King of Kong Island (1968)

What you have to accept about King of Kong Island is that there’s no king, no Kong and no island. It started life with the title Eva, la Venere selvaggia (Eva, the Wild Venus). But don’t despair - it does contain lots of fine B-movie madness.

It starts off with a mercenary named Burt who apparently doesn’t like guns (there’s a prologue which kind of explains this) and he’s in Nairobi looking up some old cronies. They’re a disreputable lot. There’s a glamorous dame named Ursula with whom Burt has a history. She seems like a very disreputable and very dangerous dame.

There’s also a younger woman, Diana. She has a brother, Robert. Robert and Diana are planning a hunting expedition. They’re after the sacred monkeys.

Unfortunately the expedition goes wrong and Diana is kidnapped by a party of gorillas.

We already know something that they don’t know, that there is a mad scientist in the bush experimenting on the gorillas. Robert does at least realise that these are no ordinary gorillas. They seem to work according to a plan.

Diana’s dad wants to organise an expedition to find his daughter and he persuades a reluctant Burt to lead it.

Burt and Robert head off to find Diana. They discover the secret of the sacred monkey. The sacred monkey is a beautiful naked jungle girl. She’s more or less the queen of the jungle. The Africans believe that all the animals obey her.

The jungle babe sneaks into their camp while Burt is sleeping, and is apparently rather impressed by his manliness.

But there’s a double-cross going on. Burt thinks he’s the hunter but actually he’s the hunted.

Burt knows there’s something sinister going on when he encounters Turk. Turk is seriously nasty and seriously crazy. What he doesn’t know is that the guy he should be worrying about is Albert Muller. Muller is a full-on mad scientist. He’s figured out how put implants into gorillas to turn them into zombie-fied slaves.

And he thinks the technology could be used on humans. Which would mean world domination!

The acting is universally terrible, but in a good way if you know what I mean. The kind of bad acting that we cult movie fans just love.

Director Roberto Mauri had an undistinguished career, making the usual variety of spaghetti westerns, peplums and related genres.

There are plenty of scenes of women being dragged off into the jungle by gorillas. There’s not much doubt this is an exploitation movie.

Muller has his mad scientist laboratory hidden in the jungle. It’s a cheap set but quite effective. The screenplay was written in a way that makes complicated special effects unnecessary.

And there are lots of guys in gorilla suits!

Retromedia have released this movie on a double-header DVD, paired with the totally insane Italian sci-fi epic Star Pilot (AKA 2+5: Missione Hydra).

King of Kong Island gets an OK 16:9 enhanced transfer, dubbed in English. What matters is this is apparently a more or less uncut print. The nude scenes involving the jungle babe were censored in some versions.

King of Kong Island is totally nuts. Don’t try to make too much sense of the plot, just go with the craziness. This is classic popcorn movie stuff. Highly recommended.