Silly, but sadly dull, story about a mad scientist who performs growth experiments on plants and animals, and eventually on his chimpanzee, Konga (you know, Konga/Kong, as in King Kong), who then grows to an enormous size to kill the scientist's enemies and eventually wreaking havoc on London. This could have been a fun low budget monster film along the lines of "Them" or "Tarantula," but it's mostly just boring and didn't even entertain me on a camp level.

I first saw this movie when I was five years old. Actually, can't believe my mother let me go to see this movie with my older brother-seven years old, and a friend. Anyway, we did, and I had nightmares for over a month. I would not go upstairs into my bedroom for fear of Konga. My mother tried to calm me, but hey, I knew that this gorilla could just reach into my bedroom and grab me with his fist. I was actually more scared of the Gorilla sized Konga that hid in the bushes. Jesus! In any case, the giant venus fly traps, the insane professor, the crazy plot---that's why it got my seven points on the review.

Konga (1961) ** (out of 4)Dr. Decker (Michael Gough) goes down with his plane in Africa and is believed dead but a year later he returns from the jungle. He begins working on an experiment that can cause things to grow in size and after trying it on various plants he injects Konga, a chimp that he brought back with him. Soon he's using the now gorilla to kill off his enemies but eventually the killer grows to the size of, well, King Kong.KONGA is a fairly loved British film that manages to not only rip off KING KONG but also MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE. I'm sure mixing those two films could have made for a good movie but sadly this thing here isn't it. There are some fun ideas scattered throughout the movie but in the end there are just way too many flaws. The biggest problem being the fact that the 90 minutes drag by at times and there are moments when the film comes to a complete stand still.Another problem is that the special effects are quite laughable. This includes the early scenes where the small chimp grows a little bit bigger. These transformation sequences are downright awful with the wavy screen doing very little. Things don't fair much better once the man-in-the-outfit happens. Once we get into KING KONG territory things really don't do anything because the budget is so low that the large gorilla really can't do anything. I will admit that the MURDER IN THE RUE MORGUE pieces are quite effective and I did enjoy the creature stalking around and killing for the doctor.Gough turns in a good performance in the lead as does Margo Johns but neither are great enough to make the film work. KONGA has a few good ideas but there are far too many logical issues and the lack of any good special effects keep this from being more than a cheap "C" movie.

As stated in the movie trivia section, they did not hire George Barrows, they just hired his suit. I'm not surprised that it was returned in poor condition after breaking through the roof etc!An actor was selected on the basis of being able to fit into George's suit. This actor was Paul Stockman, who also played the zombie in Dr Blood's Coffin. They left the name uncredited to try and convince the audience that it was in fact a real giant gorilla.I've been trying to update the details of the movie with the correct credit, but not having much joy at the moment, any admins reading this?