BA_Harrison From legendary exploitation producer Dick Randall, jungle adventure King of Kong Island starts off in suitably trashy fashion, but quickly loses momentum when it becomes evident that there isn't nearly enough plot to support a full length feature.The film begins as a group of armed robbers ambush a payroll. Instead of splitting the $300K haul, Albert Muller (Marc Lawrence) betrays his comrades, shooting them all and making off with the loot. However, one of the men, Burt (played by peplum muscleman Brad Harris), is still alive, and, after recuperating, goes looking for revenge. Meanwhile, Albert is conducting experiments on gorillas, inserting AA batteries into their skulls in order to make them obedient slaves.When I tell you that the highlight of the whole movie is an early scene in a nightclub, where Brad Harris shows off his hilarious dance moves (he nods his head a lot and occasionally claps his hands), that might give some idea of just how tedious everything else is. There's loads of aimless wandering around the jungle (with the usual stock footage of animals to pad out proceedings), Brad gets shirtless to appease fans of his ripped bod, a nearly naked jungle woman preserves her modesty with her strategically placed hair, and we get a few men in really manky gorilla costumes; all of this is executed with zero flair, looks incredibly cheap, and moves at a sluggish pace.I have a pretty high tolerance for low budget schlock, but found this one quite a chore to watch.

Bezenby Burt has been double crossed during a payroll robbery by Albert, and left for dead. Later, he goes to an island run by the dad of Robert, but something strange is going down and someone is implanting some sort of implant into gorilla's head to make the zombies, but is it Burt, Albert, or Robert, son of the island owner. Also, there's some chicks, Diana, brother of Robert, other Chick, Robert's wicked stepmother, and special monkey or something, a feral chick with the hots for Burt.That's Burt, not Albert or Robert. This film is kind of boring to begin, but then is filled with those familiar Italian themes we all know and love: Sexism, Macho Insecurity, Animal Cruelty, and anti-communism...so if you like to see women being slapped about, women being felt up, or women being threatened, this is the film for you.Also, we have man's contempt for nature, the white man's contempt for anything, and loads of black men running away from things (but not being shot in the back five times as this isn't reality). This was nowhere near as boring as I was lead to believe. Also this isn't Also this isn'tAlso check out Burt's dancing.....

jfgibson73 I'm not sure what I thought I would enjoy about this obviously cheap, amateurish Italian-b movie. I think maybe I have a bit of fondness for jungle adventure. Give me a few scenes of trekking through the brush, and I can place myself in the action. What made this movie slightly more fun than so many other low budget disasters is the mixture of so many disparate and nearly random elements.The movie starts off by establishing the main character, Burt, as a former mercenary who was betrayed during a payroll robbery. He is still looking for the man who left him for dead when the action picks up elsewhere in Africa. He agrees to go along with a wealthy family on a hunting trip that eventually turns into a kidnapping. A young, pretty girl is needed for mind control experiments, which happens to be run by Albert, the man who shot Burt in the opening scene. Albert already has been able to control gorillas with his device, and uses as security to guard his jungle laboratory. Burt gains an advantage, however, when he befriends Eva, a native jungle woman. Together they must rescue the lovely Diana and put an end to Albert's jungle terror.It's all looks pretty silly nowadays, but I thought it was a bit of fun that didn't drag too much. I had to fast forward through some of the obvious sequences, but there was also some action that kept my attention. I think there must be a void nowadays in the adventure genre, because I was a little to eager to like King of Kong Island. Perhaps the time is right for filmmakers to give us new stories with imaginative plots and exotic locations with daring heroes and heroines.

Andrew Leavold We now go to East Africa, where life is cheap but clearly ape suits are expensive. And by Africa we mean a studio back-lot somewhere in Italy that doubles for the "island" in King Of Kong Island.I must have denghi fever and it's my insane imaginings that jungle B-films were the property of the 1930s and 40s: what could be described as "Apesploitation", or the "Monkeys Going Bananas" genre. And yet in the 1960s, with Planet Of The Apes one of the most popular films of the year ("You dirty rotten stinking apes!") we have Night Of The Bloody Apes (1968) from Mexico, soon followed by the Italian sexploitation film Queen Kong (1976), and Hong Kong's Goliathon/Mighty Peking Man (1977). It may be man's endless fascination with our lesser-evolved simian twins, or we just can't help but get a cheap laugh out of a guy in a monkey suit.King Of Kong Island opens with a dastardly scientist Dr Muller using stolen goods to fund his surgical experiments on gorillas. Now, seriously, "gorilla"? Even I own a better monkey suit than this. Cut to a hunting expedition led by Burt (Brad Harris, the American actor who played everyone from Samson to Goliath and Hercules) who is ambushed by not one but TWO "gorillas", complete with surgical scars, who kidnap Diana, the most attractive of the group. Despite his previous mission's complete and abject failure, Burt is charged with bringing Diana back, past miles of stock footage - although to be truthful the producers did find a parrot and a cockatoo and a few pink flamingos for a shirtless Burt, who at times resembles a shaved ape himself, to chase around a studio lagoon.In an amalgam of every thirty-year old jungle cliché, Burt comes across some spooked natives in awe of the Sacred Monkey God, a helpful chimp and a jungle girl called Eva, who can't utter a word of English but speaks fluent monk-ese, which leads Burt to look her square in the eye and ask, "Are you the Sacred Monkey?" Unbelievable. The hunt ends at Dr Muller's underground dungeon-cum-laboratory in the middle of the jungle where the insane megalomaniac - and the King of the title - has turned the apes into radio-controlled zombies, manipulated by an enormous Electronic Brain.The film was picked up by American producer Dick Randall, an old-fashioned expert in hullabaloo who was as colorful as the characters in his own Z-grade pickups. Born in the US but based mainly in Rome, Randall was the guy who filmed Jayne Mansfield's grieving family a week after her death and immediately edited the footage into his 1968 mondo film The Wild World Of Jayne Mansfield. He also sold the Filipino midget James Bond spoof For Your Height Only (1981) to the world and turned the two foot nine star Weng Weng into an unlikely international superstar. He could sell a chainsaw massacre to Texas with the 1982 Spanish slasher film Pieces, and could sell a turkey-baster to Foghorn Leghorn in the same breath as he sold this turkey. Did I say "turkey"? I meant "gorilla", and as honorary Great White Hunters we should approach this film with the right spirit, whose concepts are as absurd as the very idea of white colonialism itself.