31 Days of Cheese Day 10: Congo

Back in the 90’s Michael Crichton was riding high Jurassic Park was the biggest book and movie of all time and film makers were scrambling to make films of his other books. Because often filmmakers think in packs and sometimes they are packs of Lemmings. (actually Lemmings don’t herd blindly into the sea but let’s just let that go for a moment). And thus films like this come about.

This film does have some historic merit. It’s probably the last movie released by a major studio that features a man in a gorilla suit (lots of them really) – a standard of movie making that goes back to the silent days. Not that it was ever a good sign that there was a man in gorilla suit in the film. And it isn’t a good sign here. It’s just that CGI technology has rendered wearing the suit obsolete. So it’s passing does deserve a mention.

However one of the reasons it’s obsolete is that no matter how they try (and they try hard here) it just looks fake a hell. Really. Humans are built all wrong to do gorilla. our legs are way too long and our arms are too damn short and our hips don’t work the way the apes do to make it work.

Anyway to the movie: The plot such as it is revolves around a motley crew of scientists, fortune hunters and what not who go into the Congo. The Earnest Scientist is bringing along the female gorilla that he’s trained to understand sign language back to the jungle where she was born, The fortune under is seeking King Solomon’s mines and the company lady is trying to find out what happened to an earlier expedition. What happened was they were killed by the deadly white gorillas that guard King Solomon’s mines located near where the female gorilla was born next to volcano that blows up at the end of the film.

Got that?

It’s a silly stupid film. Tim Curry embarrasses himself as the Romanian Fortune hunter seeking the city of Zinge which given the cartoon like accent he has for this film he should never say aloud. The rest of the actors hurt to watch except for Ernie Hudson who does a good job as the guide. ‘I’m you’re great white hunter. Except I’m black.” There is also a part where an actor has to say 1: “liar liar pants on fire.’ And 2. “Stop eating my sesame cake.”

There some nonsense about lasers and commutation satellites and what not as well. But this is a B movie to its gorilla suited core. Oh yes the gorilla drinks a martini – with olives. Which reminds me a of my favorite x walks into a bar joke.

A gorilla walks into a bar and orders a martini. The bartender thinking what the hell does a gorilla know charges him 20 bucks. A little while later he comes up to the gorilla.

“We don’t get many gorillas in here.” He says.

The Gorilla answers: “At 20 bucks a martini, I’m not surprised.”

Enjoy with a banana daiquiri. Maybe two.