Konga is filmed in 'SpectaMation', presumably meaning they used moving picture cameras to put the thing in the can. Michael Gough portrays Dr. Decker, a famous botanist who spends a year lost in the jungles outside of Tanzania. Decker (and quite likely Gough, too) is dyspeptic to a tea (stop with the puns, Dahlke). His eventual return to Britain garners front-page headlines, and he just can't wait to hold a low-wattage press conference in a seating area of the airport, so he can disdainfully patronize reporters while he manhandles his new pal, a chimp named Konga. (Nomenclature in service to reminding viewers that they're supposed to be enjoying the most brain-shattering movie since Kong.)

The good doctor has discovered a plant enzyme that causes animals to grow to enormous proportions. In order to get his discovery ready to present to the world, he must first (of course) turn Konga into a man-sized, easily suggestible killer. Or, maybe this is all in service to bagging one of his comely University students, much to the chagrin of his fake girlfriend, assistant Margaret (Margo Johns) who sums up her displeasure with Decker's deadly doings by reminding him that, "to call a woman 'just a good friend' is almost an insult." As Margaret becomes more disgusted with Decker's passive-aggressive killing ways, she zings him with this oft-quoted line, "What are you having with your poached egg? Murder?" Ouch! To say Konga hurtles off the rails instantaneously would be an understatement, but creature feature fans of all stripes won't find this terribly disturbing, as the movie is certainly a cracked pleasure of badness.

The actors are earnest. Margo Johns endows her put-upon, past-her-prime hottie with dignity and fire. Decker's college age students muster as much gee-whiz enthusiasm as their British reserve allows. You even feel their pain when, after a movie-derailing trip into the woods for some 'research', tragedy befalls one of their group. But in the end, they're all floundering in a ludicrous Rue Morgue-style, proto-stalk-n-slash flick, with a dude in a gorilla suit providing the jump scares.

The fine 'Made-On-Demand' DVD-R transfer highlights just how bad Dr. Decker's outsized carnivorous plants look, also pointing out the chintzy qualities of transformation sequences that find Konga growing from chimp, to gorilla, to Kong wanna-be: It looks like someone has poured dirty water over the lens hide the cheap-jack origins of optical enlargement. At least when Konga turns into Decker's muscle, viewers can enjoy the sharp image highlighting the monkey's suspicious eyes staring at Decker, as if to say, "I've got your number, you ninny." Sadly, when Konga grows big enough to burst out of Decker's fine English Manse, giant monster fans must rely on smacking their foreheads to provide any fireworks.

As the man-in-the-zippered-suit (ranging wildly in size depending on the angle of the shot) staggers woefully around a pair of crummy sets, the movie really shows its lack of ambition. Decker, firmly in Konga's hand, is played either by a really lame doll, or an incredibly stiff super-imposition of the actor, whining "Hellllp, helllp!" in irritating fashion, as if any of the onlookers queuing diligently in the street give a damn. Decker also enjoys brow-beating his former flunky by exhorting, "Unhand me, you fool!" For one thing, giant apes do not respond well to being called a fool, for another the only thing we viewers want in this world, by this point, is to see Dr. Decker manhandled into eternity by his former pet. Something like that happens, but it's not nearly as satisfying as was our earlier indoctrination into what one does when one's cat laps up a little too much Jungle Juice: Pop a couple caps in its dome. That's Konga in a coconut shell.

The DVD

Video:
This MGM Limited Edition Collection, manufactured-on-demand on a professional quality DVD-R, comes with pathetic cover art, and in a rather nice standard definition 16 x 9 widescreen transfer. Of course the film's producers probably wouldn't want you to see the movie's slap-dash effects in this much detail, but that's life in the 21st Century for you! Colors are reproduced accurately, and details are fairly strong on all fronts. This is a bad thing, as it makes things such as Dr. Decker's outsized carnivorous plants look like spray-painted inflatable dildos. But if it's true fidelity you want, it's true fidelity you'll get. Film grain is evident, and details aren't the strongest ever, but the transfer looks pretty great, without any compression issues to discuss.

Sound:
Dolby Digital Mono Audio, it goes without saying, is nothing special. On the other hand, it ain't bad either. Dialog and music are mixed appropriately, no serious deterioration of the audio source is detectable, and gosh-darn-it, every time Dr. Decker petulantly demands Konga let him go, you'll hear it baby, you'll hear it. You might hear it until the day you die, it's that annoying.

Extras:
This manufactured-on-demand DVD-R comes with no extras. So to fill up space I'll mention this: Konga is currently available on Netflix, and it's, to be frank, a shitty movie, all things considered. But it's a fun kind of shitty, and soon enough, Netflix will purge it from the servers, and then what will you do? If you like this kind of stuff, grab this disk, and enjoy it in your twilight years on the DVD player you saved and managed to keep working, despite the ever-present danger of the giant cockroaches.

Final Thoughts:
Konga is basement-level giant monkey cheese brought to American viewers with the help of our former keepers, the British. Serving primarily as a testy kitchen-sink murder-spree fronted by a guy in a gorilla suit, it's vintage cheese, stinky and delicious. Though you'll want hoity-toity Dr. Decker (brought to dyspeptic life by the utterly unlikable Michael Gough) to buy the farm early on, you'll have to wait to the forehead-slappingly bad giant ape rampage to achieve satisfaction. Recommended for all the wrong reasons.

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