Konga
Videogames have given me a deep appreciation for knock off Kongs, for a short while in the early eighties there was a fairly sizeable amount of “not Donkey Kong, honest guv” games with a remarkable piece of cover art to accompany them. The art is often hilarious and, for some reason, invariably has the most inexplicable of monkey tits.
Like, take a look at this dude who has just heard someone say “sixty nine”, he’s amazing. Straight out of a Carry On film.
Weirdly though, I am not so up on knock off Kong films! So that’s something I intend to remedy this year, starting with Konga. Ok, I have seen Konga a few times before so it’s an easy place to start, I know what I’m going to get and what I’m going to get is a lot of Michael Gough failing to convince that he’s worth all the bother the women in this film seem to expend on his character, also a pantomime gorilla suit and a dollop of extra racism for good measure. Is there a more British collection of things? I don’t know.
Cashing in on the previous Goughic success of Horrors Of The Black Museum, the film places most of its focus on, well, Gough. It isn’t really until the latter part of the film when Konga is properly unleashed on the world, before then he’s largely consigned to do a few murders for Michael (and for science) so the big ape action takes a while. When it does though? Oh yes, we are talking dude in a panto ape suit standing by a model of a greenhouse, looking rather worn with some middle age sag. Perfect. Second best film greenhouse scene next to Slugs and it gives the return of the Cyber Confroller in Attack Of The Cybermen a run for its money in the podge stakes. Beautiful.
Apparently, there’s a whole bunch of comics that followed in the film’s wake and to my shame, I’ve not read them so that hopefully gives me something else to do with my time this year. Sure, I’ll miss the close ups of the gorilla mask that cause me to erupt with laughter every time they happen to be onscreen but it’s more big ape punching innit and you can’t really knock that.
Oh, and yeah, Konga has got smooth tits. All good.