I have just been reading an excellent anthology of writing on British Sci Fi cinema from the days of "Things to Come" in the early 30s, as far as Hardware, the film in which Carl McCoy of flour covered wearing leather hat sporting goth botherers Fields of the Nephilim appeared.
In between it deals with Quatermass, invading space dominatrixes, the adaptations of John Wyndham novels and naughty (and under-rated) space vampire type movies Inseminoid and Lifeforce.
In amongst all that, was a chapter dealing with British monster movies of the 50s and 60s, in which Konga, a 1961 release from Anglo-Amalgamated featured prominently.
Obviously the film takes King Kong as its starting point, but the movie is evidently more influenced by the Toho studios Gaiju films i.e. a man in a monster suit rampages around a carboard city squashing cultural landmarks. Eventually the heroic British army reasserts control of the situation which was initially created by the usual sort of deranged scientist with an axe to grind before being exacerbated BY A MADWOMAN SCORNED. The film thus combines two of the fascinations of home grown sci fi - how science must be kept coralled and controlled lest it destroys Westminster Cathedral, and how women are an inherent bloody menace whether they are space or not. As ever, tea drinking normality is restored in the end.
I haven't seen it, but along with virtually every other film mentioned in this book, I have decided I must. It can't be much worse than Peter Jackson's version, which the carnivorous insect section apart, is overlong and overblown.
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