Konga (1961)

It takes a special kind of actor to deliver lines like "There's a huge monster gorilla that's constantly growing to outlandish proportions loose in the streets!" with a straight face. So, take a bow, Jack Watson.

Konga was the brainchild of Herman Cohen, a film producer from Detroit without whom the British film industry would have been a much duller place. One from the William Castle school of horror film showmen, Cohen cannily realized early on that the primary audience for horror films in the 1950s and 1960s were teenagers, and made films that specifically spoke to that market. Cohen could be accused of being hung up on ‘misunderstood teenagers get transformed into ugly monsters by the older generation’ plots. This though was the main theme that ran throughout Cohen’s career and some of his biggest hits….I was a Teenage Werewolf, I was a Teenage Frankenstein, Blood of Dracula and Horrors of the Black Museum.

Back in the States, Cohen’s regular go-to guy when it came to horror movie villainy had been Whit Bissell, but by the time Cohen relocated to England his main man had become Michael Gough. Although they were made in the 1950s and early 1960s, Cohen’s films anticipate the hippie era philosophy of ‘never trust anyone over 30’…especially it seems if they’re played by Michael Gough. Konga diverts slightly from Cohen’s tried and tested ‘teenagers and monsters’ formula, without totally abandoning it, due to Gough sharing the screen with singing sensation and teenage heartthrob Jess Conrad, but its Gough’s mad scientist, rather than the teenagers, who is very much front and central here. Since he is in pretty much every scene in Konga, Gough is given an entire movie in which to antagonize a teenage audience, playing a hissy, evil control freak with a sexually predatory agenda. In Cohen’s films Gough is the mean authority figure who is out to steal your girl and turn you into a rampaging monster, the epitome of every headmaster, cop or politician that any teenager back then aspired to rebel against. It’s a role that became Gough’s calling card for many years, he returned to the Cohen fold to play a fanatical trouble maker in 1970’s Trog, before both retiring and spoofing this screen image in Antony Balch’s Horror Hospital in 1973.




In light of the fact that Konga’s working title is meant to have been ‘I was a Teenage Gorilla’ it is tempting to wonder if Cohen’s original plan was to strictly adhere to his ‘I was a…’ plots and make yet another film in which an angst ridden teenager is transformed into a monster by an older mad scientist. Instead though that honour is allocated to Konga, a chimp that Gough’s character Dr Decker, has adopted during an unplanned year long exile in Africa. The result of Decker bailing out of a plane crash and being rescued by an African tribe. Once back in Blighty, Decker proves to be quite the talk of the town, and attracts tabloid interest (Herman Cohen aptly cameos as a sucker for a sensationalist newspaper story). As is often the case with this sort of Michael Gough character, Decker is saddled with a needy, spinsterish female assistant, Margaret (Margo Johns) whose romantic gestures are given the brush off by the Doc “there’s very little room for sentiment in the life of a scientist”. The "firm instruction” Decker had sent Margaret “to have a large cage built" turns out to be intended just for Konga, talk about getting a gal's hopes up!! All of Decker’s energy is focused on Konga, and growing carnivorous plants…which provides the most phallic imagery ever seen in an ‘A’ cert movie from 1961…what with the plants resembling B.B.C ….and I don’t mean the British Broadcasting Corporation here.



Gifted to him by the African tribe, the plants produce a growth serum that Decker shoots into Konga’s ass, in the hope of turning him supersized. A plan nearly thwarted by Margaret’s cat, who accidently drinks some of the serum, causing Decker to shoot the poor puddy tat before it grows in size….the world wasn’t quite ready for Kitten Kong yet. Konga however gets an upgrade from puny chimp to man sized gorilla with a permanently perplexed look in his eyes. At which point Konga becomes a sort of ‘Murders in the Rue Morgue for a teenage drive-in audience’, as the villainous Decker sends Konga out to do his murderous bidding.

Were he not such an amoral hard-ass you’d actually feel sorry for Doctor Decker. Just when the path to fame and scientific glory seems clear the film throws yet another adversary into the mix for Decker to blow his top at. Human obstacles come in the form of the Dean of the collage that Decker teaches at, who dismisses Decker’s plans as the rantings of a madman, and a rival scientist who signs his own death warrant by mentioning he has been making breakthroughs in Decker’s own scientific turf.




A real ‘hands across the ocean’ affair, Konga might be mindful of a US Drive-In audience, complete with tailor made dialogue (“as the Americans say…play it cool”) but it is also a recognizable part of a true Brit tradition of quota quickie dramatizations of bizarre crime stories. Konga having being produced at Merton Park studios, home of the Edgar Lustgarten fronted ‘Scotland Yard’ and ‘Scales of Justice’ quota quickie series. As with those films, Konga boasts regular cutaways to Scotland Yard, where baffled detectives try to get to the bottom of the case, while Gough regularly pops in to gloat. Decker having the cast iron alibi of getting a boss eyed gorilla to do his dirty work for him. Future ‘Take an Easy Ride’ auteur Kenneth F. Rowles, who began as a runner at Merton Park, got an early career break working on Konga, and its DVD release is one of several films Rowles worked on that he has reviewed on Amazon UK. Natch’ they’re are all glowing reviews (“very good movie must be seen”, “a must for all Stones fans”, “not as good as Ups and Downs of a Handyman”).

Herman Cohen definitely brought allot of colour to the British film industry, quite literally. Konga is a very bright and colourful movie, with Cohen tapping into 1960s audiences love affair with colour film by delivering this Eastman colour spectacular. Right from the get-go, with various colours bursting out of the screen in the opening titles, colour is all over this film with each set seemingly sporting its own orange, green, yellow or purple colour scheme. Scenes have an unnatural, picture postcard aesthetic to them. Konga doesn’t so much wave goodbye to the b/w film era, but give it a firm kick up the arse, it’s also the antithesis of the de-saturated look favored by 21st century cinema.

Lest we forget, Konga also offered 1960s audiences “the anger and the anguish of Jess Conrad” as the trailer puts it. There to get the teenagers in, and make the ladies swoon, Conrad shows up as Bob, one of Decker’s college students. When both Bob and Decker finds themselves competing for the affections of Sandra (Claire Gordon), another of Decker’s students, Bob’s days are numbered. Decker might come across as a neuter in the company of Margaret, but when Sandra is around it is a different matter “this may not have anything to do with class work, but I can’t get over how you’ve grown” he pervs. Playing mad scientists who can’t control their horndog tendencies might have been Michael Gough’s domain during this period, but it is a shtick that has roots in films like Womaneater (1958), where George Coulouris plays a mad doctor who loses it all over a perky blonde. Decker also beat a path for the headless sex pest Dr Hill in Re-Animator. Indeed Herbert West’s put down of "trysting with a bubble-headed coed. You're not even a second-rate scientist!" could equally be used against Dr Decker, who pursues Sandra, despite evoking “the anger and the anguish of Jess Conrad” in the process. Like so many movie mad scientists, Decker could have conquered the world if only he’d learnt to keep his dick in his pants.

The object of all this onscreen lusting- which must have bored the kids who’d showed up for the monster gorilla- was Claire Gordon, a starlet whose acting might have been a bit flat, but at least the same could not be said of her chest. I must confess it took me a while to put two and two together and realize that the Claire Gordon who appears in Konga was the same Claire Gordon who appeared in several 1970s sex comedies…she was a woman who certainly changed with the times.



Drugs…a footnote to the Profumo Affair…appearances in Derek Ford films…it doesn’t take much reading up on Claire Gordon to realize that you’re talking about someone who led a life of scandalous excess. Sadly like so many who lived life in the fast line, Gordon appears to have fallen prey to exploitative hangers-on towards the end. After her death in 2015, two ‘property consultants’ were accused of fraud and having coercing Gordon –then in declining health- into altering her will in their favour. As a result of which one of them- Iain MacMaster –was found guilty and sentenced to eight years at trial. Hopefully there is a special place in hell for people like Mr. MacMaster.

In a plot twist that must have been crushing for Jess Conrad’s ego, Sandra won’t give Bob the time of day, preferring the attentions of Decker and remaining oblivious to his lecherous agenda. During a field trip, a piece of bad continuity appears to bless Jess Conrad with the same abilities as a religious figure with the same initials. One moment it’s thundering and raining, then Jess Conrad gets angry, and suddenly its bright and sunny again, J.C. performed a miracle!! The ‘religious subtext’ of Konga extents to a scene where Jess Conrad (same initials as Jesus) attends his last supper, where his father is played by ‘Good Old Days’ host Leonard Sachs. All of which surely makes Sachs ‘the face of G.O.D’…..and they say people read too much into that Kubrick film about the hotel!!!

To be serious though, I do find it interesting that Leonard Sachs was able to be in people’s living rooms every week as host of G.O.D and yet also have a concurrent acting career, with the IMDB recording a count of 138 acting roles. Whereas usually, well known TV personalities like Bruce Forsyth and Bob Monkhouse were never accepted as actors when they tried their luck on the big screen. As with Claire Gordon, Sach’s life wasn’t also lacking the odd scandal, with an arrest for participating in the noble art of cottaging in 1984. Alas, Sachs’ fatherly advice in Konga “no woman is worth going hungry for” falls on deaf ears. Not because Bob is in love with Sandra, but rather because he is in love with himself, and darts away from the dinner table when he spots a mirror. Whenever Jess Conrad spots a mirror, Jess just gotta preen. Play it Cool, Jess!!



Everything goes belly up when Decker puts the make on Sandra, and is overseen doing so by Margaret, prompting a fine bit of Grayson Hall style ‘grapping your own throat’ acting from Margo Johns. Realizing that she has been passed over for a younger model, Margaret gives Konga a fix of the jungle juice. Which makes him grow giant sized, and results in Konga making off to London with Dr Decker in his hand. All of which leaves Sandra at the mercy of the carnivorous plants, one of whom chomps down on her arm. The film doesn’t actually make this quite clear, but Sandra is meant to be killed by the plants, thankfully the film’s publicity dept were on hand to clear that up.



Maybe Herman Cohen felt it was a little too downbeat to end the movie with everybody dead, leaving the door open for Sandra to return as an embittered one armed female scientist with a deep psychological hatred of gorillas, men and greenhouses.

Konga has a curious relationship with the original King Kong, it gets frequently written up as a rip-off or cash-in on the 1933 film, but it is a little more official than it first appears. During the production, the makers of Konga paid RKO pictures $25,000 to effectively ensure that they wouldn’t be sued for copyright infringement. Since the last reel of Konga involves a giant gorilla rampaging through a major city, and a gorilla whose name was just Kong with an ‘a’ added, it was probably a smart move for the makers of Konga to cover their asses this way. As the right people were paid off, this effectively makes Konga a fully authorized King Kong movie, as much as the Japanese Toho King Kong movies from the 1960s. The impression that you get though is that this was an 11th hour business decision, since the film itself doesn’t really capitalize on the King Kong angle. It’s only in the advertising that Konga made the most of having greased RKO’s palms, with hype like “Not since King Kong” plastered all over the posters. Some territories however got sold the film as a bona fide King Kong movie. In Malaysia the film was released as ‘Konga is King’ while Argentina gave Konga royal status when the film was released there as ‘King Konga’. It is worth noting though that King Kong was 28 years old by this point, and a property that RKO hadn’t really touched in decades. A situation that probably made them more willing to lease the character’s likeness to any Tom, Dick or Herman. It was only a few years later- when King Kong was remade in the 1970s -that the rights owners appear to have become more vigilant and protective of the character, famously suing the makers of ‘Queen Kong’ for copyright infringement and taking similar action against Paul Leder’s A.P.E when it was being promoted as ‘the new King Kong’.



Compared to the likes of Gorgo, The Giant Behemoth and Mathilda May, Konga doesn’t actually cause that must damage to London. No buildings are leveled, no passersby are trampled, even tomorrow’s milk delivery is spared. Perhaps due to this lack of destruction Konga was allowed to return….not to the big screen…but in an American comic book series (1960-1965), where the character underwent a Rambo like rehabilitation from anti-social menace to action hero…all the while managing to keep his genitals in the shadows…which must have been very painful for Cliff Richard’s old band. VIVA KONGA !!!!!