Konga (1960) - in German

Well, it's a bank holiday weekend and, as the main TV channels seem determined to ignore this fact by failing to make any effort to come up with special programming, I thought that here at Sleaze Diary, I'd provide a special holiday weekend presentation: Konga.  In German. This is another of those Super * feature film digests that were popular back in the sixties and seventies, before the advent of home video.  While many are incredibly disjointed, presenting an incoherent jumble of scenes from their source, I have to say, that this version of Konga actually does encompass all of the film's highlights.  If they can be called that.  A poverty row rip off of King Kong, courtesy of Herman Cohen, the film is paded out with lots of dialogue scenes and a sub plot involving the giant ape being used as an instrument of revenge, not to mention a means of removing love rivals.  It does boast another bonkers performance from Micheal Gough as the mad scientist responsible for turning a chimp into a man in a gorilla suit. 

This digest version does spare us the creepiness of most of middle aged Gough's romantic pursuit of one of his young students.  It does, however, do nothing to shed light upon her fate: as in the full length movie, she is last seen being grabbed by the arm by a carnivourous plant.  Whether it eats her or not, we never know.  This one used to be a late night favourite on the BBC and Channel 4 - of late it has been turning up on Talking Pictures TV quite regularly.  It really is a terrible film, yet bizarrely entertaining, with its typically eccentric performance from Gough, nonsensical dialogue and utter disregard for logic.  The footage of the military letting off their weapons in central London were filmed, without permission, on the Embankment, resulting in complaints to the police.  The parade of shops the dead Konga is seen in front of were situated round the corner from Merton Studios, where Konga was filmed  and feature in many of the studio's productions.  While the studio is now a housing estate, those shops are still there.