Review of Congo (1972) by Ross C — 09 Nov 2010

There is an expedition to the Congo in Africa to seek out special type of diamonds that can be put to a variety of uses, one of them the essential component in a laser. The party has found the source of the gems and more, and Charles (Bruce Campbell) uses the satellite video link to talk to his father and CEO of the company, Travis(Joe Don Baker), telling him the good news along with Dr.Karen Ross (Laura Linney), who is also in the control room and used to be Charles fiancee. However, he fails to let them know the exact location of the find and signs off too soon, which proves to be unfortunate when that transmission turns out to be his last. What has happened? Karen realizes that she must gather a new expedition to track them down using the signal of the laser....

So far Congo has been eliciting a steady stream of chuckles, but once they get down to the serious business of finding diamonds and a lost city which happens to be around the site they're looking for, boredom sets in. Not that it's uneventful, what with the cast having to parachute out of their plane when it has rockets fired at it, a tribe who are keeping a member of the previous party alive so he can scream at Amy and expire just as Karen and company find him, and a hippopotamus attack in their river, among other obstacles. What lies at the end of their journey is a lost race of killer gorillas that bump off the least important members of the cast in order, and an active volcano which erupts on cue. Considering the whole adventure yields absolutely nothing of worth, not even diamonds, you may be left pondering what exactly the point was. Same here. And why did they teach Amy to drink Martinis and smoke cigars if they're so ecology conscious?