KONG ISLAND (1968)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *cosmological*

The moldy jungle-adventure KONG ISLAND—which sports neither any islands nor any entities named Kong—is moderately lively. though Roberto Mauri’s direction is sloppy in the extreme. Burt Dawson (Brad Harris, famed for peplum and Eurospy flicks) participates in a payroll robbery, but he’s betrayed by his partner Turk and left for dead. The vengeful Burt—who becomes the film’s de facto hero despite his unsavory past—tracks his enemy to Kenya, where Burt begins stumbling across other old colleagues. One is middle-aged Theodor, who has a grown son and daughter, the latter being at once sexy and innocent. Despite his daughter’s evident affection for hunky Burt, Theodor finances an expedition into the Kenyan jungle. Ostensibly the seekers—who include not only Burt, but Theodor’s two kids as well—is supposed to look for a creature whom the natives dub “the Sacred Monkey,” but Burt’s real purpose is to find Turk.

Unfortunately, Turk is now working for a mad scientist named Muller—ALSO an old colleague of Burt’s—and Muller’s current project is to insert computer discs into the heads of gorillas to create obedient ape-servants. Theodor’s son is killed and the sexy daughter is kidnapped, but Burt escapes. While roaming the jungle, he stumbles across a mute jungle girl who’s apparently the Sacred Monkey herself. He calls her Eve and persuades her to lead him to Muller’s compound, where the scientist has operated on one of Eve’s ape-buddies. In the big low-budget climax, Theodor shows up to reveal that he’s Muller’s secret backer, Eve catfights a little with a henchwoman, and Burt somehow destroys Muller’s installation. It’s all pretty stupid, but might have been fairly diverting with better photography. Significant only as one of a handful of Euro-jungle films of the period.