KONGA (1961)

  As far as silly giant monster movies go this one is certainly entertaining enough for a watch. Made the same year as the definitive British giant monster movie GORGO, this time instead of a GODZILLA-influenced monster we get a more KING KONG-inspired creature who starts out as a chimpanzee and as he gets bigger is magically(and unexplainedly) transformed into an ape. The story itself is nothing like KONG and owes more to your standard mad-scientist yarns of the 50s. In addition to a giant ape running loose you get some over-sized man-eating plants which can't help but remind us all of THE LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS which came out the previous year. Now if they only made a GORGO VS. KONGA flick it woulda been cinematic gold! 

Inspired this comic book series which ran for 23 issues and is very expensive to find today!:

THE BOWERY BOYS MEET THE MONSTERS (1954)

 I watched this one right after SPOOK CHASERS which I thought was the worst Bowery Boys movie I'd ever seen and I believe this might be the best one the Boys did. It was obviously inspired by ABBOTT & COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN and apparently was also the highest-grossing film in their long-running series. Since this is clearly a very low-budget deal, as were all of the Boys adventures, you're not getting very top-shelf monsters. There's a couple of mad scientists, a vampire lady, a man-eating plant(owned by Grandma Walton(Ellen Corby) from THE WALTONS TV program) and a killer gorilla and robot thrown in for good measure. The kooky family that lives in our monster house is kind of Addams Family-ish with their large Lurch-like butler and creepy mansion home. There's also a couple of brief scenes where someone is turned into a hairy Mr. Hyde-like monster. While obviously not on the level of Abbott & Costello this is still good for a goofy late-night watch. 

ORLOFF AGAINST THE INVISIBLE MAN (1970)

 

 In Jess Franco's original AWFUL DR. ORLOFF, way back in 1962, the doctor(Howard Vernon) is involved in grafting a new beautiful face on his disfigured daughter. In this sort-of sequel, not directed by Franco, but by this French dude, Pierre Chevalier, who ended his career with the amazing PANTHER SQUAD, Mr. Vernon returns but now he's obsessed with making an invisible man(or in this case an invisible ape-man!). I guess Orloff is just a master of all fields of science! 

 This film is generally pretty slow and dull but there is a great deal of nudity on show if you watch the correct uncut version. Watch it only if you really want to see a killer invisible ape on the loose(which I assume is a weird callback to Poe's PHANTOM OF THE RUE MORGUE). AKA DR. ORLOFF'S INVISIBLE MONSTER

 The VHS release of this was re-titled THE INVISIBLE DEAD though it's not a zombie movie at all!:

This sweet double-bill teams our Invisible Man up with a pretty obscure Eurotrash Mummy film!: 

JUNGLE BLUE (1978)

 This one is kind-of a porno rip-off of the Tarzan story, except that Tarzan, called Evor here, instead of being a little boy raised in the jungle by apes is in fact an immortal being created by God at the same time that he made Adam & Eve and instead of throwing him into the Garden of Eden he made Evor go into the jungle with no chicks at all. The main plot concerns a couple of hippie/criminal types who massacre a whole village of Evor's native pals and steal some jewels that just look like worthless trinkets. This is not the only thing that you will have to use your imagination with since all of the acting is up to typical 70s porn standards. There's a bit of unexpected bloodshed here as our baddies continuously try and snuff Evor by multiple gunshot wounds and by having his genitals chomped on! Ouch! There's also tons of 70s pubic hair that end up filling ladies mouths during a couple of the lesbo scenes. Evor's pal Chico the gorilla who is a guy in an ape suit with a real black cock sticking out of it that gets to hump a few ladies which makes for some memorable spectacles. Quite a unique melding of crime, jungle-sploitation and fuck flick that you will remember after viewing.
 One odd thing about this is that everytime Evor has a sex scene they do close ups on his genitals and it's clearly John Holmes junk or if not a very close facsimile of it.

SEVEN DEATHS IN THE CATS EYES (1973)

 This is probably the only giallo I've seen where there's a crazy gorilla running around while a black-gloved killer with a razor blade is slashing people's necks at the same time and a big-assed extra-fluffy cat is playing peeping-Tom. For that it does stand out but for the most part this one is pretty generic as far as these Eurotrash killer-thrillers go. This one is not overly stylish or gory but it does have a nice-looking rotting half-a-skeleton corpse on display and Jane Birkin (who I mostly knew before this as that chick who sang with Serge Gainsbourg(who also shows up here as an inspector)) does a pretty good job even if she doesn't get naked as she is known for doing from time to time. Check it out only if you run out of top-tier giallos.

THE WHITE GORILLA (1945)

 A real mess of a movie mainly due to the fact that they took a bunch of footage from a 1920s serial called PERILS OF THE JUNGLE and spliced it into new footage(well new for 1945 anyway). The plot has to do with the titular White Gorilla being excluded from all the fun gorilla games by the mean black gorillas and then becoming a badass who kills everyone cuz he's super pissed off at the world. I guess we can transpose some simplistic racial politics onto this with our collectively progressive 2016 minds because that's always so much fun. There's also a little boy Tarzan character(from the serial) who shows up and all the natives act scared of him, which is dumb and adds nothing to the story.
 I know this movie because clips from it show up in that compilation movie IT CAME FROM HOLLYWOOD and it's a lot more fun when you only have to watch a minute or two of footage. At it's full running time(which is actually only a little over an hour) it's a real sleep-inducing drag. So I guess check it out if you're in need of a nap.

NABONGA (1944)

 This is the second one of these female Tarzan-type flicks that I've watched recently(the first one being SAVAGE GIRL)  and the main thing that sticks out to me is that back in the 30s and 40s no one could figure out how to make a female character, even ones that were raised by wild animals in the hostile jungles of Africa, tough at all. In this one our Tarzan lady(called "The White Witch" by the spooked natives) does have a dad for a while when she's a little kid but then he disappears and she's raised and protected by a big badass gorilla with a spiky punk-rock hair-do named Samson. Why they gave this guy in a gorilla suit spiked hair I'm not sure but I like it and I suppose it does make him stand out from the other standard apes running around. Everything's going fine with some gorilla fights and monkey hijinks until Buster Crabbe(who played Flash Gordon a bunch and also played Tarzan himself at least once back in the 30s) and a couple of crooks come along looking for some lost treasure that Lady Tarzan's(who actually just has the dull name of Doreen) daddy may have swiped. Doreen does get the hots for ol' Buster(mainly because he's the only white man she's seen since her pops and I guess that's her preference) and I suppose it's a happy ending. Things don't work out so swell for Sampson though. R.I.P. punk-rock King Kong. :(  AKA THE JUNGLE WOMAN

SAVAGE GIRL (1932)

 This creaky oldie is basically a Tarzan movie with a gal replacing Tarzan(in Greece this was titled THE DAUGHTER OF TARZAN) and it's also half a comedy. The plot deals with a constantly drunk richman who wants to build a zoo on the property of his Westchester home so, of course, he travels to Africa to hunt down animals and bring them back. You would think a lady raised in the wild jungles by herself would be a lot tougher than this chick but that's not what you get. Our titular character always seems just about to be raped by the villain(or maybe just rough-housed since this is the 30s) and doesn't put up much of a fight. Luckily a killa gorilla comes along and saves her. It's all pretty silly and played for laughs most of the time but you do get a girl in a loincloth swinging around if that's your fetish.

THE SON OF KONG (1933)

 The original KING KONG is one of the greatest classic sci-fi/horror/adventure movies of all time. This sequel is not quite up there with it's predecessor and it's clearly due to it being rushed out to capitalize on the success of the original. This was actually released in the same year as KING KONG and while the FX are just as good the main not-as-giant gorilla here is way goofier and is actually a hero in the story which takes away from any horror aspects the first film had and makes it way more of a kiddie-friendly monster-movie. Still it's at least a semi-classic and one that was shown along with the first movie and MIGHTY JOE YOUNG every year on Thanksgiving on local TV here in New York making it a sentimental holiday tradition and a good alternative to watching MARCH OF THE WOODEN SOLDIERS again. If you dig the classic monster flicks or just quickie cheapo exploitation films capitalizing/ripping-off something better this one isn't a bad choice. As a bonus you get to see a musical group of monkeys perform a delightful tune.

 This poster sells the movie as a straight-up comedy:

 While this one plays up the adventure aspects:

THE GORILLA (1939)

 I don't know much about The Ritz Brothers but from what I can tell they're like an even more retarded and less funny version of The Three Stooges. They starred in a whole string of films throughout the 30's that I probably will never bother watching. If they're not annoying enough for you they also throw in a screaming hysterical woman(Patsy Kelly) which was apparently a popular thing to have in horror movies in the 30's. This one is only of interest because Bela Lugosi appears as a creepy butler. A guy with hairy hands called "The Gorilla" is going around killing people. Also there's a "real" gorilla(a guy in an old-timey gorilla suit of course) and a crazy convoluted mystery plot. The best thing about these old classics is that they're all usually around 60 minutes and in this one Lugosi gets to, at least in one scene, be a hero which is something you rarely see. In addition to Lugosi, Universal monster regular Lionel Atwill also appears.

 

THE MONSTER MAKER (1944)

J. Carrol Naish(who's best remembered by me as being in that crappy DRACULA VS. FRANKENSTEIN movie by Al Adamson) plays the lead role here as a mad doctor named Dr. Markov. We know he's evil because he dons a beard and mustache and this is the 40's. He experiments with gigantism and injects a guy, whose daughter he's looking to bang, with this serum that turns him into an elephant-man-looking monster with big hands and feet and a deformed head. He also keeps a pet gorilla(classic guy in a gorilla suit) around in case anyone needs to get bumped off. As far as monster movies go this one isn't really that great since the monster never really does any rampaging up until the very very end and the plot revolves more around Doctor Markov trying to get the gal. Even the gorilla doesn't get to do very much and that's really disappointing. Luckily this is only just over an hour long and makes for a good 3am viewing on insomnia-filled nights.
 Coincidentally Dr. Frankenstein is referenced in this movie and that's the character Naish would go on to play years later in DRACULA VS. FRANKENSTEIN.

NIGHT OF THE BLOODY APES (1969)

 
 Caught an awesome theatrical showing of this last night hosted by sleaze/rockabilly wild-man Johnny Legend.  Although it doesn't feature the great Santo or Blue Demon this one is probably my favorite of the lucha-libre/horror movies from Mexico.  It covers all three bases as far as blood, breasts & beasts go.  You get a half-man/ half-gorilla going around tearing the clothes off women, attempting rape and also tearing people apart with his bare hands.  Heads roll, eyes roll and there's some masked lady wrasslin' to break up this "orgy of terror".  Thanks to director Rene Cardona, who is basically just remaking his earlier film DOCTOR OF DOOM, this piles up the 70's blood and crazy over-the-top gore, including real scenes of some heart surgery, enough to make fans of later splatter-filled movies happy.  Thank you Mexico!
 AKA GOMAR: THE HUMAN GORILLA & HORROR AND SEX .