Queen Kong (1976)

Frank Agrama, the director of this spoof on the King Kong theme is better known for his wildly searched horror of 1981 Dawn Of The Mummy. But before that he left us with this weird British remake of King Kong on a extreme low budget. Just look at Kong, just a man in a suit. And there is singing in it, there is a bit of inside jokes in it, this isn't a horror to be honest even as it is stated on the box, full uncut. But everything you see in the original King Kong they remade, the fight with the Tyrannosaurus Rex is unbelievable, it isn't done in stop motion but it's again, well, a man in a suit. But being so stupid and badly done you really want to see this cheesy piece of stupidity. The acting is okay, really, if you can catch this than you just wont believe that this kind of flick could be made in the seventies, really looks like a Carry On...but still, it's out there to be seen, well, see it.

OK,I purchased this on a Dutch r2 DVD cheap,I heard a lot of comments about saying it had been forced out of circulation in the 70's and it wasn't very good.So i sat down and gave it a chance. Since this is British,the action takes place in London (fun) and also on "the island" (ok).First up having Robin Askwith in it helps a lot,he's one of my favorite British actors from around that time.He has that sort of hippie charm i guess.The lovely Rula Lenska (redheads rule) really does a good job here too and it includes a lot more beautiful girls (I know i'm a chauvinist pig!).After a short intro establishing the character Rule lenska plays (the director),the action starts in the streets of London (Portobello road) and swiftly moves to "the island" where the film slows down a bit,but quickly picks up again shortly after (Queenie fighting the monsters) and we actually get to see the transport to London (for a bit). As soon as Queenie arrives there the fun really starts and the action picks up considerably...AND we get a happy end for a change! Incredibly this movie is over the top feminist stuff (all firmly tongue in cheek) ... and I especially like the relationship between Queenie and the Robin Askwith character.Like i said the tone is very feminist and the strange character Robin plays in this has nothing of a "real man" with his girlie clothes and robes and gentle ways,really refreshing lol...The humor is typical British madness of that time,a bit hit and miss but generally not bad,I found myself laughing out loud several times.It's good trashy fun.Another thing...I really liked the songs in this movie,fun stuff! Overall a movie I'll cherish in my collection and that deserves and will be getting repeated viewing.I like! Oh I almost forgot,it also offers some good new ideas concerning Kong here (like having the 2 "lovers" get into a fight in the apartment building and Queenie coming to the rescue)! Final thoughts:I wonder if this was Italian,would it have more fans?

This gender bent spoof of King Kong was hard to see until the advent of DVD. Thats a shame because its better than the film that producers of the remake of King Kong unleashed on the unsuspecting world. Having not pretense at being anything other than a send up this film lets it all go in what is mostly a good but really dumb comedy. The problem with the film is that even at a running time of around 80 minutes this movie is way too long. There is only enough material to sustain a 20 minute short and its stretched to fill a feature. The lack of material leaves many dead spots and allows for some really bad material to creep in. Had this been shorter it would have been better (say as a sketch on SNL), but as it stands now its a very interesting side note to the debacle that was the 1976 King Kong remake.

"Queen Kong" from 1976 is a film I always wanted to see ever since I first heard of its existence, around 1978 or so. Being a lifelong fan of all things "giant monster destroys things" (especially Godzilla) I began a lifelong search to find this on bootleg. Incredibly, despite most other things turning up eventually, this never surfaced.I learned a bit more about it over the years, like that it actually was released in a small amount of theaters abroad, being pulled almost immediately. I met some other monster fans over the years who also were searching for this film but to no avail.So when I heard that "Queen Kong" was actually going to get a DVD release, I was pretty happy. Other giant ape movies from the 70's were released on DVD, like The Mighty Peking Man (a.k.a. Goliathon) and A.P.E., so I felt this was deserved. I was psyched on finally seeing, after 25 years or so, what this film was about.Well, to put it mildly, this film is garbage. It is complete, utter crap. It's not even "so bad it is good" like say, "Robot Monster." This film is horrid because it doesn't have a clue: it's totally void of any heart, wit, or charm. And you need at least two of those to make an entertaining "bad" movie.The shame of it all is that the premise has a lot of potential, to make a feminist "King Kong." In the hands of filmmakers who actually knew what they were doing, the idea may have had a chance.The first 30 minutes of this film is so unbelievably mind-numbing, it just seems like someone took an expensive camera in the backyard and started filming. Now normally, that sounds like the making of a "so bad it's good" film, but again, no charm, wit or heart, so the film doesn't work on any level. Nothing happens in the first 30 minutes at all - it literally is a complete waste of time.30 minutes in, Queen Kong finally shows up, and after some extremely poor scenes, 20 minutes later (yes, just 20 minutes later) Queen kong is en route to London, having been captured. In London, after Queen Kong escapes what looks like a big outdoor dinner party, she then goes to Big Ben (after about 5 seconds of fun model work and the rest, horrible model work), climbs up, and battles helicopters. The male substitute for Fay Wray makes a speech over a copter's PA about feminism, and it ends soon after.Again, there isn;t a trace of wit, cleverness, heart, or charm in this totally bland take on the "King Kong" legend. It's hard to even laugh at the brief monster battles because of the lack of these things. Dino DeLaurentes (sp), who made 1976's "King Kong" and forced this out of the theaters, had nothing to worry about really - word of mouth would have killed this off within days. In comparison to the other "Kong" rip-offs of the day I mentioned, "The Mighty Peking Man" is so vastly superior to this it boggles the mind, and even the poor "A.P.E." is so far ahead of this dreck. And don't even think about comparing this to any Godzilla film - the worst Godzilla film looks like Gone With The Wind next to "Queen Kong."The one lone good thing about "Queen Kong" is that the girls are all very pretty and beautiful. And 1976 beautiful is pretty hot. The fact that they bothered to get good looking girls is at least a little something to the filmmaker's credit. If you can get hold of the film's trailer without buying the DVD, all the FX shots you'd be interested in seeing are mostly in there. There's no need at all to watch anything but the trailer. One day I'll listen to the director's commentary, just out of morbid curiosity.