Featured Creature, The one Stan Winston couldn't save

 

Title: Congo

What Year?: 1995

Classification: Runnerup

Rating: What The Hell??? (2/4)

 

In the course of my reviews, something I have increasingly pondered is that the 1990s have been coming up as a locus for lists of “worst” movies, conspicuously Troll 2.  It’s enough to raise the question, were the 1990s a unique time for “bad” movies, or is this just a matter of shifting memory? What I find even more intriguing is, were science fiction films really better or worse than the “mainstream” films of the decade? As a case in point, I decided to cover a movie I’ve been somewhat surprised to discover has attracted notoriety. By sheer coincidence, it also happens to be yet another ape movie. Here is Congo, a movie based on a Michael Crichton novel that would probably have been forgotten if not for Jurassic Park.

Our story begins with a standard ill-fated expedition, led by a familiar face. We then meet Karen, a take-charge lady scientist sent to find out what happened, and Peter, a researcher who has tried teaching sign language to apes. The pair connect when Peter’s star pupil, a gorilla named Amy, paints a picture of her original home, a ruined city somewhere in the African jungle. That’s enough to attract the interest of Karen’s boss and a seedy Romanian you wouldn’t buy a used Yugo from, who believe that it’s a clue to the location of an ancient diamond mine. It’s further revealed that these diamonds aren’t just rocks with artificially-inflated prices, but valuable material for communications technology. With money from the Romanian and further help from an African guide, they make their way through the perils of the jungle and a post-colonial warzone. But their prize is still ahead- and guarded by mutated apes bred and trained to kill all intruders!

Congo was a 1995 film by Paramount Pictures, based on a 1980 novel by Michael Crichton (see Futureworld and Andromeda Strain). The film was given a $50 million budget and a range of high level talent, including a score by Jerry Goldsmith, effects from ILM and Stan Winston, and a cast led by Laura Linney as Karen and Ernie Hudson of Ghostbusters as the guide. Other cast included Tim Curry as the Romanian Homolka,  and B-movie stalwart Bruce Campbell as the leader of an il-fated expedition. The film differed from the book in removing a rival corporation and certain references to interbreeding between humans and apes. The movie received extensive merchandising, including a tie-in “Volcano Burrito” (?!) from Taco Bell. The movie made a reasonable $152M box office, but received negative reviews and long-term ridicule. It has remained available on disc and for streaming.

For my experiences, this is a relatively rare movie I recall seeing in the theater and not much else, which by now should be a red-alert siren. The real core of my memories is reading Michael Crichton in the late 1980s and/ or early 1990s, which in itself is a good introduction to this movie’s problems. Of the books I read then, the first was certainly Jurassic Park (see my Retro Raptors dino blog), and the next would have been Sphere, which was in many ways even better. (What the Hell happened with the movie for that one can wait for another day.) After that distinguished pair, the best I read back then would be The Terminal Man. By comparison, Congo was mostly an entertaining curiosity, combining Crichton’s techno-thriller formula with the jungle-adventure genre. Its better points arose from the thematic collision of corporate greed and post-colonial politics. Its weaknesses centered on science that was sketchy even for the 1980s, particularly the insinuation of human/ ape interbreeding (see Ingagi) and the uncritical acceptance of primate language. In hindsight, those who greenlit the movie went in with what was already a dated and problematic property, and quickly made things worse on very front.

With all that said up front, I have to add that this movie went a long way to stay on my good side, to the point that I gave it an extra viewing and found it more favorable. Its greatest real handicap, common to belated adaptations, is that it feels like it’s imitating sources that really came out later than the source material, particularly Aliens and Jurassic Park. It’s made up for by good dialogue and characters. The most watchable and flat-out entertaining moments are from Hudson, who comes across as knowledgeable and competent without leaning on overdone animist spirituality. (His accent is puzzle in itself.) Inevitably, Curry chews on the scenery, yet eventually manages to present a nuanced character, a man with a boy’s dreams still under the cynical surface. Needless to say, the actual leads are far less impressive, especially Peter. The most actively irritating scenes all come from half-hearted efforts to introduce romantic tension, the one thing that Crichton refreshingly avoided. There’s a further disappointment in the thought of what might have been if Campbell had received a bigger role, especially in the finale, which feels like an entire Evil Dead outing crammed into 30 minutes.

That leaves the apes, and this is where things get dodgy. It’s still not generally known how much Hollywood relied on misleading substitutions in portrayals of the apes, a conceit that was in fact forced by the dangerous temperament of actual adults of almost all species. (That right there should have been a red flag for the interbreeding myth.) In that context, this movie was a monumental breakthrough, but in hindsight, it invites harsher judgment than it deserves. Amy (credited to both Lola Noh and Misty Rosas) is a fine demonstration of practical effects, with the only problem being that she looks a bit small. While there are certain moments that overdo the cute (especially a mindboggling smoking sequence), she is on the whole less anthropomorphic than in the books. It’s the hostile hybrid apes that fare worse than can be easily explained. The best thing to be said is that they move very convincingly, something only stop-motion masters had ever done before, and it’s especially unnerving to see the whole group emerge en masse. The big problem is the design, which is a profound missed opportunity. Crichton’s concept, loopy as it was, could have been absolutely terrifying if done right, perhaps as simply as a scaled-up bonobo. Instead, we literally get “ugly gorillas”, more pitiful than menacing in closeups.

For the “one scene” I really wanted to do a different scene I will give honorable mention, a terrifying hippo encounter around the midpoint. But the one I cannot avoid is the volcanic eruption that interrupts the finale, simply because it does virtually everything wrong. My standing rant on this subject is that the Hollywood fascination with lava is like worrying about getting lead poisoning from a machine gun. It's as hot as a blast furnace with the viscosity of wet cement; in a significant eruption, the odds are you’d be dead long before the stuff got anywhere near you. Here, we don’t even get the buildup of lava oozing down the mountainside. Instead, it bursts through the walls of the underground lair like it was coming out of a burst water main, interrupting the final battle. What’s amusing is that there’s still ample time for both the apes and humans to retreat (not that it would do them any good). The main characters use the opportunity to make a standard dramatic escape. The hybrids, on the other hand, manage to lose several of their number, then start actually throwing themselves into the flow like defeated samurai committing sepuku. And this is the part nobody gets right, as lava is much too dense for anything to sink, and far too hot for any organic matter but bone to survive even momentarily…

In closing, I have a little more to say about the rating. A non-trivial reason I decided to review this movie at all is that I haven’t yet given a “bad” review under this feature. Even with that context, I figured in advance that it would get no better or worse than what I have given it. After taking a look at the movie itself, I came close to relenting and bumping it higher, particularly with Hudson’s performance factored in. It’s the kind of thing I often do for movies that have acquired a negative reputation (see Memoirs of An Invisible Man).  This is a case, however, where the critics were duly provoked even if they weren’t strictly “right”. This wasn’t a troubled or controversial production like Brainstorm or the 1990s Dr. Moreau, but on the contrary, one that was made under virtually ideal conditions. That in itself is the surest proof that this movie could and should have been better, and  enough for me  to treat it harder than I might. And with that, I’m done.