Review of Congo (1972) by Harry W — 29 Jan 2014

Congo caught my attention as a film adapted from a Michael Crichton novel which happened to star Tim Curry, so I was happy to check it out.

Bruce Campbell's cameo instantly gave the film a good start, and since I didn't expect him but am an avid fan of his I found myself thoroughly satisfied to see him appear on screen. This set me up to enjoy Congo and predict it to be at least a decent B-movie, if nothing else.

But when the sight of Amy the gorilla is seen and the unconvincing prosthetics hit the screen, that's where the problems come into play. The face is lifeless and there looks like too much rubber is in the suit, but what gives it away is the fact that the actions of the gorilla are too humane. The story fails to convince viewers that Amy is a real gorilla because the physical acting of Lorene Noh and Misty Rosas makes the false prophecy all too much more of a lie. Amy is terribly unconvincing, but would you believe that some of the prosthetics actually look like they were designed by Laura Gemser in a miscast part, since one of the gorillas has the look of a goblin from Troll 2, the famous disastrously poor quality film.

The story becomes reliant on a few things. The good locations and fine cinematography are two of those, yet they become hampered by poor quality slow motion effects used in certain scenes and weak lighting in others. Consistently, Congo proves itself to be no visual experience, and the visual effects alone even manage to emphasise that. Even the action scenes are dull, with mere shots of actors firing blanks deviating back and forth with shots of blood pack squibs on the awful gorilla costumes.

The script is also pathetic. It isn't intelligent and its full of childish jokes directed at the younger audiences, but even then it's simply pathetic writing which is never really atmospheric or of any beneficial quality to Congo. This is problematic because it renders Congo both too childish for viewers that appreciate the old film genre of jungle adventure cinema as well as too violent for children. Its honestly hard to find viewers that will truly enjoy Congo.

Dylan Walsh does a decent job as the lead actor, managing to pull off a decent performance weighed down by awful material, but the rest of the cast fails.

Laura Linney delivers what dramatic talent she has, but weighed down by a poor script and bad direction she only delivers about half of her potential. Her line delivery is good, but the lines and physicality tied to them simply are not believable.

Ernie Hudson fails to evoke any adventurous memories in Congo, or to his days as the African-American hero of Ghostbusters.

Joe Pantoliano has his most generic skills used which make him an annoying presence in Congo, and he has no character to develop in his short time as a screen presence.

But worst of all, by making Tim Curry portray a Romanian man it takes away all of his British charm which makes him such a great actor. And his Romanian accent seems like a poorly conceived generic attempt at a Russian accent which is unconvincing and adding of nothing to the film, while the rest of the time it sounds as if he is choking on dry fish. It would have done nothing lesser to the film to allow Tim Curry's British charm to flourish, but that didn't occur to John Patrick Shanley when he constructed his shoddily written script.

So with the only quality being the colourful jungle and the presence of Bruce Campbell, Congo is an insufferably dull film with awful direction from Frank Marshall and terrible costume designs.