King of Kong Island (1968)

recommended

Watch something else. There are very few redeeming qualities to this film.

There is just so much movie here. For some it may be too much. But in the same secretly sarcastic way most telemarketers say the phrase, the title of this one is particularly apt.

Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

Burt has been double crossed during a payroll robbery by Albert, and left for dead. Later, he goes to an island run by the dad of Robert, but something strange is going down and someone is implanting some sort of implant into gorilla's head to make the zombies, but is it Burt, Albert, or Robert, son of the island owner. Also, there's some chicks, Diana, brother of Robert, other Chick, Robert's wicked stepmother, and special monkey or something, a feral chick with the hots for Burt.That's Burt, not Albert or Robert. This film is kind of boring to begin, but then is filled with those familiar Italian themes we all know and love: Sexism, Macho Insecurity, Animal Cruelty, and anti-communism...so if you like to see women being slapped about, women being felt up, or women being threatened, this is the film for you.Also, we have man's contempt for nature, the white man's contempt for anything, and loads of black men running away from things (but not being shot in the back five times as this isn't reality). This was nowhere near as boring as I was lead to believe. Also this isn't Also this isn'tAlso check out Burt's dancing.....

A trashy Italian jungle adventure, with a mad scientist implanting radios into gorillas' brains, so they will do his bidding. The film is sleazy and slow, a kind of scummy imprint of White Africa in the age of decolonization. The bureaucrats have fled the continent, and all who are left are the mercs, the drunks, and the cranks. Too many scenes in a dive bar, too much footage from big game hunts, no point in the end. A perfect nihilistic Z movie.Any nudity has been edited out of the American cut, making this trashy film even more pointless. The film is still plenty sleazy, though. Everyone sweats and snarls their way across the frame, and each new location looks grimier than the last. I think I caught beri beri just watching this movie.And yet, the whole time, I was happy. I was entertained. There is nothing so sweet as a movie that plays completely beyond the bounds of good taste. A movie that DARES you to watch.It deserves its rotten, budget DVD presentation.

I'm not sure what I thought I would enjoy about this obviously cheap, amateurish Italian-b movie. I think maybe I have a bit of fondness for jungle adventure. Give me a few scenes of trekking through the brush, and I can place myself in the action. What made this movie slightly more fun than so many other low budget disasters is the mixture of so many disparate and nearly random elements.The movie starts off by establishing the main character, Burt, as a former mercenary who was betrayed during a payroll robbery. He is still looking for the man who left him for dead when the action picks up elsewhere in Africa. He agrees to go along with a wealthy family on a hunting trip that eventually turns into a kidnapping. A young, pretty girl is needed for mind control experiments, which happens to be run by Albert, the man who shot Burt in the opening scene. Albert already has been able to control gorillas with his device, and uses as security to guard his jungle laboratory. Burt gains an advantage, however, when he befriends Eva, a native jungle woman. Together they must rescue the lovely Diana and put an end to Albert's jungle terror.It's all looks pretty silly nowadays, but I thought it was a bit of fun that didn't drag too much. I had to fast forward through some of the obvious sequences, but there was also some action that kept my attention. I think there must be a void nowadays in the adventure genre, because I was a little to eager to like King of Kong Island. Perhaps the time is right for filmmakers to give us new stories with imaginative plots and exotic locations with daring heroes and heroines.

I found this movie as part of a 3-movies-on-one-budget-DVD set called Killer Gorilla, and, having never considered the killer gorilla movie as a genre, thought that I should immediately fill this crucial gap in my knowledge. I also am attracted to the brazen way which this movie attempts to cash in on the familiar name of a more famous movie: that's right, Howard's End.Viewers will not be surprised to learn, however, that there is in fact no king, no kong, and no island. We begin with what I can only assume is the "Love Theme from Kong Island" as we have all this exotica lounge music playing over the credits (by the way, this movie is just Kong Island in the credits). We are immediately introduced to our local mad doctor, who is performing a top-secret operation on a gorilla while spooky "woo-ooo" music plays. This, I might as well just tell you now, is to implant a mind-control device, so the mad doctor can control the gorillas, raise an army, etc.Cut to hot bar owner Theodore, who likes his women the way he likes his rocks: silent and still. He has this daughter Ursula, who is still in love with this guy Burt, who I think may be the hero. One thing you notice right away is that the guys are pretty burly! They are all gathered in this happening exotic nightclub, where some hugger-mugger or other happens, I think telling us that Burt is on some mission of revenge or some such.Soon we are treated to some really low-grade kung fu, then they all head off into the jungle, led by their guide Kaloomba. Unrelated nature footage abounds as they turn left and right, pretending to be amazed by the many wild creatures of the Congo. But soon, guys in gorilla suits are gathering and they make off with Ursula.Burt, this muscleman played by Brad Harris, who apparently portrayed Hercules in several movies, and was also in SS Hell Camp, as well as Dallas and Falcon Crest, decides that he's feeling not so fresh, and locates a stream where he strips his shirt off and runs cool water all over his heavily muscled body. It is total beefcake. He then sees the jungle queen, whose name is, I kid you not, the Sacred Monkey, and he says the only thing his little mind knows how to: "HEY!" Then we rejoin Theodore and his wife as they have a fight. Theodore slaps the bejesus out of her, then throws her on the bed to ravage her, then we cut away. We next see the mad doctor in his poorly-conceived lab, where he tells Ursula "Now you will have to serve me, like them!" (meaning like the gorillas. So, is he saying that the gorillas serve him sexually? Kinky doctor.) Then the hero shows up, and there's some fights, then Theodore and his wife are there, and the wife shoots Theodore right in front of Ursula, his daughter! The mother turns around and tells Ursula: "This is all your fault!" Poor Ursula is really gonna have a few issues with relating, closeness and intimacy, I'm afraid.Anyway, as has been signed into law, if a mad scientist has created and / or controls a living thing, it is decreed that the animal or whatever revolt and rise up to kill him at the end. The pattern is not reversed here. Then they bid a bittersweet adieu to the Sacred Monkey, and Ursula is all perky and waving "bye!" mere minutes after watching her mother kill her father in front of her. Poor girl, her mind is irrevocably cracked.Overall, kind of fun, though it did get a little boring with all the interminable walking through the jungle and gaping at inserted nature footage. Though on the plus side there is all the hunky male beef and the exotica bachelor den music… it could be worse.------ Hey, check out Cinema de Merde, my website on bad and cheesy movies (with a few good movies thrown in). You can find the URL in my email address above.