SON OF KONG

d. Ernest B. Schoedsack (1933)

'I guess next time you leave big monkey alone, huh?'

Released a mere nine months after King Kong, and made at a third of the cost, Son of Kong is a charming, modest little film that packs murder, mutiny, dinosaurs, seismic disturbances and a big white hero ape into seventy minutes without ever removing its tongue from its cheek. 

Set a month after Kong's New York rampage, it focuses on hapless promoter / chancer Carl Denham, now broke and facing a grand jury trial and a dozen law suits. Eager to escape his legal woes, and feeling bad about dead Kong and his dead victims, he jumps on board his boat and hits the open seas.

After forty five minutes of mildly diverting intrigue and romance, the highlight of which is a group of monkeys in fezzes playing avant-garde mood music, he finds himself back on Skull Island in search of treasure, arriving just in time to save Kong's son from drowning in quicksand. Poor Little Kong 'ain't a patch on his old man', being gentle, dopey, boss eyed, albino and a mere twelve feet tall, but he is lovable and approachable and doesn't seem to want to eat anyone.  

Comically anthropomorphic, Little Kong becomes Denham's protector, beating up the various oversized mammals and reptiles that prowl the island, including a Nothosaurus, a Styracosaurus and a giant, angry bear that he puts into a headlock and punches repeatedly in the face.

All too soon, a violent earthquake sinks the island beneath the sea, and plucky Little Kong sacrifices himself to the turbulent waters in order to hold his best friend Denham above the waves until he can be rescued. It's all rather sweet, and although it lacks the impact, iconography and innovation of its illustrious predecessor it is fun, genuinely funny and easy to like.

JUNGLE WOMAN

d. Reginald Le Borg (1944)

It's worth remembering that half the films made during the golden age of Hollywood were b-movies, and never intended to be anything other than a time filling support to something more important, more expensive, more valued, the thing that people wanted to see. There are great b movies, made with love and care, and these tend to be the ones that are remembered today. Then there are films like Jungle Woman, incomprehensible potboilers thrown together from old footage and cliche and padded out with voice overs, flash backs and long scenes of people walking corridors and going up and down stairs until sixty or so minutes pass.

Ostensibly a sequel to, but more like a rehash of Captive Wild Woman with all its teeth pulled out, the production misses any number of chances to be as silly or interesting as only a film about a beautiful woman who used to be a gorilla can be and really only merits notice because of the sulky presence of its female star, the mysterious and exotic Acquanetta, here slap bang in the middle of her five film credit career. The so called 'Venezuelan Volcano' is her usual somnolent self, drifting around in a self-absorbed daze, occasionally scowling and staring. She's not much of an actress, but she's a hell of a presence, the sort of person who enters a room glowering and makes everyone wish she'd either say something or just go away.   

As a final note, it is now believed that Acquanetta was neither Venezuelan or a gypsy or an Arapaho Indian but instead that rarest of all onscreen Hollywood persons: an African American.

THE MAN WHO TURNED TO STONE

d. Leslie Kardos (1957)

We’re in one of our favourite locations (alright one of my favourite locations), the women’s prison. This particular jail is notable for its high incidence of fatal heart attacks amongst the prisoners, usually preceded by lots and lots of screaming. Somewhat unpredictably, It turns out that the prison governors are all 150 years old, the last surviving guinea pigs of experimental animal magnetism experimentation. Apparently, the treatment has formed an invisible stone sheath around their bodies, protecting them from knives, bullets, breaks, bruises and the ravages of time. Every now and again, the treatment needs renewing, so, before they turn into statues, they order their lumbering henchman to steal a female convict, at which point they dump her in a warm water bath, attach some electrodes and suck the energy out of her until she’s good and dead.

No, I don’t know how they came up with them, either. But I’m glad that they did, as it’s another mad minor classic from that most psychotronic of cinematic years, 1957 AD.

THIRST

d. Rod Hardy (1979)

The 1970s was an interesting time for Australian cinema, producing perhaps half a dozen indelibly brilliant and original films. Thirst isn’t one of them, but it is rather good, and provides an interesting and cliché avoiding half turn on the standard horror mythos, depicting vampires as a powerful, hidden class of people who have money, resources, influence and their own way of doing things, a sort of undead Illuminati. 

These vampires are bound together by blood in every way, not just through their appetites but through their family connections and hundreds of years of heritage / inbreeding (so often the same thing). The most nagging detail is that the vampires have created an industrial process to ensure they have all the blood that they need, running large dairies where listless but good looking young people have their blood drained from them on a  daily basis until they are desiccated husks. The blood is then bottled or put into cartons for consumption at breakfast. I don’t suppose it’s too much different to the Gold Top I used to drink in the 1970s, which, delicious or not, most closely resembled mucous in a glass. 

My only real concern was a technical query: if vampires are born into vampirism, and are immortal, when do they stop ageing? I mean, If David Hemmings (featured here as one of the few sympathetic characters) is going to live forever, why doesn’t he do so in his young and pretty 1960s form from, say, Eye of the Devil, rather than as he appears here: grey, a bit baggy, slightly tipsy and tired, tired, tired? 

Quiet, forceful, strange, compelling, Thirst is intriguing and interesting for most of its running time, only letting itself down with some poorly fitting fang dentures and a rather silly red eye optical effect that kicks in just before the bloodsuckers bite.