Terrible but also terribly entertaining

MartinHafer

The plot and special effects for this film are terrible--especially the special effects. However, despite being a completely terrible film, it isn't total garbage. Michael Gough's completely one-note and over the top performance actually makes the entire thing worth seeing, as this terrible over-acting is the only way they could have made this thing work at all.

The film begins with Gough being discovered in the jingle a year after he was assumed to have died in a plane crash. He's in fine shape and excited about carrying on with botanical experiments based on what he learned while staying with Ugandans until his rescuers arrived. Apparently, a local witch doctor taught him a lot of cool things about genetic manipulation and mind control (little-known fact--most of the world's top geneticists are in fact witch doctors, with three recent Nobel Prize winners being witch doctors).

It seems his research has to do with, get this, infusing plant DNA into animals in order to make them grow to huge proportions in a matter of minutes! My favorite experiment is one where he gave a cute little chimpanzee injections and it grew into a gorilla!! How the miracle drug caused the animal to not only grow but change species is beyond me!! And, for these scenes, there was of course the obligatory man in a gorilla suit!

You'll love Michael Gough's performance as the doctor, as he manages to wonderfully create as mad a scientist as you can find on film. With such stock phrases like "you fools!" and "I'll show them!!", he's perfect for the part. And, like any self-respecting mad scientist, he's not above using his giant chimp/gorilla to settle some grudges. In fact, having the beast kill is sort of like eating potato chips--you can't stop with only one!

By the end of the film, not only are several people dead, but Gough's jealous mistress decides to give the animal a HUGE injection--resulting in a 60 foot high creature. However, how big the animal is seems to change in each scene (the scale was NOT well established or maintained)! And eventually, when the "chorilla" takes Gough prisoner and while he's struggling in vain in the clutches of the animal, what does he repeatedly yell? Yep, "you fool, you fool"! The final scenes show the chorilla (with Gough) roaming the streets of London. Oddly, the beast does NOT go on a rampage but rather ambles about without causing any particular harm. In fact, much of the time he just stands there doing absolutely nothing! This made it easy for the military to attack it and in a less than thrilling finale, you see tracer bullets and bazooka shells consistently missing the creature--even though the folks are only about ten yards away!! These are supposedly trained soldiers and he's the size of a house...and yet they keep missing! It's actually pretty funny.

Overall, the costumes and special effects are truly dreadful. The story is quite silly (but watchable in a cheesy sort of way) and Michael Gough does pretty much the same job acting as he did in most films he made during the 1960s and early 70s--an angry and superior sort of fella from start to finish. For bad movie fans who like laughing at inept films, this is a movie just for them. For anyone else, forget it--you can't help but do better picking another film.

score 3/10

MartinHafer 6 July 2009

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw2092179/