Konga!

Konga is a delightful entertainment. And as amazing as it sounds it's delightful not just because it features a somewhat hokey giant ape stumbling across London, but because of the acting of one man -- Michael Gough. Whenever you look him up these days, his role as "Alfred" in those Batman flicks of moons ago get the main attention, but for me it will ever be Konga.

Gough plays a scientist named Decker who returns to London after a year lost in the depths of the African jungles with new ideas and some seeds. It seems he's learned how to make things big, but there is nothing on the planet able to outgrow this guy's ego. Gough's performance as Decker gives the screen one of the most repulsive people it has ever experienced. Nothing and no one is more important to  Decker than himself and he spends the movie proving it.

He  turns on everyone around him, eventually killing his superiors, killing innocent kids, and then preying upon those left in his special care. He is a man who violates every boundary of trust given to him. He is truly "uncivilized" and that's the theme. The comic book adaptation spends more time in the jungle and shows us how Decker finds his special things, but in the movie all of that is ignored in service of showing the results.

While not of the same kind as the werewolves of fiction, Decker and Konga are two sides of the same creature, and the latter is changed in physical shape to reflect the changes inside the heart and soul of the other. Decker's ego knows no bounds and so does Konga grow to giant size and in doing so plod to his doom. Decker imagined he was above, beyond the grip of society, but in the grip of Konga, his other self in the shadow of the clock tower which holds Big Ben, he is brought low at last.

If perchance you haven't seen Konga I recommend it and even more maybe the reading of the comic adaptation which shows greater details of the origin.

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