first but the giant Ape breaks free & rampages through London...This British & American co-production was directed by John Lemont & is considered a real Turkey amongst film fans & to be fair Konga is bad but I had a good time watching it & thought it was reasonably entertaining in it's silliness, the whole film seems to have been made as a King Kong (1933) rip-off with a giant Ape that runs amok in a world famous city & is killed by a famous landmark in said city & taken as just a silly & cheap monster film there's some fun to be had here.
The script is far too talky & Konga himself is more of a subplot until the last fifteen minutes when he that silly woman Margaret injects loads of growth serum into his arm & he grow's taller than Big Ben, the majority of the film focuses on Dr. Decker & his vague experiments (are they about increasing size or mind control or about changing physical form?) as well as he lecherous longings for his pretty young blonde student Sandra, his possessive & quite frankly dim secretary Margaret also causes him problems as do various other people whom he has to kill off as the script tries to throw in a few murders & an opportunity for the tatty Konga Ape suit to be seen.
If taken for what it is & watched in the right frame of mind then Konga is good clean totally ridiculous monster filled fun, nothing more nothing less.The effects are really poor, the Ape suit was apparently hired from George Barrows & it's a really tatty & unconvincing looking thing.
The acting isn't great, in fact apart from Michael Gough's larger than life villain whose motivations & plans are all over the place it's quite poor.Konga is good fun if your in the right mood & your a fan of silly giant monster films, if not then I would advise you stay well away from this as you will probably hate it.
After being lost in the wilds of Uganda for a year and a half, insane botany professor Michael Gough returns to London and creates a serum that allows his pet chimp Konga to grow to astronomical sizes.
Konga himself, the "monster," is a confused, overgrown chimp who follows a mad doctor's orders until the film's climax, when Konga quadruples in size, breaks out of his cage (and out of his house, via the front wall) and starts throwing people around like they're nothing more than Ken & Barbie dolls.
The "love theme" from KONGA plays while the giant collapses and reverts, in death, to the little chimp he was at the start of the movie, before mad Dr. Decker began experimenting with him.
I remember finding it silly then and, if anything, it proved even sillier now but, being able to appreciate the campy qualities in Michael Gough's histrionic central performance, it was a worthwhile revisit after all.The film starts immediately with a cheap but effective airplane crash and then cuts to a year later with Gough's sudden return to London with a small chimp in tow; at his arrival at the airport he is met by a delegation (stretching to just 3 reporters!) and already he starts showing signs of a 'not- suffering-fools-gladly' attitude towards those scoffing at his outrageous theory of plants with human characteristics that can accelerate growth!
Soon he is extracting the growth fluid from these plants and injecting them into his chimp (when a pet cat unwittingly sips the accidentally-spilt formula, Gough loses it and, to his assistant's amazement, shoots the fatally curious feline on the spot!) and, before you can say "Konga", it is turned into a fully mature ape.
Transported around town inside his black van, it is used to eliminate those people who stand in the way of his reaching the goals he had set for himself in life: the patronizing college Dean, a fellow Indian scientist working on similar lines (George Pastell of Hammer's THE MUMMY fame) and one of his pupils (the boyfriend of a studious female Gough drools over and vice versa!), though the latter only after he gets one hell of a beating from him!Though the film was obviously modeled on 1933's KING KONG (one, in fact, wonders why nobody sued given the blatant rip-off of the title and theme!), the script borrows from several other genre classics: 1932's MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE (via its trained or, in this case, hypnotized[!] ape), 1935's BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN (a 'rival' scientist offering the protagonist to join forces – though, perhaps owing more to budgetary constraints than anything else, the latter's creations are never shown!) and THE RAVEN (in the doctor's obsessive and unnatural desire for a much younger girl) and, of a more recent vintage, 1960's THE LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS (the flesh-eating plants).The film is reasonably solid until the last quarter of an hour when it unfortunately falls to pieces: incidentally, here we get perhaps one of cinema's most credibility-stretching moments with Gough seemingly so lost in pawing the heroine in the greenhouse that he is totally oblivious to Konga's extreme growth next door – literally coming through the roof and setting his house ablaze – but the fire engines and civil authorities from God knows how far away do hear the ruckus and come dashing onto the scene!
You'll love Michael Gough's performance as the doctor, as he manages to wonderfully create as mad a scientist as you can find on film.
"We can't have a cat the size of a leopard roaming around London!" After a few injections the tiny chimp Konga turns into a bloke in a gorilla suit, aided by a "wavy line" screen effect, and is promptly hypnotised by The Goughster, looking extremely stoned when the process is finished.
Veteran British actor Michael Gough chews the scenery worse than the man-eating plants he raises in his hothouse; today he is best known for playing Alfred in several BATMAN movies.
In "Konga," however, the ape is huge and the rampage is through the heart of London, and if Konga's fury is a bit on the somnolent side and his general appearance rendered somewhat tacky by dint of some truly subpar special FX, these two factors do not prevent the film from remaining good, cheezy fun, now 53 years after its initial appearance.In the film, directed by John Lemont, the viewer meets a maniacally dedicated botanist named Charles Decker (wonderfully well played by British horror icon Michael Gough).
But Margaret has an even greater surprise in store, when Decker's serum is used on his cute little African chimp, Konga, doubling its size, and later, when another injection causes Konga to grow to the size of a formidable-looking gorilla!
Indeed, Gough is easily the single best component of this movie, and when he is not on screen--which only happens during the last 15 minutes of the film, during Konga's nighttime London boogie--the picture suffers.
Also the special effects for the film that was one of the first giant monster movies shot in color took 18 months to complete.
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.
Then it's just shit.The story: Dr. Charles Decker (played by Michael Gough) returns home after a year in Africa after being presumed dead.
He also brings back plants from Uganda and starts injecting Konga with a special serum (which not only makes him bigger but turns him from a lowly chimp into an APE!!!).
As the chimp grows, so does his species, as by the time he's man-sized, he looks more like a gorilla.