Konga

Poster tagline: NOT SINCE KING KONG HAS THE SCREEN EXPLODED WITH SUCH MIGHTY FURY AND SPECTACLE!!! Wretched. The 1950s and 60s saw several film variations of King Kong, whether by Hollywood, the Japanese studio Toho, or, specifically here, in Europe. If you were expecting an eye-popping spectacle based on the poster, you’d be terribly disappointed. The main character is a professor who keeps a chimpanzee in his laboratory and, using special injection solutions from exotic carnivorous plants, gradually enlarges it and endows it with boundless obedience and aggression. 90% of the runtime takes place in three cheap locations: the professor's apartment, his lab and a greenhouse with carnivorous plants. No tension is created through interrupted dialogues and the three murders, carried out by Konga in human size (on the professor's orders), don't save the day. All in all, the viewer "enjoys" the main character, Konga, for a total of about 10 minutes. In order to make the dull storyline at least a little more dramatic, the screenwriters added a love triangle (the professor, the student, her boyfriend) and when the escaped and now already giant Konga gets unleashed 15 minutes before the end, the viewer is not in for a visual effect fast. Konga just uses rear projection to walk between the buildings, always stopping for a moment, looking and walking again, without any interactions with people, demolished buildings, nothing. This is what a pointless remake looks like. But the poster is so beautiful! (10.04.2012)