Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. This is
Speaker 1: Rob Lamb.
Speaker 2: And I'm Joe McCormick, and today we're featuring an older
Speaker 2: episode of Weird House Cinema. This one originally published on
Speaker 2: November eleventh, twenty twenty two. And let's see, I was
Speaker 2: not on this episode. This is one that you recorded
Speaker 2: with our friend and colleague Annie Reese. This was on
Speaker 2: the movie Congo. Oh boy, we were just talking about Congo,
Speaker 2: the weird Michael Crichton written jungle adventure movie with an
Speaker 2: animatronic gorilla, talking gorilla, and very importantly Tim Curry in
Speaker 2: just an unbelievable Peter Lorii role.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a super fun film. This one came up
Speaker 1: in our recent Listener Mail episode and I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: well that was a fun episode and we've never rerun it,
Speaker 1: so we're going to rerun it here now. This one,
Speaker 1: As I recall, Annie presented a list of movies she
Speaker 1: would be open to talking about, and this was on
Speaker 1: the list. I was like, it's got to be Congo.
Speaker 2: Laura Lenny, Ernie Hudson, Joe Don Baker, what's not to love?
Speaker 1: Yes, all right, let's jump right in.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb
Speaker 1: and I'm Annie Reese. That's right.
Speaker 4: Can I just jump in? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's perfectly, perfectly fine. That's the way to do it. Yes, everyone,
Speaker 1: it's Annie Reese of Stuff Mom Never told you and
Speaker 1: save her. She is going to join me as my
Speaker 1: guest co host today as Joe is still very much
Speaker 1: on parental leave, and we kind of had a back
Speaker 1: and forth about what to discuss here, and eventually there
Speaker 1: was just no denying the appeal of nineteen ninety five's Congo.
Speaker 4: I think it was my first option, and I'm very
Speaker 4: sorry if I overwhelmed you, because I do love movies.
Speaker 4: I do love bad slash weird. I don't want to
Speaker 4: put them in the same category, but I do love
Speaker 4: movies that kind of make you raise your eyebrow like huh.
Speaker 4: So when you asked, I was super excited and immediately
Speaker 4: sent you I think like fifteen suggestions, but Congo was
Speaker 4: the first one. And I hope Joe's not mad that
Speaker 4: we're doing it without him, because I've talked about Congo
Speaker 4: with him, but it is just something that is hard
Speaker 4: to explain. And in fact, last night I was going
Speaker 4: over some of your notes and I was laughing aloud
Speaker 4: at your notes because it's just a strange film. So
Speaker 4: much of it is hard to describe, and I kind
Speaker 4: of love that about it. I'm kind of endeared by
Speaker 4: how strange it is, if that makes sense.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's one of those films where, oh, on one hand,
Speaker 1: I can't imagine Congo is anyone's favorite movie. No, and
Speaker 1: yet it's hard not to love, if not parts of
Speaker 1: the film or the whole film itself, you've still got
Speaker 1: to admire sort of the the guts to try and
Speaker 1: put together something like this like this was. It's like
Speaker 1: a throwback to older jungle adventure movies, but with the
Speaker 1: high tech Michael Crichton edge to it. And I'm not
Speaker 1: sure ultimately anybody was really clamoring for this, but it's
Speaker 1: hard to argue with the fun results here.
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, I think that's It's such a It's a
Speaker 4: movie that continually is asking you, like, well, don't ask
Speaker 4: too many questions. Just come along with this journey. We
Speaker 4: don't have to explain this. It's just going to be
Speaker 4: fun and it's it does end up being very fun,
Speaker 4: even though at the end you're like, but wait, and
Speaker 4: it just like switches genres a million times. It's never
Speaker 4: entirely clear like what it's trying to be. It's very
Speaker 4: obviously in the shadow of Jurassic Park, because it had
Speaker 4: come out in the wake of Jurassic Park. But there's
Speaker 4: something about about so much of the acting in it
Speaker 4: that is just fullhearted despite what is going on around,
Speaker 4: like maybe even because of what is going on in
Speaker 4: the script that is just hard not to kind of
Speaker 4: it just kind of winds you over. You're like, oh, yeah, sure,
Speaker 4: let's go on this journey.
Speaker 1: It has a lot of energy, and it has some
Speaker 1: great performers in it, who many of which really decide
Speaker 1: to chew the scenery, which I think is the right
Speaker 1: impulse for a film like this. And then yeah, the
Speaker 1: genre I wouldn't I won't say it's necessarily a genre confusion,
Speaker 1: but there are elements of this movie that are kind
Speaker 1: of monster film and perhaps even seem like they might
Speaker 1: venture into horror. But there's also plenty of stuff that's
Speaker 1: just kind of this old fashioned, essentially like a jungle
Speaker 1: cruise kind of adventure. And if you go in just
Speaker 1: hungry for the killer gorillas. You get a little bit
Speaker 1: at the beginning, and then you got to wait a
Speaker 1: long time before you get back to them.
Speaker 4: I think I read I read an article that said,
Speaker 4: if you're for a movie that was like promising killer gorillas,
Speaker 4: you only really get them at the one hundred minute mark,
Speaker 4: just constantly like but wait where okay?
Speaker 1: But then they they and then the ultimate I guess. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're not on screen a lot, but there are a
Speaker 1: lot of gorillas on screen when they are on screen,
Speaker 1: so you do get to see a lot of really
Speaker 1: amazing gorilla costumes. And I'm a sucker. I'm a sucker
Speaker 1: for a bad gorilla costume. You bring a great gorilla costume,
Speaker 1: and I'm totally on board.
Speaker 4: Yes, and I if you would allow me, I would
Speaker 4: love to tell the very complicated story of how I
Speaker 4: saw congo.
Speaker 1: Oh, let's hear it.
Speaker 4: Yes, okay, okay, So come along with this journey like
Speaker 4: this is oh so I One of the first movies
Speaker 4: I ever saw in theaters was Jurassic Park. I snuck
Speaker 4: into the theater. I was like three or four. I
Speaker 4: should not have been there, and I had a nightmare
Speaker 4: about Raptors. That night, I couldn't hide that I had
Speaker 4: seen this movie because it became very clear. So I
Speaker 4: got in very big trouble for it. But I loved
Speaker 4: the movie, and after that I became Once I got older,
Speaker 4: I read a lot of Michael Crichton. I really liked sphear.
Speaker 4: I think my interest was sort of reignited in the
Speaker 4: two thousand's after Lost, because there was a big loss
Speaker 4: theory about the book Prey. Yeah, so I started reading
Speaker 4: it again, and somehow Congo never entered this year. I
Speaker 4: did not know it was written by Michael Crichton. I
Speaker 4: because I'm kind of a gullible and sometimes terrible at
Speaker 4: deciphering sarcasm, had been told that Congo was an Oscar
Speaker 4: winning movie and like best Film level, okay, So I
Speaker 4: thought it was going to be this really dramatic sade
Speaker 4: on I don't know, diamonds and or gorillas in Africa, which,
Speaker 4: by the way, that is one thing that does not
Speaker 4: age well in this movie. So I was preparing it
Speaker 4: for it to be a really emotional, sad film, and
Speaker 4: because of that I had put it off. I'd put
Speaker 4: off seeing it for years and years and years, still
Speaker 4: not knowing it's Michael Crichton, and so at the beginning
Speaker 4: of the pandemic, when it's like, oh gosh, I'm just
Speaker 4: gonna have to start, I'm gonna stream everything because that's
Speaker 4: what I that's what I have to only love to
Speaker 4: me to do. I was with a friend of mine,
Speaker 4: a very very good friend of mine, and I was like,
Speaker 4: you know what, tonights the night I'm gonna I'm gonna
Speaker 4: do Congo, I'm gonna stream it. I'm gonna be sad
Speaker 4: and it's gonna be great. And I So we kept
Speaker 4: putting it off even into the night, and so it
Speaker 4: was like two am, and I was kind of tipsy,
Speaker 4: and I started watching it, and she went. She went
Speaker 4: to lay down in a room next to me so
Speaker 4: she could still hear me, but she wasn't watching it.
Speaker 4: So what follows was me desperately trying to make sense
Speaker 4: in my head about how this could be a Best
Speaker 4: Picture Oscar movie and me shouting at Katie like, oh
Speaker 4: my god, Tim Curry showed up and he's got some
Speaker 4: accents I can't explain, and her being like what and
Speaker 4: me being like, oh my gosh, there's a talking gorilla
Speaker 4: and it likes Martini's what's going on? And just like
Speaker 4: my brain desperately trying to make this make sense. And
Speaker 4: I think it's a real testament to like what you
Speaker 4: think a movie is when you go into it, of
Speaker 4: how hard I was trying to well there's I mean,
Speaker 4: surely it's something. I'm maybe I'm missing something or and
Speaker 4: so I it wasn't until the lasers lasering of the
Speaker 4: gorillas at the end that I was finally like, I'm
Speaker 4: I'm not sure this movie won any all screws. Then
Speaker 4: when they escape in the hot air balloon, I was like, O, Katie,
Speaker 4: they're in a hot air balloon. I don't think I
Speaker 4: don't think this was an award winning movie at all.
Speaker 4: And so then I desperately like go online and I
Speaker 4: search what is this movie? And to my delight, I
Speaker 4: found several several articles about it that were like exactly that,
Speaker 4: what is this movie? And I read them all and
Speaker 4: then I said, we are watching this again, and I
Speaker 4: need you to witness what I just saw. So it
Speaker 4: was like only a couple of years ago I saw it,
Speaker 4: and I just it still left such a mark on
Speaker 4: me because I was the whole time, what is going
Speaker 4: on here?
Speaker 1: Oh wow, that's so. Yeah. If you go into into
Speaker 1: the film Congo expecting one of those, and then there
Speaker 1: were I believe several like serious films that came out
Speaker 1: at least in the decade follow dealing with serious dramatic
Speaker 1: scenarios in Africa. This is this is not one of them. No,
Speaker 1: but I can imagine, Yeah, you're surprised when these various
Speaker 1: speculative and fantastic elements begin to pop up.
Speaker 4: Oh my gosh, the hot air ballue. It's the funniest
Speaker 4: part to me is that I made it all the
Speaker 4: way to that part before I was finally like, something's
Speaker 4: off here. I think I've been told a lie about
Speaker 4: what it is.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, that is that's amazing. So the second viewing
Speaker 1: you had that was the one where you went in
Speaker 1: having full knowledge of what Congo was and what you're
Speaker 1: going to get out of it.
Speaker 4: Yes, and now I've seen it several several times, and
Speaker 4: it's kind of a tradition, a tradition with me and
Speaker 4: some friends that we watch it and mostly we just
Speaker 4: are like, look at what Tim Curry is doing, because
Speaker 4: he's really, like you said, a lot of the actors
Speaker 4: are chewing up the scenery. Him and Ernie Hudson are
Speaker 4: just it feels like they're having a good time. And yeah,
Speaker 4: I hope so, because they it's it's shining through and
Speaker 4: it's so fun to just watch them have that fun.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm looking forward to talking more about about Ernie
Speaker 1: Hudson in a bit because it is a great Ernie
Speaker 1: Hudson role, perhaps his best role. It's amazing. Now my
Speaker 1: history with Congo it very much connected to Jurassic Park,
Speaker 1: you know, because nineteen ninety three, Jurassic Park comes out
Speaker 1: in theaters. I think I was fourteen at that point,
Speaker 1: and like a lot of kids of that age in
Speaker 1: that time period, like instantly you're in on Michael Crichton books.
Speaker 1: You pick up a copy of Jurassic Park, you read that,
Speaker 1: and they both provide very similar but slightly differing experiences.
Speaker 1: And I remember my dad had read and was reading
Speaker 1: some Michael Crichton at the time, so we kind of
Speaker 1: had that to bond over, and I read I read
Speaker 1: a series of them at the time. I think I
Speaker 1: read Fear, which I think I've mostly forgotten, Eaters of
Speaker 1: the Dead, which I enjoyed a lot, and then the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty novel Congo, which of course is the basis
Speaker 1: for this film. So looking back on it, I think
Speaker 1: I was drawn in more to the more fantastic of
Speaker 1: the Michael Crichton books, the ones that involve dinosaurs coming
Speaker 1: back from the dead, cannibal cavemen attacking vikings, and of
Speaker 1: course this wonderful tale of strange lost gorillas and lost
Speaker 1: cities in the jungle and superpowered lasers.
Speaker 4: Of course, and diamonds that somehow, you know, that's one
Speaker 4: of my other favorite parts of this movie. And I
Speaker 4: am a big sucker for this period of technology where
Speaker 4: I experienced it. I grew up with it, but it
Speaker 4: feels so outdated and kind of like wonky now, and
Speaker 4: it's clear that, like the understanding wasn't entirely there. So
Speaker 4: I love the plot line of just like, don't ask
Speaker 4: too many questions, but this diamond is how we're going
Speaker 4: to revolutionize commune occasions technology and it is necessary for satellites.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the techno aspect of the film is it's one
Speaker 1: of the aspects of Michael Crichton's work that I think
Speaker 1: tended to set a lot of his stuff apart, especially
Speaker 1: from this period of his writing, because he had a
Speaker 1: real knack for like adventure and thriller stories, but then
Speaker 1: would bring in this level of technology and technological speculation,
Speaker 1: and yeah, it made things feel more alive at the time.
Speaker 1: Some of it maybe it has not aged as well,
Speaker 1: just because that's how that's how cutting edge sci fi works.
Speaker 1: As you eventually reach the period where you read Neuromancer
Speaker 1: again and you're like, whoa, they're sending faxes. That doesn't
Speaker 1: feel very cyberpunk, but it's just talid cos.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I do love it. I mean, there's so
Speaker 4: many parts of this movie where it is very fun,
Speaker 4: which again I'll use that word a lot because I
Speaker 4: do think Congo is a very fun movie to look
Speaker 4: back at the technology and just smile to yourself and
Speaker 4: be like, well, it was a different time and they
Speaker 4: were trying.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's I mean, this is a pretty pricey film.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's the most expensive film that we've
Speaker 1: watched on Weird House, but it's up there. It was
Speaker 1: a big summer blockbuster, and the weird thing is that
Speaker 1: it was successful. I understand it, maybe not critically, but
Speaker 1: it made money at the box. I was people went
Speaker 1: out and saw it and they enjoyed it, and yet
Speaker 1: it is It is the right level of blockbuster where
Speaker 1: it is sort of culturally forgotten by a lot of people,
Speaker 1: which allows someone like you to come around later and
Speaker 1: go into it not knowing exactly what you're going to
Speaker 1: get out of it. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Such a lot of the articles I read before this,
Speaker 4: a lot of people said that, like, people are rediscovering
Speaker 4: Congo and asking the same questions I did after watching it.
Speaker 4: And it is interesting because, as you said, people saw
Speaker 4: it and it had a huge marketing push, huge marketing push.
Speaker 4: From what I understand, I think there was a quote
Speaker 4: from one of the somebody higher up the film that
Speaker 4: he basically said, anybody who doesn't see Congo is a
Speaker 4: terrible person or something like. They were really really hyping this,
Speaker 4: and I'm surprised that. Yeah, it just I guess people
Speaker 4: were like, sure there was this talk and Gorilla, let's
Speaker 4: move on to another thing. But now people are rediscovering
Speaker 4: it and it is it's just a ride. I'm excited
Speaker 4: for any listeners who haven't seen it to just describing
Speaker 4: the plot. That was one of the most fun things
Speaker 4: that night when I was watching it the first time
Speaker 4: and just shouting these random phrases to my friend in
Speaker 4: the other Boom, like I had to share it with
Speaker 4: her because this is so bizarre to explain to someone.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's the story behind it is kind of
Speaker 1: bizarre too. I was reading a little bit about this. Like,
Speaker 1: one thing we have to keep in mind is that
Speaker 1: coming back to nineteen eighty the period that the book
Speaker 1: comes out, So by the late seventies, Michael Crichton was
Speaker 1: all already a big name, both with books but also
Speaker 1: with movies. We'll get into that in a bit, but
Speaker 1: the story goes that he had this idea to do
Speaker 1: a modern King Solomon's Minds type movie, a modern jungle
Speaker 1: adventure but updated for modern audiences with lots of you know,
Speaker 1: Michael Crichton technos stuff in it. And twentieth Century Fox
Speaker 1: loved it. In fact, they loved it so much as
Speaker 1: they signed him to a contract to write the novel,
Speaker 1: the screenplay, and direct it before there was even a book.
Speaker 1: He signed. But then he got massive writer's block and
Speaker 1: had to use an isolation tank to overcome it, and
Speaker 1: that is where Congo comes from. It emerges from the
Speaker 1: isolation tank.
Speaker 4: That makes sense. That makes sense, And he had some
Speaker 4: really this original take on the film that he was
Speaker 4: going to do sounds like it was going to be
Speaker 4: extremely different, and also kind of gave me the vibes
Speaker 4: of like, how is this going to get made? How
Speaker 4: are we going to translate this story to a movie?
Speaker 1: Mm hmm, yeah, And I think there were there were
Speaker 1: some some issues early on, just like how would you
Speaker 1: create like the gorillas. And I think one of the
Speaker 1: reasons they ended up making it, They're like, well, we've
Speaker 1: done Jurassic Park, now we can do anything. Let's make
Speaker 1: cgi gorillas. And I think it didn't take them long
Speaker 1: to realize that that a that wasn't really achievable, mainly
Speaker 1: because of the fur issue. But then also I think
Speaker 1: they encountered something that that that filmmakers have have sort
Speaker 1: of have to rekeep reminding them, and that is gorilla
Speaker 1: suits absolutely work. The gorilla suits are great. You get
Speaker 1: a good physical actor in there who can move around properly,
Speaker 1: and and it's amazing. It totally. In fact, it works
Speaker 1: so well. You know you'll encounter films like say, hell Boy.
Speaker 1: I remember seeing some behind the scenes stuff with Giamo
Speaker 1: del Toro who was talking about creating these like secondary
Speaker 1: demon monsters that hell Boy battles, and he was like, well, Bay,
Speaker 1: we said, let's start with a gorilla suit and let's
Speaker 1: just monster it out. Make it not a gorilla but
Speaker 1: a demon. But performance wise, it's essentially a gorilla suit
Speaker 1: because that absolutely works. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's really interesting because I do think and I
Speaker 4: just watched a documentary about this the other day about
Speaker 4: special effects, and I do think it's interesting that like
Speaker 4: Jurassic Park was such this like touchstone in terms of
Speaker 4: technology what we can do, and it was a lot
Speaker 4: in a lot of ways, like they had so many
Speaker 4: practical things, but they also had CGI, and so I
Speaker 4: think there was a lot of like, well maybe CGI
Speaker 4: sounds cooler, like this technology is newer, so much must
Speaker 4: be better. And I think that we have seen and
Speaker 4: have talked about, like CGI is obviously gotten a lot
Speaker 4: better since then, but in those early days especially, there
Speaker 4: was something better. It worked better to have these gorilla
Speaker 4: suits as opposed to trying to do something with CGI.
Speaker 4: Like there Stan Winston who was behind it, like he
Speaker 4: he created these and I don't think I think it
Speaker 4: would have been much worse if they had tried to
Speaker 4: go a different route, especially because as we're going to
Speaker 4: talk about there. I can't say it enough. This gorilla
Speaker 4: like drinks some martini. Oh yeah, Like we can't. I
Speaker 4: think if they had tried to see gi some of
Speaker 4: this stuff, or gone a different way than gorilla suits,
Speaker 4: then it would be funnier in a way that they
Speaker 4: absolutely didn't intend. There are certain scenes in this movie
Speaker 4: where I'm like, I can't tell if you meant for
Speaker 4: this to be funnier or not.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but they had got on cgi gorillas, it would
Speaker 1: be an entirely different piece. Because there's plenty of stuff
Speaker 1: about this film that does feel dated, be it the
Speaker 1: sort of high tech stuff or the general like nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety five sheen that is over everything, and like the
Speaker 1: film doesn't have like a visual vision. I guess that
Speaker 1: really supersedes that ninety fiveness of the whole picture. But
Speaker 1: the gorilla suits amy that they all look very real.
Speaker 1: You still buy them like they hold up, even if
Speaker 1: there are other aspects of the film that don't.
Speaker 6: It's true, it's true.
Speaker 1: So but before we go move on to the trailer,
Speaker 1: and one more thing I want to add is that, yeah,
Speaker 1: I very much remember enjoying the book. I did read
Speaker 1: the book first, on this one. It's full of a
Speaker 1: lot of traditional jungle adventure story elements, but with the
Speaker 1: added laser technology that's very much in there, it does
Speaker 1: get progressively weirder as you end up learning more about
Speaker 1: these mysterious gray apes and this lost city. And I
Speaker 1: think a lot of this ties into some elements of
Speaker 1: essentially what was kind of darwin'sploitation fiction of Yesteryear. We
Speaker 1: see this in in the works of HP Lovecraft's facts
Speaker 1: concerning the late author German J. E. R. N y N,
Speaker 1: but also Sir Arthur Cunnan Doyle. He had one of
Speaker 1: the Sherlock Home adventures called The Adventure of the Crooked Man.
Speaker 1: And then there's also it's also worth noting that the
Speaker 1: Lovecraft tale in question kind of links back to an
Speaker 1: Edgar Rice Burrough story from nineteen sixteen titled Tarzan and
Speaker 1: the Jewels of Opar, which also seems very It seems
Speaker 1: like it was probably a primary inspiration on Michael Crichton here,
Speaker 1: because it concerns a lost city and it also concerns
Speaker 1: a group of human ape hybrids that protect it. And
Speaker 1: all of these films, I mean, all these stories that
Speaker 1: I just mentioned, they all have elements of human ape
Speaker 1: hybridity and strange things, strange apes and sort of evolution
Speaker 1: tinged danger.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, that's a good point. And I do have
Speaker 4: a quote I want to read at the end, but
Speaker 4: somebody was reviewing it and was just asking, like the
Speaker 4: monstrous gray apes in this, if you dig too deep
Speaker 4: into why they exist, it doesn't really make sense.
Speaker 1: No, no, it.
Speaker 4: Doesn't really make sense at all. But that's true. Yeah,
Speaker 4: that kind of evolution gone wrong, or maybe like even
Speaker 4: our fears around evolution and even some of those past
Speaker 4: perhaps scared stories and sometimes not scared stories of experiments
Speaker 4: done with humans and apes and like the Soviet Union
Speaker 4: and stuff like that, but then you always had kind
Speaker 4: of the comedic tinge of you know, Harrying the Hintersons,
Speaker 4: Like there was a lot going on in that genre act.
Speaker 4: We are in that kind of specific idea. So that's interesting.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, it is again a jungle adventure movie,
Speaker 1: but with satellites and lasers. Let's go ahead and hear
Speaker 1: that fabulous mid nineties trailer audio Activate the remote.
Speaker 7: In the race for the world's most advanced communications technology,
Speaker 7: a shocking discovery has been made.
Speaker 4: Block You're remote, give me a thermal reading result of
Speaker 4: six six.
Speaker 7: Relatively, it will take two young scientists into the heart
Speaker 7: of the African jungle. A secret hidden for two thousand
Speaker 7: years owns the.
Speaker 4: Key to the future. This is Karen Ross eight one
Speaker 4: four five two Houston.
Speaker 7: Do you read you used to work for the CIA,
Speaker 7: and now you're trafical. Some will come to it for science.
Speaker 2: The delts.
Speaker 4: This is a big five. Some for fortune and diamond
Speaker 4: line of incredible bounty, and some to return home. She
Speaker 4: doesn't really belong anywhere to No, she belongs here.
Speaker 7: Together they will search my boss.
Speaker 4: You thought I wasn't gonna make it. We sent another expedition,
Speaker 4: drawn deep into a mystery castroyed people dead, great gorilla gorilla.
Speaker 4: I saw one.
Speaker 7: And the more they discover the same aheroglyphics, over and over,
Speaker 7: the greater the danger. What did they say, we are
Speaker 7: watching you?
Speaker 1: You never saw an animal.
Speaker 4: Move like that? How intelligent are they?
Speaker 1: Smart?
Speaker 7: The two damn spots.
Speaker 1: We're getting out of here them put them on the.
Speaker 6: Danger species left.
Speaker 3: From the best selling novel by the author of Jurassic.
Speaker 6: Art fil.
Speaker 7: Of The feel Isn't true.
Speaker 3: Congo, Where you are the endangered species?
Speaker 1: See it sounds like it's gonna be an adventure. It
Speaker 1: sounds like something that you're gonna you're gonna buy a
Speaker 1: lot of popcorn and cola for and you just just
Speaker 1: try not to pee the entire time.
Speaker 4: There's a part of me that wishes I had seen
Speaker 4: I think if I had seen the trailer and had
Speaker 4: no idea about the movie, I wish I I I'm
Speaker 4: jealous I didn't get to have that experience. I suppose
Speaker 4: because it's actually having seen it. It's a pretty accurate trailer.
Speaker 4: I was expecting something cheesier, to be honest, but it
Speaker 4: could be because I've seen Congo a lot by now,
Speaker 4: so it didn't have exactly the as much of the
Speaker 4: strangeness and dated vibe that I thought it would. And
Speaker 4: it does feel very much like, Yeah, this is popcorn movie.
Speaker 4: Come out and enjoy your popcorn, have fun, then go
Speaker 4: and home and forget about it.
Speaker 1: I guess yeah. I don't know that much of the
Speaker 1: film really stuck with me. In fact, there are elements
Speaker 1: of the film that I remembered as being different because
Speaker 1: of the book, Like I just ended up assuming that
Speaker 1: the parts of the book were were accurately depicted in
Speaker 1: the film, and so I just remembered the film as
Speaker 1: having those details, and we'll come back to what those
Speaker 1: are in a bit. But if you are looking to
Speaker 1: have your first Congo experience, or your first Congo experience
Speaker 1: in decades, well, lucky for you, Congo is widely available,
Speaker 1: even if it's partially forgotten, as much as a blockbuster
Speaker 1: can be forgotten. I watched it on a very old
Speaker 1: feeling DVD that I rented from Video Drum here in Atlanta.
Speaker 1: There is a Blu ray from twenty fourteen and in
Speaker 1: their HD digital cop you can rent or purchase online,
Speaker 1: but I don't think it's received a full blown special edition,
Speaker 1: so there are no like real Congo extras out there
Speaker 1: floating around, which seems weird.
Speaker 4: It does. I couldn't really get a good grasp on
Speaker 4: that I own the DVD because I never wanted to
Speaker 4: be without it after that first time watching it. But
Speaker 4: it is one of those things where I honestly feel
Speaker 4: like most of the cast gave it there all they
Speaker 4: really did, but it's it's also got the vibe of like, okay,
Speaker 4: we did that, let's not talk about it anymore. I
Speaker 4: do know Ernie Hudson has said he would reprise his
Speaker 4: role as Monroe. Oh that would be me, I know,
Speaker 4: but I'm not sure, like if there's any talk at
Speaker 4: all about a sequel. I just know he said that
Speaker 4: he would do that. But yeah, and like you said,
Speaker 4: it was it was financially successful, but I think it
Speaker 4: wasn't because of the critical review, which was not good
Speaker 4: if we didn't make clearer but I think we did,
Speaker 4: but it was not good because of that, And I
Speaker 4: don't think it did as well as they wanted, even
Speaker 4: though it did way better than it should have. Given
Speaker 4: the reviews, I think they've just sort of, yeah, put
Speaker 4: that one up on the shelf. Let's just forget that
Speaker 4: that happened.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is. Speaking of reviews, I had to revisit
Speaker 1: Roger Ebert's review for the film because it's a pretty
Speaker 1: fun review. It's a three star review, to be clear,
Speaker 1: so he didn't he didn't go beyond three stars on it.
Speaker 1: But it's also kind of a glowing review of the film,
Speaker 1: Like he has a lot of very nice things to
Speaker 1: say about it and some of the performances. So I'll
Speaker 1: call back to that review a couple of times in
Speaker 1: a bit.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I read that to you and I was amused
Speaker 4: by because I was expecting it to be negative, but
Speaker 4: he kind of seemed to, I hesitate to say get
Speaker 4: it because I mean, he kind of seemed to be like,
Speaker 4: you know, this is just it's a fun movie. It's
Speaker 4: got its issues, but I had a good time watching it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Ebert would would definitely fall on that line for
Speaker 1: various film reviews if it was just the right type
Speaker 1: of kind of weird film or pulpy film, like he would,
Speaker 1: he would view it favorably. So yeah, I find myself
Speaker 1: agreeing with Ebert a lot on certain films. All Right,
Speaker 1: well let's get into some We've discussed some of the
Speaker 1: people already, but just to go through the list, and
Speaker 1: I think some of these will, especially behind the scenes names,
Speaker 1: will help us sort of make sense of like what
Speaker 1: Congo is. And I think, you know, pointing out that
Speaker 1: Frank Marshall born nineteen forty six is both the director
Speaker 1: and the executive this feels kind of key because Marshall
Speaker 1: primarily known as a major Hollywood producer, and while he's
Speaker 1: not involved in the current Star Wars stuff with his wife,
Speaker 1: he's still very much a part of the Indiana Jones franchise,
Speaker 1: the Jurassic Park franchise, which of course keeps coming back
Speaker 1: to life and emerging from eggs various other film and
Speaker 1: TV projects. His direct as a director's output has been
Speaker 1: far smaller. But I think this is perhaps key, Like
Speaker 1: if we think of the blockbuster as as not just
Speaker 1: a film, not just like a piece of art, but
Speaker 1: this sort of colossal business project. Congo I think does
Speaker 1: kind of feel like that, Like, can you fault the
Speaker 1: fact that the Congo exists as a finished film and
Speaker 1: made more money than it costs? You know, it seems
Speaker 1: to have been a financial success. It checks off all
Speaker 1: the boxes. You can't really fault it for that. You
Speaker 1: might fault it for vision, You might say, well, you know,
Speaker 1: it has this kind I've seen people point out what
Speaker 1: has kind of a like a TV almost look to it.
Speaker 1: It doesn't feel suitably cinematic enough, et cetera. But there's
Speaker 1: no faulting it from a business perspective.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I mean it had all the ingredients there.
Speaker 4: And I do think the timing of this is important
Speaker 4: to keep in mind too, because again, it was a
Speaker 4: time when technology was shifting, when what people had access
Speaker 4: to in terms of technology was shifting when what people
Speaker 4: could do in terms of creating things with technology was shifting.
Speaker 4: So I think it very much was a product of
Speaker 4: its time in that way where you know, the idea
Speaker 4: of the blockbuster had been around since the seventies, but
Speaker 4: it had kind of become a here's how you do
Speaker 4: it by that point. But it also had these pieces
Speaker 4: that were changing in terms of the technology especially, So
Speaker 4: it is interesting to me that they did stick with
Speaker 4: the gorillas and suits, but also having these people that
Speaker 4: had been involved in one way or another in this
Speaker 4: type of blockbuster business, as you say, because they did
Speaker 4: very much a business. It's it's seeing what came out
Speaker 4: of that because there are pieces. I feel like, this
Speaker 4: is one of the things about Congo is there. It's
Speaker 4: all there, but it's almost like they weren't matched or
Speaker 4: they were like leaning in too hard at in this
Speaker 4: comedic way at one point and too hard in this way.
Speaker 4: Like it was kind of like a blockbuster, but not
Speaker 4: one that was uniform, if that makes sense. Yeah, Like
Speaker 4: there was a lot going on where they're like, oh,
Speaker 4: let's try this, let's try this, let's try this, which
Speaker 4: all can work in a blockbuster, but they did it
Speaker 4: from almost like three or four different blockbusters and kind
Speaker 4: of trying to jam it together.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I can see you might might chalk that
Speaker 1: up to Marshall and like, like, what's the director's vision
Speaker 1: for it, and how much of what works in the
Speaker 1: film is ultimately coming from all of the people who
Speaker 1: give it. They're all for this performance, of this bit
Speaker 1: of the special effects. But still at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, like Marshall is the one. He's landing the
Speaker 1: plane here, he's the one bringing the ship to port.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's certainly have to give him credit to
Speaker 1: all Right, Well, Michael Crichton we already mentioned him a
Speaker 1: bit already, but lived nineteen forty two through two thousand
Speaker 1: and eight. Probably one of the best known novelists of
Speaker 1: the late twentieth century, and his work continues to resonate,
Speaker 1: at least with some of the franchises that he helped establish,
Speaker 1: particularly Jurassic Park in Westworld.
Speaker 4: Yes, and I loved I loved Drastic Park, and I
Speaker 4: read all of those books, and it is very because
Speaker 4: i'd seen the movie first, and reading Drastic Park after
Speaker 4: you've seen the movie, and Lost World after you've seen
Speaker 4: the movie, it is a lot more there's a lot
Speaker 4: more attention to detail, a lot more technology, a lot
Speaker 4: more science, which I guess that makes sense in terms
Speaker 4: of what can trance to film, especially a blockbuster film,
Speaker 4: and what can be in a book. But that was
Speaker 4: something that was interesting to me when I went back
Speaker 4: and read those books, was Oh, wow, this is a
Speaker 4: lot more detailed in terms of how this would actually work.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: As a novelist, he wrote several novels under pen names
Speaker 1: in the late nineteen sixties, but then he published The
Speaker 1: Andromeda Strain that came out in nineteen sixty nine under
Speaker 1: his own name, and this propelled him into bestseller status.
Speaker 1: Very listed some of his big novels, but he also
Speaker 1: entered into the film world pretty early, directing and writing
Speaker 1: five films between nineteen seventy three and nineteen eighty four,
Speaker 1: West World, Coma, The Great Train Robbery based on his
Speaker 1: book Looker, and Oh are you familiar with Runaway? I'm
Speaker 1: Not Runaway is this stupendous film that stars Tom Selleck
Speaker 1: as like a cop who specialty is hunting down killer
Speaker 1: robots that are the work of the diabolical roboticist played
Speaker 1: by Gene Simmons of Kiss and I mean, that's already enough.
Speaker 1: You got a that's a lot just going on visually
Speaker 1: with these two actors. But the tiny robots in question,
Speaker 1: So don't don't think like black Mirror asks scary killer robot.
Speaker 1: These things look like something you would see in a
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties special about the future of robots. You know,
Speaker 1: these are about as scary as the little robot that
Speaker 1: came with the original Nintendo system that puts the spinning
Speaker 1: discs on the controller.
Speaker 4: Oh wow, you have sold me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it's worth it's worth coming back to. But
Speaker 1: he also he also wrote nineteen seventy three is Extreme
Speaker 1: Close Up. He directed the nineteen eighty Bert Reynolds movie
Speaker 1: Physical Evidence. He didn't write that one, but that was
Speaker 1: his final directing credit. And yeah, Michael Crichton again, I
Speaker 1: feel like, you know, some of his works may feel
Speaker 1: a bit dated tech wise now, but a lot of
Speaker 1: it still holds up and it's still very enjoyable. But
Speaker 1: he did not write the screenplay. The screenplay credit goes
Speaker 1: to John Patrick Shanley. And this, I don't know if
Speaker 1: this actually played into your expectations of being a serious
Speaker 1: nighted film, but I could see where it might have
Speaker 1: because this is a big name.
Speaker 4: I don't I'm not familiar with it, with his name.
Speaker 4: I'm glad to know that there could have been a
Speaker 4: legitimate reason other than me misunderstanding what I think was
Speaker 4: just a sarcastic joke. So I will take that lifeline
Speaker 4: that you're throwing me, but please tell me.
Speaker 1: More well to just think of it this way. You're
Speaker 1: going into Congo, and you well, especially as a modern
Speaker 1: viewer of Congo or a recent viewer of Congo, you
Speaker 1: might well go into it and think, well, this is
Speaker 1: written by the guy who won an Academy Award for
Speaker 1: writing nineteen eighty seven's moons Truck. This is the guy
Speaker 1: who won both a Pulitzer Prize for Drama and a
Speaker 1: Tony Award for Best Play in two thousand and five
Speaker 1: for Doubt a Parable. He Andy also wrote Joe Versus
Speaker 1: the Volcano Alive and the nineteen eighty three animated film
Speaker 1: Were Back a Dinosaur Story. But still a number of
Speaker 1: big films there that, especially when you're when you're looking
Speaker 1: at the credentials here, I could and if if this
Speaker 1: is the only name you recognize going into the film,
Speaker 1: you might think it's going to be more of a
Speaker 1: more of a drama.
Speaker 4: I wonder if they I'll have to go back and look.
Speaker 4: I wonder if they include that, you know how, sometimes
Speaker 4: they'll be like and coming from this award winning writer,
Speaker 4: maybe they did include that, and I was like, ah,
Speaker 4: the proof.
Speaker 1: I think I've seen his name, and I've watched several
Speaker 1: of the trailers and I'm not exactly sure which one
Speaker 1: of them we ended up sourcing here in the episode,
Speaker 1: but at least some of the trailers mentioned him by name,
Speaker 1: so I think they were very much like, Hey, you
Speaker 1: liked Moonstruck, Well, I hope you like Killer Apes because
Speaker 1: Congo is coming to theaters.
Speaker 4: But for a couple like twenty minutes you have to
Speaker 4: wait get a taste in the beginning.
Speaker 1: But otherwise, well, let's get into the cast here, because,
Speaker 1: as we mentioned earlier, our lead here, our lead star,
Speaker 1: as well as the lead character, is doctor Karen Ross,
Speaker 1: played by the fabulous Laura Lenny Yes.
Speaker 4: Who I love and probably and this might be saying
Speaker 4: something about me, I don't know, but I know her
Speaker 4: best from the Mothman Prophecies. Oh really that movie, which
Speaker 4: I know is not. She is a great actor and
Speaker 4: has done like amazing award winning work, and she did
Speaker 4: a great job in that movie. But that is the thing.
Speaker 4: When I was a kid, I loved that movie. I
Speaker 4: w watch it all the time.
Speaker 1: I remember very little that I think that's one that
Speaker 1: was kind of on in the background for me. So
Speaker 1: I just remember scenes of Richard gear like standing in
Speaker 1: the dark, and there was a bridge, and there may
Speaker 1: be being not as much Mothman as I thought there
Speaker 1: would be.
Speaker 4: There is very little moth Man. This is true. I
Speaker 4: am somebody who does enjoy as much as I've been
Speaker 4: making fun of Congo, I actually do really enjoy like
Speaker 4: kind of like mystery. They would do like flashes of Mothman,
Speaker 4: and if you'd like paused at the right time, you'd
Speaker 4: be like, there is Like I liked that kind of
Speaker 4: stuff a lot, so I think it worked for me,
Speaker 4: and it did really scare me. I'm a very imaginative,
Speaker 4: still am person, so I think I got I got
Speaker 4: all up in my head about Mothman. There was a
Speaker 4: screeching owl outside my window, and I was convinced it
Speaker 4: was moth Man like, and yet I do like scary movies,
Speaker 4: so I would watch it over and over again. Even
Speaker 4: though it did scare me.
Speaker 1: Well. At the time of this movie came out, Laara Lenny,
Speaker 1: I think was best known for Tales of the City
Speaker 1: and also some smaller role in various films. But of
Speaker 1: course she's gone on to I mean, I think a
Speaker 1: lot of people now know her for stellar performances in
Speaker 1: series like Ozark, John Adams, the movie Kinsey and many more.
Speaker 1: Like you said, she's she's a terrific actor. She's only
Speaker 1: gotten better as of course, she's gotten better roles because
Speaker 1: I guess when you come down to it, even though
Speaker 1: this is the lead character, this is the she's got
Speaker 1: the starring role here, and she does get a lot
Speaker 1: to do a lot of heroic stuff. But she's a
Speaker 1: she's a tech expert, she's a CIA operative. There. You know,
Speaker 1: she's looking essentially for well not a lost love but
Speaker 1: a former love who is now lost in the jungle
Speaker 1: and possibly dead. So it's not like there's no you know,
Speaker 1: dramatic material to sink her teeth into here. But also
Speaker 1: like how much room does Congo really give her to
Speaker 1: do that?
Speaker 4: Yes, but like I said, I feel that these actors
Speaker 4: really did give it their all and she did, and
Speaker 4: I oh yeah, watching it as a modern viewer who
Speaker 4: didn't really know what this was, but I knew it
Speaker 4: was from nineteen ninety five. And I know we're gonna
Speaker 4: talk about this in the plot because I have a
Speaker 4: lot of thoughts about it. But I did find it
Speaker 4: really fascinating that she was a woman who was an
Speaker 4: XCIA operative, She was badass, she had They like tried
Speaker 4: to make this romance between her and the other like
Speaker 4: main male character that's not Ernie Hudson, who we're gonna
Speaker 4: talk about, but they never tried too hard, which I
Speaker 4: find really interesting and I do. I really do enjoy
Speaker 4: that her Bruce Campbell very brief cameo who was her
Speaker 4: ex fiance. It seems like they still care about each
Speaker 4: other even though they're exes. Like there's just a lot
Speaker 4: of interesting stuff that women, unfortunately in general, don't get,
Speaker 4: especially in the kind of these blockbuster action roles like
Speaker 4: that I did really enjoy, and I I really love
Speaker 4: her and Ernie Hudson together being kind of like we're
Speaker 4: running this whole thing. That's one of my very favorite parts.
Speaker 4: So yeah, the role didn't give her like she can
Speaker 4: do so much more than that, and it was pretty
Speaker 4: limited in terms of what she could do. But I
Speaker 4: did like that she had these pieces and again are
Speaker 4: unfortunately pretty rare for a woman in a role like that,
Speaker 4: especially at this time.
Speaker 1: Now, she does have at least one really nice scene
Speaker 1: with the top build male actor in the film, and
Speaker 1: that's Dylan Walff playing Peter Elliott. He's our primatologist who
Speaker 1: works with Amy, the talking gorilla born nineteen sixty three.
Speaker 1: They do at least have one really nice scene together
Speaker 1: on the airplane where we were sort of we see
Speaker 1: doctor Elliott's whole deal with Amy, and now she's on
Speaker 1: board and Amy is like jealous of her presence, and
Speaker 1: so there's kind of a spat back and forth about
Speaker 1: not only like how we sort of like how we
Speaker 1: treat the natural world and animals, but also like what
Speaker 1: is the purpose of this mission? And it's just a
Speaker 1: nice little scene on the airplane. There's nothing really action
Speaker 1: based going on.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Yeah, I do love the Oh gosh, I can't
Speaker 4: wait to talk about Amy, but I do love this
Speaker 4: kind of jealousy she has around Laura Leni's character doctor
Speaker 4: Ross and just parsing that is a fun thought exercise.
Speaker 1: Now, now, Dylan Walsh, he's fine in this I'm not
Speaker 1: going to knock his performance at all, and in fact,
Speaker 1: it's kind of nice that it's a performance that allows
Speaker 1: this character to fade into the background a bit and
Speaker 1: not feel like he's an action hero that just just
Speaker 1: kind of pushed to the background by the plot. Like
Speaker 1: his role is there as Amy's kind of like father
Speaker 1: figure and fulfills that really well. This is an actor
Speaker 1: mostly of television, including the Hearts and Minds episode of
Speaker 1: the nineties Outer Limits, which I'm not sure I've seen
Speaker 1: but looks rather good. He also appeared in such films
Speaker 1: as the two thousand and nine reboot of The Stepfather
Speaker 1: in two thousand and six's of the Lake House, again
Speaker 1: perfectly likable in this film. Yeah, no complaints, I agree.
Speaker 4: I also think it's I like when we give the
Speaker 4: so called heroes of something where they don't have to
Speaker 4: be physical or like their heroism. Isn't that aspect? So
Speaker 4: I actually, do you really enjoy that he has some
Speaker 4: lines where he delivers them so well in their terrible lines,
Speaker 4: like at one point he says, I'm a primatologist, not
Speaker 4: a pound of sugar, Like there's only so much he
Speaker 4: could have done as well, And I love that line.
Speaker 4: It is very funny to me. But I'm sure as
Speaker 4: an actor, you read.
Speaker 1: That and you're like, who Okay, yeah, it's I guess
Speaker 1: it's kind of a thankless job in some respects, like
Speaker 1: just to have an actor leats who your role is
Speaker 1: to is to at times make challenging lines believable, make
Speaker 1: this character believable, but in doing so, he's inevitably going
Speaker 1: to fade into the background. Compared to the more outrageous
Speaker 1: characters such as Ernie Hudson's Captain Monroe Kelly. Oh, this
Speaker 1: this character, this performance just absolutely rules.
Speaker 4: He delivers every line where you're like, I just want
Speaker 4: I just want you, I just want this whole movie
Speaker 4: to be you. Yeah, does it so well. He's so
Speaker 4: like charming and confident and just like overall unflustered even
Speaker 4: when he is flustered. Like one of his favorite lines
Speaker 4: for me is when he says so to me, hilariously,
Speaker 4: I run away because he runs away from a charity gorilla,
Speaker 4: and I just love that. I love that he kind
Speaker 4: of embraces even after he told Dylan Watch's character like,
Speaker 4: you don't run away, but he did it. I don't know.
Speaker 4: There was a lot of subversions with him that I
Speaker 4: very much enjoyed, and just the way he seemed to
Speaker 4: be having the time of his life with his character,
Speaker 4: it made it very enjoyable to watch this performance.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is one of those performances where every little
Speaker 1: thing he does is so entertaining. Like there's this there's
Speaker 1: a scene in the movie where they're just handing out
Speaker 1: little air conditioning units for the tents and he accepts one,
Speaker 1: and it's it's it's great, Like nothing is happening in
Speaker 1: the scene except Captain Monroe Kelly accepted an air conditioning unit,
Speaker 1: and it was it was so charming.
Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, So much of what he did he clearly
Speaker 4: like made the as an actor went through and made
Speaker 4: the like fun decision or the decision like he thought
Speaker 4: about his character. And so there's a lot of time
Speaker 4: times things are you just are like, oh, I pick
Speaker 4: up this air conditioning unit, but he like thought about
Speaker 4: it and acted it and made it fun and memorable.
Speaker 4: Like so much of his character is that. And there's
Speaker 4: so many lines he he has that he delivers in
Speaker 4: a way that is I mean, he just immediately makes
Speaker 4: you blank him like it's just like, oh, this so
Speaker 4: interesting and cool. And I love when Dylan wash Washer's
Speaker 4: character has a leechkiness, which I'm sure we're going to
Speaker 4: talk about, but he's just Captain Monroe Kelly is just
Speaker 4: like you deal with it. It's your leech.
Speaker 1: Cigar cigarette.
Speaker 4: Yes, when he sees Amy, he just immediately is like, sure,
Speaker 4: this gorilla wants something to smoke. Okay, he puts like
Speaker 4: pills in her. There's just something about him that rolls
Speaker 4: with the punches and does it in a way that
Speaker 4: looks very cool, and it's very.
Speaker 1: Charming, very cool, very charming. In Ebert's review, he did
Speaker 1: he seemed to really love this performance as well, and
Speaker 1: he points out that like there's a little bit Clark
Speaker 1: Gable to this performance. There's a little bit Stuart Granger.
Speaker 1: It's a droll performance, and the character has both sardonic
Speaker 1: detachment but also heroic courage. So he's you know, he's,
Speaker 1: he's he's kind of right there in the middle. He's
Speaker 1: he's he's kind of a rogue, but not not to
Speaker 1: the point where you're like, can we trust Captain Monroe Kelly.
Speaker 1: They're not playing that game with this character. And yeah,
Speaker 1: he has he has his flaws, but they're not tragic flaws.
Speaker 1: He just a delight to watch on screen the whole time.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and that is one thing that Congo did that
Speaker 4: I can't really get a grasp on if they did
Speaker 4: intentionally all the time. But they did subvert a lot
Speaker 4: of like action movie tropes in particular. I mean they
Speaker 4: leaned into a lot of it, but a lot of
Speaker 4: it they did. They took things in a way I
Speaker 4: wasn't expecting. So there's this towards the end where very
Speaker 4: reminiscent of Jurassic Park, where Doctor Ross is like, I'm
Speaker 4: going in this temple. I'm going in. Give me a gun,
Speaker 4: give me a radio. I'm going and Monroe Kelly has it.
Speaker 4: He's like, no, no, no, it's not safe, you know,
Speaker 4: implied like for a woman, I'll do it. And then
Speaker 4: he pauses for like a little second, and there's like,
Speaker 4: but I'm also scarce, and he gives me the gun,
Speaker 4: he gets the radio, and they go in together like
Speaker 4: I'm not going in a lot like they have so
Speaker 4: many fun moments like that where you're expecting it to
Speaker 4: go one way and it doesn't. And I think for
Speaker 4: this character where it is there's a little bit of
Speaker 4: confusion about who's supposed to be the traditional hero, and
Speaker 4: he sort of emerges as more of the like strong
Speaker 4: leader that we typically align with hero. I like that
Speaker 4: it's sort of more spread out with these characters, that
Speaker 4: it's not just one. But he does have those kind
Speaker 4: of moments where he's not like, he's like, no, you're
Speaker 4: coming with me, I'm afraid to go in there too.
Speaker 4: Like I like it that he just acknowledges that I
Speaker 4: don't know. It is a very fun performance to watch,
Speaker 4: for sure.
Speaker 1: Now Ernie Hudson's been in just so many things since
Speaker 1: I think the mid nineteen seventies, but of course he's
Speaker 1: probably most famous as being Winston z Moore from the
Speaker 1: Ghostbusters franchise. He was in The Crow, He was in
Speaker 1: such TV series as Oz and The Family Business. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I've seen him point out that this was one of
Speaker 1: his favorite performances, if not his favorite performance that he
Speaker 1: got to give.
Speaker 4: M M.
Speaker 1: All right. Now we've already mentioned him, but we also
Speaker 1: have Tim Curry in this role playing Herkimer Homolka oh Man.
Speaker 1: This is the role that Ebert described as the Peter
Speaker 1: laure role, and I think that's I think it's pretty accurate.
Speaker 1: This is the kind of role Peter Laurie would have
Speaker 1: played in a jungle adventure movie like this, the mysterious
Speaker 1: European figure with suspicious morals and aims, and Curry the
Speaker 1: legend that Tim Curry is. Of course, he just breathed
Speaker 1: so much life into this scoundrel.
Speaker 4: Yes, oh my gosh, I think I have done at
Speaker 4: least one viewing where I just watched Tim Curry the
Speaker 4: entire time, and he is like in the background, acting
Speaker 4: his ass off, Like they're like the scene where they
Speaker 4: first get to Africa and Eddie Ventro, who all talk
Speaker 4: about like is talking about how much Amy is worth.
Speaker 4: He lowers his glasses and has the most like starstruck
Speaker 4: shocked look. I mean he's not even the focus of
Speaker 4: the scene, Like he's just back there doing his thing.
Speaker 4: He's got the most unexplainable accent that he just leans
Speaker 4: into so hard. And he has some of my favorite
Speaker 4: lines where he's like that Gorilla knows where the lost
Speaker 4: City of Zinge is, like he just, oh, there's something
Speaker 4: about it that he elevated a thing, like he was like,
Speaker 4: you know what, I'm gonna really lean into this suspicious
Speaker 4: Romanian philanthropist going around the world and doing good. Who
Speaker 4: really wants to find this los city of Zinge, Like
Speaker 4: it's beautiful.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, he the accent, yes, is quite a mouthful.
Speaker 1: That's that's definitely worth noting. But but yeah, there's so
Speaker 1: many little moments, but then he gets those big moments too,
Speaker 1: like when they finally enter the Lost City of Zinge
Speaker 1: and he gets to just be star eyed and wonder
Speaker 1: at all. And I think he has a line like
Speaker 1: the myth of the killer the gorilla is true, you know,
Speaker 1: and it's it's so wonderful.
Speaker 4: Yes, oh my gosh. And I do love about him,
Speaker 4: like he's the villain absolutely, but he's also kind of
Speaker 4: the like bumbling, wide eyed, confused villain in a way
Speaker 4: you don't see too often.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like he's in way over his head. I think
Speaker 1: the key aspects of it.
Speaker 4: He's constantly kind of like wide eyed and confused and
Speaker 4: concerned his money flow is always getting interrupted, which I
Speaker 4: very much enjoyed. There's just something that feels kind of
Speaker 4: unique about his take on this very stereotypical, mysterious European
Speaker 4: villain that is pretty funny. It's funny to see him
Speaker 4: out of his depth, out of his league, and I
Speaker 4: love how everybody knows who he is.
Speaker 5: Everybody's like, oh, this guy, Yeah, don't trust him.
Speaker 1: You can't trust this guy what you're doing. Everyone who
Speaker 1: encounters especially once they get to Africa, everyone there is
Speaker 1: familiar with him, and he does not have a good reputation. No, Now,
Speaker 1: what can we say about Tim Curry? I mean, obviously
Speaker 1: a legend born nineteen forty six. Is probably one of
Speaker 1: his most famous roles is, of Course, doctor Frankenfurter Are
Speaker 1: from the Rocky Horror Picture Show back in nineteen seventy five.
Speaker 1: He was in the original stage version as well. He
Speaker 1: was Wadsworth and eighty five's Clue. He was the demon
Speaker 1: Darkness in nineteen eighty five's Legend. Other memorable films include Annie,
Speaker 1: the nineteen ninety adaptation of Yet, of Course, in which
Speaker 1: he played Pennywise, the dancing clown. And he's also done
Speaker 1: a lot of great voice work over the years, including
Speaker 1: the Pirates of Dark Water and season five and six
Speaker 1: of Star Wars The Clone Wars, in which he took
Speaker 1: over the role of Palpatine slash Darth Sidius after the
Speaker 1: passing of Ian Ambercrombie. Ambercrombie was pretty terrific in that role.
Speaker 1: But Curry he also brought his own level of greatness
Speaker 1: to that voice role as well.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I think he's really really great at imbuing
Speaker 4: so much character, so with like one line, he can
Speaker 4: do it. So I often joke like, if somebody could
Speaker 4: win an Oscar for one line, I would give it
Speaker 4: to Tim Curry from hobolone two for how he says
Speaker 4: pizza ever pronounced that word before? Because he's that's two
Speaker 4: below him, Like, he does so much of that stuff
Speaker 4: where he expresses so much with his voice and how
Speaker 4: he delivers lines.
Speaker 1: What is he doing in home alone too? I don't
Speaker 1: remember he's.
Speaker 4: The concient He should have won an Oscar for that role.
Speaker 4: I like only half kidding, but he does that. He
Speaker 4: does that so well where he that was a minor role,
Speaker 4: but to me, like, I remember so much of how
Speaker 4: he delivered that line, that one word, and it communicated
Speaker 4: so much about that character. And I also I loved
Speaker 4: him and these are this is a reflection of my childhood.
Speaker 4: I loved him in a Muppet Treasure Island, Yes, and
Speaker 4: Wild Thornberry's. He was a voice in the Wild thorn Berries.
Speaker 4: That's right, Yeah, So He's done a lot, a lot
Speaker 4: of stuff like that, and I just, yeah, there's so
Speaker 4: many Like if if we wanted this episode to be
Speaker 4: basically just as quoting the movie, so much of it
Speaker 4: would just be me like loving Tim Curry's delivery of
Speaker 4: these often very hilarious lines. I love it. I love it.
Speaker 1: Those are some of the main actors involved here. But
Speaker 1: we're going to roll through some of the other ones.
Speaker 1: Maybe it may be a little quicker on some of
Speaker 1: these because there's less to say about them. But I
Speaker 1: thought I was gonna skip over this one. But Richard,
Speaker 1: the secondary primatologist, is played by Grant Heslov born nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty three. He's done a lot of acting over the years,
Speaker 1: but he's primarily known as a producer. He's a long
Speaker 1: time collaborator with George Clooney. Yeah, and he's fine in this,
Speaker 1: no problems there. I think he's killed by guerrilla eventually,
Speaker 1: like most.
Speaker 4: In the film.
Speaker 1: Oh and then we have Jodn Baker in the film.
Speaker 1: Jodn Baker born nineteen thirty six plays RB Travis Baker,
Speaker 1: of course, loud Texan actor who is perfect in this
Speaker 1: as the enraged, just comedically greedy head of a massive
Speaker 1: media corporation to his son. Right, This is like Bruce
Speaker 1: Campbell's character is his son who is suddenly missing and
Speaker 1: presumed murdered by gorillas in the jungle, and all he
Speaker 1: can think about is those diamonds. We got to get
Speaker 1: those diamonds, and I mean that's all and he just
Speaker 1: rages the whole He's not on the screen a lot,
Speaker 1: but when he's there, he's swinging golf gloves at computer screens,
Speaker 1: He's yelling at Laura Lenny. Just a completely hate heable character.
Speaker 4: Yes, he also has many alignments that I'm like, I'm
Speaker 4: impressed with how much you gave this because it's not
Speaker 4: that great of a line. But one of my favorites
Speaker 4: is I can be human later. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just just a caricature of a of like a
Speaker 1: media corporation head. But yeah, as a charac caricature, it's
Speaker 1: very well done. Baker, of course, has an impressive filmography
Speaker 1: going all the way back to the mid sixties. He
Speaker 1: did a lot of TV work, but he hit it
Speaker 1: big time in nineteen seventy three. He's Walking Tall. Some
Speaker 1: of his more memorable films and Flu nineteen seventy five's
Speaker 1: Mitchell nineteen eighty four's Final Justice, eighty five's Fletch. Oh,
Speaker 1: then we get into the James Bond era. He's one
Speaker 1: of those guys that has the has the honors of
Speaker 1: playing two different characters in different Bond films. So he
Speaker 1: was in nineteen eighty seven's The Living Daylights, where I
Speaker 1: think he's a villain, but then he's also in both
Speaker 1: GoldenEye and Tomorrow Never Dies playing a different character who's
Speaker 1: on the good guy side of things.
Speaker 4: Yeah, good for him.
Speaker 1: Jodan Baker. Okay, now we've mentioned Amy, the talking gorilla,
Speaker 1: who is just one of the greatest characters certainly in
Speaker 1: this film, and maybe you could make a role for
Speaker 1: like nineteen ninety Cinema as a whole. Oh indeed, Now
Speaker 1: this is a role that, again, like all the gorillas
Speaker 1: in this film, they are brought to life via fabulous
Speaker 1: gorilla costumes but also tremendous physical performances within the costume.
Speaker 1: And I believe they're two different individuals. Credited. One is
Speaker 1: Lola no born nineteen seventy two. Credited is playing Amy,
Speaker 1: the first of two short statured actors credited with the role.
Speaker 1: I think she's been more active as a producer, but
Speaker 1: the other is Misty Rosis born nineteen seventy three, and
Speaker 1: Roses is a wonderful performer responsible for bringing a live
Speaker 1: such characters as cool is It, kol. I can't remember
Speaker 1: this character's name. How I said, quel quel queel? Okay,
Speaker 1: the let's see. What does he keep saying in the
Speaker 1: Mandalorian He's like, I have spoken, I have spoken. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So she is the physical performer. Nick Nolty did the voice,
Speaker 1: of course, but she's the physical performer of that character.
Speaker 1: She was also the physical performer of the frog Lady
Speaker 1: in What the second season?
Speaker 4: Wow, that's awesome.
Speaker 1: So there are a number of Star Wars connections.
Speaker 4: To con Yeah, all.
Speaker 1: Right, this one's a blink and miss it role here.
Speaker 1: But Peter Jason plays a character named mister Janis. He's
Speaker 1: just one of the individuals at the airport before they
Speaker 1: leave for Africa. Born nineteen forty four. Memorable face from
Speaker 1: various films over the decade. He's popped up in things
Speaker 1: like Alien Nation, Prince of Darkness, Dream Skate They Live
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety five is Mortal Kombat and Escape from La
Speaker 1: And another one you might blink and miss is Jimmy
Speaker 1: Buffett shows up in this movie. He plays the pilot
Speaker 1: of the seven to twenty seven they that they bored
Speaker 1: to travel to Africa. So yeah, for some reason, the
Speaker 1: High parod Head himself is presence in Congo, and I
Speaker 1: guess has has blessed Congo.
Speaker 4: Yes, in that way, I mean it feels right for
Speaker 4: some reason. Of course he's there. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, now, real cool. We mentioned Bruce Campbell's in this, Yes,
Speaker 1: Bruce Campbell's in this. For a hot minute, this is
Speaker 1: of course. Yeah, he's at the very beginning of the film,
Speaker 1: and then he is kind of a spoiler. He is
Speaker 1: assaulted by some sort of killer ape, and the movie
Speaker 1: keeps the hope alive that he will come back. And
Speaker 1: I remember, by the time I saw this movie, I
Speaker 1: had already seen maybe Army of Darkness, so I was
Speaker 1: familiar with his work, even if I hadn't seen the
Speaker 1: Evil Dead movies yet. So I was excited that he
Speaker 1: was in here, and then I was disappointed that he
Speaker 1: was gone, But the movie kept the hope alive that
Speaker 1: we would find him again and he would help fight
Speaker 1: the gorillas, and of course we find out at the
Speaker 1: end he's just he's been dead the whole time. He's
Speaker 1: really dead. But in a way this in the film,
Speaker 1: it ended up kind of subverting expectations as well, because,
Speaker 1: especially as a kid, not knowing maybe how structures of
Speaker 1: these things for likely will work. You think, well, Bruce
Speaker 1: Campbell's in this, well, he's going to show up at
Speaker 1: the end and he's going to chain saw some apes.
Speaker 1: But that's not happened.
Speaker 4: No, we get lasers instead. And I will say a
Speaker 4: lot of the reviews I read from this time people
Speaker 4: seem to that was one of the big critiques people
Speaker 4: had was I guess they felt tricked that he was
Speaker 4: in it and then just never He's in it for
Speaker 4: like I said, maybe a minute, maybe a little more,
Speaker 4: but then he doesn't come back, and people were like,
Speaker 4: this is criminally this is a criminally short cameo.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because Armia Darkness came out ninety two, so it
Speaker 1: had had time to of course not only hit theaters,
Speaker 1: but to really dig into the VHS market in the
Speaker 1: home rental market. So again this is me my sort
Speaker 1: of childhood memory of this, but or junior high memory
Speaker 1: of this or whatever. I remember feeling like the world
Speaker 1: was hot for more Bruce Campbell action and maybe they weren't,
Speaker 1: or maybe the studio system that had not really caught
Speaker 1: wind of the Hunger yet.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think you were. I think you were picking
Speaker 4: it though. I think people wanted Bruce Campbell, but you know,
Speaker 4: this is what we got.
Speaker 1: We also have Otta walleh Alkanawe Agbaje in this. He
Speaker 1: just plays I think there's one of the many soldier
Speaker 1: characters that sort of populates the background of the film.
Speaker 1: But this is a of course English fashion model turned
Speaker 1: actor born nineteen sixty seven, who had pretty big roles
Speaker 1: on TV's OZ and also Lost, which you mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: but this was one of his first screen roles. He's
Speaker 1: gone into act in a number of big pictures including
Speaker 1: The Mummy Returns, The Bourne Identity, the remake of The Thing,
Speaker 1: the Second Thor Movie, and Suicide Squad, so he's been
Speaker 1: in quite a few things. He also writes and directs
Speaker 1: Now two, getting into two surprisingly uncredited performances in this.
Speaker 1: The first we have Delroy Lindo pop up in this
Speaker 1: playing Captain Wanta. This is one of This is a
Speaker 1: corrupt military official that they encounter again on the way
Speaker 1: to the Lost City and he like hits him up
Speaker 1: for a bribe and also just talks about how much
Speaker 1: he hates Tim Curry's character. He's really really hard on
Speaker 1: Homolka here, even telling him that he has to stop
Speaker 1: eating the sesame cake in the hotel twice twice.
Speaker 4: One of my favorite articles. And I was the next
Speaker 4: day after I watched this, and I was like, what
Speaker 4: did I just watch? Somebody wrote imagine a script that
Speaker 4: went through rewrites and still had to stop eating my
Speaker 4: sesame cake in there, not once, but twice.
Speaker 1: But Linda makes you believe it. It's a yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a small but memorable little performance here. Mm hmmm, Linda.
Speaker 1: Of course, some of his biggest films have included Malcolm X,
Speaker 1: Get Shorty to Five Bloods, and The Core. He's also
Speaker 1: slated to have a major role in the Blade reboot
Speaker 1: if they ever actually make that movie. I don't know
Speaker 1: what he's going to play in that, but I kind
Speaker 1: of have I'm wondering if he's going to play a
Speaker 1: Whistler character, if he's going to be like the mentor
Speaker 1: to Blade. But we'll see. And then you you mentioned
Speaker 1: this one already, but we this character Eddie Ventro who
Speaker 1: shows up and this is an uncredited performance by Joe Pontaliano.
Speaker 4: Yes, and I was a huge Matrix fan. I had
Speaker 4: an extremely embarrassing email address, which you unfortunately have seen,
Speaker 4: which I've told that story before, but anyway, because I
Speaker 4: had a huge crush on Neo Keanu Reeves from The Matrix,
Speaker 4: but I didn't know he was going to be in
Speaker 4: this movie, and uh when he showed up, that was
Speaker 4: one of the things I shouted to the other room,
Speaker 4: was like, it's Joey Pance, It's Cipher's here. My friend
Speaker 4: was like, what are you talking about.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a It's a great, slimy little role that
Speaker 1: he plays like that. I think one of the first
Speaker 1: things that he does is he offers to buy Amy
Speaker 1: the Gorilla.
Speaker 5: Yes, like immediately, immediately, Yeah, so yeah.
Speaker 1: Joe Pantleiano here probably yeah. Best known for playing Cipher
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety nine Is the Matrix, Caesar in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety six Is Bound, and he played the character Teddy
Speaker 1: in two thousands Memento. So yeah. A talented character actor
Speaker 1: that often plays kind of slimy, sleazy characters, morally ambiguous
Speaker 1: at past mm hmmm. I think he was also in
Speaker 1: a couple of tales from the Crypt episodes, which, of
Speaker 1: course perfect place to stick somebody with these talents.
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, I do love He has a scene where,
Speaker 4: like the he re emerges after I assumed we would
Speaker 4: never see him again, and he's getting off the plane
Speaker 4: and he has like a head injury and he makes
Speaker 4: the funniest sound to me where he's like, oh, I
Speaker 4: don't know. There's just something about how he did that
Speaker 4: that cracks me up every time I watch this.
Speaker 1: In case I forget it for later. What happens to
Speaker 1: his character in this film? Do we see him killed
Speaker 1: by guerrilla or something, because at some point later in
Speaker 1: the film, I'm like, where did he go?
Speaker 4: He kind of just wanders. He's like, here's your equipment.
Speaker 4: Have fun? He doesn't. He says he doesn't like to
Speaker 4: leave the airport, so I assume he just haunts the airport.
Speaker 1: Okay, m Well, let's get into the plot a bit.
Speaker 4: Yes, Oh gosh, I'm so excited.
Speaker 1: So we open in sub Saharan Africa, presumably the Congo
Speaker 1: given the name of the film. We have Bruce Campbell's
Speaker 1: character Charlie, leading a team into the wild surrounding Mount Muchino,
Speaker 1: who we're told here some sort of volcanic mountain, and
Speaker 1: almost right away we see he's packing heat, like we
Speaker 1: see him holding the pistol there, and I guess this
Speaker 1: is all kind of nice subversion because they really kind
Speaker 1: of present him as like, this is our star, right,
Speaker 1: this is the action hero. This is the guy who's
Speaker 1: going to take us through the movie, right.
Speaker 4: And I do want to before we move on again.
Speaker 4: I love when you can watch a movie and be like, oh,
Speaker 4: this is the nineties or whatever. The Congo title is
Speaker 4: done in the most glorious like gold word art if
Speaker 4: you remember what that was, So it's like a fading
Speaker 4: of gold to orange, and then it has a blue
Speaker 4: drop shadow glow and that's like this nineties, Oh my gosh.
Speaker 4: So I'm a sucker for that kind of stuff. But yeah,
Speaker 4: I do think you know, if you have started watching
Speaker 4: this and you're like, I guess this is our hero,
Speaker 4: and then it doesn't really turn out to be what
Speaker 4: you think it's going to be at all.
Speaker 1: Right, Well, for one thing, it's like we're very much
Speaker 1: in sort of Indiana Jones territory, and then we cut
Speaker 1: to space. We're in orbits and we see this satellite,
Speaker 1: which this is one of the moments where the effects
Speaker 1: feel rather dated because it's like a very dated CGI
Speaker 1: satellite orbiting the Earth. And this, of course is going
Speaker 1: to be an important part of the plot. This is
Speaker 1: what is enabling him to communicate without any lag at
Speaker 1: all with a Houston Control center. That's where we go
Speaker 1: to next, and here we meet Laura Lenny as our
Speaker 1: former CIAgent, doctor Karen Ross, and they initiate a satellite
Speaker 1: call to Bruce Campbell's team around the volcano and they
Speaker 1: start to talking about blue diamonds.
Speaker 4: Yes, And as much as I make fun of the script,
Speaker 4: and I do, I will say they accomplish a lot
Speaker 4: pretty quickly. So when you first see Laura Lenni she's
Speaker 4: walking in with a colleague of hers who has a
Speaker 4: very hilarious password which is just his name Rudy, Rudy
Speaker 4: Rudy to get in. But it like immediately establishes that
Speaker 4: the character we're about to meet, who is Bruce Campbell's father, Travis,
Speaker 4: is paranoid. He's very very paranoid and he doesn't trust people.
Speaker 4: But yeah, I love to how quickly there's so much
Speaker 4: whiplash in this movie where you're like, oh, diamonds, oh,
Speaker 4: but for satellites.
Speaker 1: And of course, Bruce Campbell's character has brought a functional
Speaker 1: laser gun into the wild with him and immediately loads
Speaker 1: up one of these blue diamonds and test fires. It's
Speaker 1: starting a small fire behind him, and we're like, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm not completely clear on how all this works, but
Speaker 1: blue diamond and apparently works. Blue diamond lasers are important,
Speaker 1: and back in Houston, they're very pleased with how this
Speaker 1: is all shaping up.
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, I love how they don't bother to explain it.
Speaker 4: I like, legitimately love that when movies are like, you
Speaker 4: know what, we're not really about this part of it,
Speaker 4: so I can explain it. But he even makes a
Speaker 4: mention of like it's this isn't a good enough diamond, essentially,
Speaker 4: like we need a better diamond and then we'll really
Speaker 4: be in business.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So at this point, one of the other members of
Speaker 1: Bruce Campbell's characters, Charlie's team, calls him over and says, hey,
Speaker 1: I found something. Jump into this water here and swim
Speaker 1: under these ruins with me. And he's like, okay, I'll
Speaker 1: do that, and so they jump in and lo and behold,
Speaker 1: they discover a lost city hidden beneath the jungle canopy
Speaker 1: and the other guy character that will not be around
Speaker 1: for long, but we find out he'll be back actually,
Speaker 1: but then not be around for long. A guy named
Speaker 1: Jeffrey stresses that this is a big find, this is amazing,
Speaker 1: and he's telling him all this. They're standing in front
Speaker 1: of this ominous stone gorilla statue. They're sinister music playing.
Speaker 1: We can already tell nothing good it's gonna happen here.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it really ramps up pretty quickly. You're like, oh wow,
Speaker 4: something is just about to go wrong. And this has
Speaker 4: one of my very favorite like horror elements where one
Speaker 4: of them goes missing. Jeffrey goes missing. Bruce Campbell's kind
Speaker 4: of staring off in the distance, maybe getting you know, wind,
Speaker 4: something's not right, calls from his friend eyeball just out
Speaker 4: of nowhere. Here is a human eyeball in front of him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then we get we cut to the monster POV.
Speaker 1: There's this growl and then we get the shot of
Speaker 1: Bruce Campbell screaming, and it's kind of interesting to think
Speaker 1: like that, you try to put yourself in the mind
Speaker 1: of the monster here. So the grey gorilla, after brutally
Speaker 1: murdering the other guy. Pop is to pluck eyeballs out
Speaker 1: and then sort of mess with Charlie here, like just
Speaker 1: chunk a few eyeballs at him, get his attention, and
Speaker 1: then kill him. So very very twisted on the part
Speaker 1: of our our ape adversaries here. So back in Houston,
Speaker 1: they try and call back on the video chat. They
Speaker 1: see everyone is dead, something is running around, and Ape
Speaker 1: attacks the camera. They get kind of this freeze frame
Speaker 1: that they're gonna have to figure out later. So things
Speaker 1: get a little bit event horizon here. They've got some
Speaker 1: footage that they're going to have to tinker with later.
Speaker 1: It seems like there was a this was a thing
Speaker 1: for a while in cinema. There's always a situation where
Speaker 1: you have some strange footage and there's something computery you
Speaker 1: could do to it, and you could get everything enhanced
Speaker 1: and figured out later on.
Speaker 4: Yes, Yes, and there's a lot to there's a lot
Speaker 4: that I love about this part number one. This was
Speaker 4: such a trope in the nineties. I don't know if
Speaker 4: you ever saw the Mary Kate and Ashley movie. It
Speaker 4: takes two, but there was such a trope in the
Speaker 4: nineties that, like, if you could contray role communications like
Speaker 4: cell phones or new technology. You could control everything, and
Speaker 4: it was such like a evil villain trope. And I
Speaker 4: love how Travis immediately when you meet this character, who's like, yeah,
Speaker 4: the most over the top evil business corrupt capitalist guy.
Speaker 4: Is it like that he's going to dominate the communications
Speaker 4: industry with this diamond And all of this is interspersed
Speaker 4: with like the most nineties graphics and the most ninety
Speaker 4: sound effects to that, like camera that they're looking in
Speaker 4: on the campsite with. It is just there's something about
Speaker 4: it that feels so from that time that it's like
Speaker 4: a whole, a full body experience for me, like, oh, yes,
Speaker 4: this is nineties.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think Tomorrow Never Dies one of the Bond
Speaker 1: film we referenced earlier. I think that the villain in
Speaker 1: that one, played by Jonathan Price, is also some sort
Speaker 1: of a media mobile type character.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was such a thing, and I do love
Speaker 4: that he This is when his line I mentioned earlier
Speaker 4: of like I can be human later comes up like
Speaker 4: he's like immediately an overtop caricature. I love how Laurlanie's
Speaker 4: character literally she says to him, are you for real?
Speaker 4: And she's in the most nineties Khakis invest too, by
Speaker 4: the way, and this is when you kind of find
Speaker 4: out like she was dating Bruce Campbell. They were going
Speaker 4: to get married and then they broke up for whatever reason,
Speaker 4: but she still obviously cares about him. And she has
Speaker 4: this confrontation with Travis like, I'm not going in there
Speaker 4: unless you promised me you're doing it for your son.
Speaker 4: If you're doing it for Charlie, i'll go. But if
Speaker 4: I get one hint that this isn't for him, I'm
Speaker 4: gonna make you sorry.
Speaker 1: She says, yeah, I love that he does calm down
Speaker 1: a little bit, and he's like like, yeah, I'm doing
Speaker 1: it for him. I did not find it very believable,
Speaker 1: but it's good enough for her. She's like, Okay, all right, Yes,
Speaker 1: I believe you enough to go out and try and
Speaker 1: find him in the wild.
Speaker 4: Yes. And I also love one of my favorite parts,
Speaker 4: which like right before it he said something pretty offensive,
Speaker 4: which just like maybe it was locals, but then he's
Speaker 4: like or a rival company, Like there's just something about
Speaker 4: him that's so he's so paranoid. He's so so paranoid.
Speaker 4: I also agree that she perhaps believed him too readily.
Speaker 4: But I also think she wanted to go, Like she
Speaker 4: she does still care about Charlie. But yeah, he's not
Speaker 4: very believable at all, but maybe that's just his constant
Speaker 4: vibe is just this level of anger.
Speaker 1: So yeah, and I think I think you're right. I
Speaker 1: think like she she wanted to go. She wants to
Speaker 1: to try and find Charlie. And so it's not that
Speaker 1: she's saying I'm not going unless like she's not really
Speaker 1: looking for an affirmation from him. She's just trying to
Speaker 1: encourage the human side of him, like like, Okay, I'll
Speaker 1: do this, but I want to see it like some
Speaker 1: acknowledgment that part of this is because you love your son.
Speaker 4: Right exactly and uh not you know, not sending me
Speaker 4: off to get killed to get well that time is Yeah,
Speaker 4: but this is one of my This is when I
Speaker 4: was watching the movie, this cut that happens now, Oh whoa,
Speaker 4: this is what am I watching right now? And this
Speaker 4: is when we get introduced to Amy.
Speaker 1: That's right, we cut to our gorilla expert. This is
Speaker 1: we meet our primatologist characters and we meet Amy the gorilla,
Speaker 1: and Amy is doing art, Amy is is making things.
Speaker 1: But also we quickly learned that. Well, I guess we
Speaker 1: kind of build up to this, right because we meet
Speaker 1: Amy and she's great and she's totally believable as a
Speaker 1: as a younger female gorilla. I guess I don't know.
Speaker 1: I went back and forth on how old Amy is,
Speaker 1: because early on there is very much like a childlike
Speaker 1: aspect to Amy that we like to but she's also
Speaker 1: she drinks, she's drinking martini, she's smoking cigars and spoiler
Speaker 1: but at the end of the movie she goes off
Speaker 1: and marries a silver bag, so she's like, she's an
Speaker 1: adult woman gorilla too, and we shouldn't take that away
Speaker 1: from her.
Speaker 4: No, absolutely not. I mean those are some of our
Speaker 4: favorite parts of Amy. Amy is multifaceted, and I think
Speaker 4: I just I need people to watch this if they
Speaker 4: haven't seen it, because you're watching it and you're like, oh,
Speaker 4: here's this gorilla. This gorilla is drawing all these pictures
Speaker 4: that look very similar. And I believe this is what
Speaker 4: they introduce the stuffed animal named Lovey.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, she because yeah, and this is another thing
Speaker 1: that builds up the sort of childlike nature because she
Speaker 1: has her love right, she has the little stuffed animal
Speaker 1: that she's carrying.
Speaker 4: Around, right, So they're very much prompting you to believe, yeah,
Speaker 4: she's this, you know, more childlike gorilla and those other
Speaker 4: things which I can't wait to talk about more detail
Speaker 4: at the Martini and whatnot come later. But right in
Speaker 4: the beginning, okay, seems like a young sweet gorilla.
Speaker 1: Yes, but of course we keep talking about Amy, the
Speaker 1: talking gorilla, and to get there again, the movie really
Speaker 1: doesn't waste a lot of time. We like cut to
Speaker 1: essentially like a ted talk thing that doctor Elliot's doing
Speaker 1: at Berkeley. He's talking about language, he's talking about sign language,
Speaker 1: he's talking about virtual reality technology, and then he cuts
Speaker 1: to the real meat of everything. They have created a
Speaker 1: real time sign language audible translator with power glove that
Speaker 1: allows sign language literate animals like Amy allow them to
Speaker 1: actually speak out loud. She wears a little power glove,
Speaker 1: she does the signs, and this enables her to speak
Speaker 1: and say things like Amy, good gorilla.
Speaker 4: And this is one of my very favorite parts, because
Speaker 4: I mean this is when it in one way really
Speaker 4: goes off the rails, at least when I was watching it.
Speaker 4: But it has the funniest scene. It's like the funniest
Speaker 4: cut to the audience scene I've ever I think I've
Speaker 4: ever witnessed, because people are watching. He's talking. Yeah, he's
Speaker 4: talking about virtual reality. He's talking about all of this
Speaker 4: like really high tech stuff. And then he calls out Amy,
Speaker 4: and people, you know, turn and gasp and they see
Speaker 4: this gorilla coming down the aisle. It's just like a
Speaker 4: you know, where you would go to see a talk
Speaker 4: out of college or something. And Amy comes up and
Speaker 4: there's this guy and I don't know the actor's name,
Speaker 4: but he's kind of like bored flipping through the pamphlet
Speaker 4: and he looks up and then Amy says, yeah, you know, Amy,
Speaker 4: good Gorilla, Amy good Gorilla, And he kind of like
Speaker 4: is staring ahead in horror and an awe, and he
Speaker 4: says that gorilla is talking. It's so funny. It's such
Speaker 4: a great stand in for the audience, Like it really
Speaker 4: is because you're like having a similar reaction. But I
Speaker 4: love the cut to him of what this girl is donking.
Speaker 1: And then we also cut to Homolka there played by
Speaker 1: Jim Curry. He's in the audience and he's watching creepily
Speaker 1: and he has a ring with this kind of like
Speaker 1: I on it and we suddenly get this very mid
Speaker 1: nineties flash. Then of suddenly there's like scenes from Amy's dreams,
Speaker 1: something with a jungle and a flash of a gray
Speaker 1: monster a jumping across it, and uh, we're kind of left.
Speaker 1: I was left wondering like, well, what happened? Where did
Speaker 1: this come from? Did that happen? Because I looked into
Speaker 1: the ring because was that in in? Yeah? Did I'm cursed?
Speaker 1: Is that in his mind? Or is this Amy's dreams?
Speaker 1: But then we cut we cut ahead and we basically
Speaker 1: find out that well, she she doesn't seem to be sleeping. Well,
Speaker 1: Peter is worried that she's deteriorating mentally because she's not
Speaker 1: in the jungle. She needs to be in the jungle.
Speaker 1: He meets with the Dane and he's like, we need
Speaker 1: to raise a bunch of money to send our star
Speaker 1: talking gorilla back to the jungle. And the Dean's like,
Speaker 1: nobody's gonna pay for that.
Speaker 4: Yes, which I am of two minds about I think
Speaker 4: I can see. But you know, also these he believes
Speaker 4: these paintings are from the jungle, like this is what
Speaker 4: she's been doing. But enter Herkima Harmolka former Romanian traveling
Speaker 4: around the world and doing good. And guess what, I've
Speaker 4: got a lot of money, and I want to fund
Speaker 4: your trip to take this gorilla back to the jungle.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's like, I have no ulterior motive. I just
Speaker 1: want to see Amy return to jungle. Yes, just sound
Speaker 1: like really like he's basically doing a Abella Lagosi Dracula character here.
Speaker 1: It's even more that than it is Peter Lourie.
Speaker 4: Yes, And the accent is so immediately you can't think
Speaker 4: of anything else. And I love like, for the audience,
Speaker 4: at least you've gotten all these hints that he's up
Speaker 4: to no good or he's got an ulterior motive, as
Speaker 4: you said. But it cuts to immediately from that scene
Speaker 4: to doctor Elliott being like, yes, his name's herker Mahomolka.
Speaker 4: I don't see the problem. He's gonna fund us to
Speaker 4: do this.
Speaker 1: I trust everyone.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yes, I love it. I love it. He's just like, yeah,
Speaker 4: I don't see any reason why we need to wonder
Speaker 4: about this anymore.
Speaker 1: And of course Amy's on board.
Speaker 4: Yes, we get Amy into three D glasses.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, a sweet scene where there they were in
Speaker 1: their three D glasses looking at a book. So another
Speaker 1: scene with a lot of childlike wonder for Amy.
Speaker 4: Mm hm. This is when she asked to be tickled
Speaker 4: the first time.
Speaker 1: I think, oh, yes, yes, hmmm mm hmmm. And so
Speaker 1: at this point, it seems like, okay, the expedition is
Speaker 1: ready to go. They get to the airport. Kamulka's like,
Speaker 1: everything seems good. They seems like they're loading the plane.
Speaker 1: But then uh oh they're unloading the plane. Uh and
Speaker 1: uh So there's this scene out there on the tarmac.
Speaker 1: I'm on the big the mid the crates. Everyone's a
Speaker 1: little stressed. Amy just wants to be tickled. She doesn't
Speaker 1: know what's going on. But then doctor Rossa up and
Speaker 1: she's like, hey, let my company pay for some of
Speaker 1: your trip and just let me bring my team along.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Basically, they need like she needs almost like a visa.
Speaker 4: She needs a reason why she's going. She has to
Speaker 4: join their expedition to get in because I guess if
Speaker 4: they report what's happened, like, they're not going to be
Speaker 4: able to get across the border to investigate what happened.
Speaker 4: So she's trying very very hard, has been for a
Speaker 4: long time. This is where I get my line that
Speaker 4: I said earlier, I'm a primatologist, not a pound of sugar.
Speaker 4: And we also see the beginnings of Amy being jealous
Speaker 4: of doctor Russ because Peter is like, oh, it's not me,
Speaker 4: it's Amy. You can't come because Amy doesn't like you.
Speaker 4: But yeah, they start unloading stuff off the plane and
Speaker 4: her molka, I love this. What does he say? There's
Speaker 4: been an interruption in my cash floor or something? And
Speaker 4: then doctor Ross knows like, ooh, I got you. You
Speaker 4: need me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he can't pay for the fuel for the plane,
Speaker 1: but her company certainly can. And so basically we cut
Speaker 1: to everyone's on board the plane flying to Africa, and
Speaker 1: this is where we have that wonderful scene where we
Speaker 1: get some scenes where Amy is upset with Karen and
Speaker 1: and the primatologist and Karen have a nice back and
Speaker 1: forth about like what what is the trip is about?
Speaker 1: And what is what is the human relationship to animals
Speaker 1: and so forth.
Speaker 4: Yeah, because she's very curious and can't quite pin down
Speaker 4: why he did it, and he kind of gives like
Speaker 4: why did he train Amy to be able to speak? Essentially,
Speaker 4: and he says he gives her some quotes about you know,
Speaker 4: the face of the teacher and like why not and
Speaker 4: all this kind of stuff. But this is also when
Speaker 4: we get the infamous and I dare you to find
Speaker 4: any review who doesn't mention it scene where Amy is
Speaker 4: a nervous flyer. Yeah, she wants her rain drop juice. Yes,
Speaker 4: And it turns out that rain drop juice is a
Speaker 4: martine Yes. Yes, So we get a scene in a
Speaker 4: film where a gorilla is drinking a martini and looks
Speaker 4: very happy about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and totally totally believable scene too, I mean, aside
Speaker 1: from the ridiculousness of it, like you buy Amy the
Speaker 1: talking gorilla as a real individual who just likes a
Speaker 1: nice drink to take the edge off during a fly Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: of course.
Speaker 4: And I mean she she had been tense because she
Speaker 4: had also just thrown an egg at Karen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she's called her an ugly woman and yeah, there's
Speaker 1: an egg at her. So then things are off to
Speaker 1: a rocky start between Karen and Amy.
Speaker 4: Yes. And this is also when like they have a
Speaker 4: discussion around the myth of the killer ape and like
Speaker 4: King Kong all of that stuff, so kind of you
Speaker 4: can see her Molcha starting to show his hand that
Speaker 4: he's interested in this, like he's got, he's got more
Speaker 4: than he's letting on and what he wants to get
Speaker 4: out of this trip.
Speaker 1: Now I'm gonna, I guess try and skip some of
Speaker 1: what happened. Like basically, they land in in Africa. They
Speaker 1: they land in one country, they need to go into
Speaker 1: another country, but already things are in a destabilized state.
Speaker 1: Here we meet Joe Pantoliano's character Eddie Ventro. He's immediately like, hey,
Speaker 1: can I buy that ape off you? And they're soldiers
Speaker 1: running around. Something blows up on the airfield in the
Speaker 1: back in the in the background, and and Elliott's like
Speaker 1: asking around for the guy that they hired. But that
Speaker 1: guy's know where to be seen because no looks like
Speaker 1: Big Media has paid for the best guide available, and
Speaker 1: that is Captain Monroe Kelly. And he's up and he's
Speaker 1: you know, he's suave. You know, he's very laid back
Speaker 1: about everything. But he basically saves all of them and
Speaker 1: he's working on getting them where he needs to go.
Speaker 1: He's he's all action and solutions. He piles everybody in
Speaker 1: the back of the military truck and they're on their
Speaker 1: way out.
Speaker 4: Yes, And one of my favorite things about this scene
Speaker 4: is we get two instances of seeing people being I
Speaker 4: guess totally on board and completely okay with a talking gorilla.
Speaker 4: But when Amy talks, Captain Monroe is just like, yeah, sure,
Speaker 4: and here's a smoke. Amy like, I guess that's what
Speaker 4: you want. But he immediately takes control of the situation
Speaker 4: and seems to immediately clock like one Hermolka is no good.
Speaker 4: He's one of the characters that's like, oh, I remember you.
Speaker 4: And then two that Karen is very competent and like
Speaker 4: that they will be working together to kind of lead
Speaker 4: this expedition. But also I guess three that everybody's in
Speaker 4: there for a different reason, and nobody's being completely honest
Speaker 4: except for maybe Peter.
Speaker 1: Right. Even Captain Kelly here is being a He's kind
Speaker 1: of he's a little uncertain as well, like you don't
Speaker 1: distrust him. But there's that part where one of the
Speaker 1: characters ask him, are you some kind a criminal? And
Speaker 1: he just says, aren't we all? And it's just another
Speaker 1: great Captain Monroe Kelly moment. We get some it sounds
Speaker 1: like Kelly is perhaps also an arms dealer. We're not
Speaker 1: entirely sure. I guess what he's he's involved in, but
Speaker 1: it also seems like he's the best, most expensive hope
Speaker 1: for them. He's hired by the tech company, but they
Speaker 1: don't get very far before the military stops them and
Speaker 1: like arrest everybody and says, look, nobody can go to Zaire,
Speaker 1: so you're all stuck in this hotel here. And this
Speaker 1: is where we get Captain Wanta played by del Roy Lindo.
Speaker 1: He shows up and people were interrogated and he does
Speaker 1: not seem to have good intentions and almost immediately hits
Speaker 1: them up for a massive bribe.
Speaker 4: Yes, and he receives it. And this is when we
Speaker 4: get the infamous stop eating my sesame cake line twice
Speaker 4: because Tim Curry is back there kind of nervously nibbling
Speaker 4: the sesame cake and when he sees the money, like
Speaker 4: his mouth drops open. Like his expressions during this whole scene,
Speaker 4: he is just like a befuddled, terrified, out of his
Speaker 4: league villain who gets called out yeah by Delroy Lindo.
Speaker 4: He's like, oh, this piece of trash, Like we don't
Speaker 4: work with him. He's terrible, And it's just one of
Speaker 4: those things where you're watching it, you're like, wow, I mean,
Speaker 4: these performances are amazing, But how in the world did
Speaker 4: this get made?
Speaker 1: So Captain Wanta has up with this bribe and and
Speaker 1: Karen pays it like she basically has just an enormous
Speaker 1: amount of cash on her. There's this nice scene where
Speaker 1: Captain Wanta is then stapling the brown sack that he
Speaker 1: put the money into shut and he tells them that
Speaker 1: it's the gorilla that's going to get them across the border,
Speaker 1: because no one wants to be seen in Western media
Speaker 1: being cruel to the gorilla. And so it looks like
Speaker 1: they're going to get to continue.
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, So this brings us to like another plane trip.
Speaker 4: A lot of jokes about uh, doctor Elliott and Amy
Speaker 4: being a husband and wife, which I think we've already
Speaker 4: had some of those two, but people witnessing their interactions
Speaker 4: and some of the funniest, least believable parts of the
Speaker 4: movie I think take place in this section because they
Speaker 4: get shot at while they're in a plane. In this plane,
Speaker 4: after Amy has been fed some kind of drug in
Speaker 4: a banana to calm her down, by the way, and Laura,
Speaker 4: Lenny badass that she is, gets a flare gun, kicks
Speaker 4: open the door to the airplane and uses the flare
Speaker 4: gun too, I guess distract to send the heat seeking
Speaker 4: missiles that way, which I don't think is how it works.
Speaker 4: But it's quickly joined by Monroe Kelly's like, yeah, this
Speaker 4: is a good idea. We're going to help you. It's
Speaker 4: a really cool, like badass scene. I just questioned legitimacy.
Speaker 4: That's how it works.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So yeah, they fire off these flares. They're able
Speaker 1: to redirect the heat seeking ground to air missiles that
Speaker 1: are being fired at them by the military. But it
Speaker 1: looks like the plane's been hit. Everyone's gonna have to
Speaker 1: parachute anyway. So we get some shenanigans here where Homolka
Speaker 1: of course is cowardly and has to be booted out
Speaker 1: of the plane Monroe Kelly. He grabs a drugged Amy.
Speaker 1: Amy has been given the I think they later referred
Speaker 1: to it as the banana with the dope in it,
Speaker 1: so she has she's already had her dope banana. So
Speaker 1: he scoops her up and jumps out. Gear is being
Speaker 1: dropped as well, and uh yeah, then we're in the
Speaker 1: jungle proper at this point, and.
Speaker 4: I think this is when we start getting answers about
Speaker 4: what some of the characters are up to. So we
Speaker 4: hear a little bit about, you know, the city of Solomon,
Speaker 4: the last city of Zinge Monroe. Kelly reveals he as
Speaker 4: a past history of a terrible expedition that went wrong
Speaker 4: with hermoca and caring them out at the jungle. We
Speaker 4: also learn a bit more about Laura Lenni's character and
Speaker 4: what she's looking for because she has this what she says,
Speaker 4: is a gadget that has features like you know, her
Speaker 4: ex Cia past is kind of talked about. So we're
Speaker 4: getting at some of these answers, these character answers about
Speaker 4: what people are looking into. And also I would like
Speaker 4: to point out this is when I was like, oh,
Speaker 4: this is a volcanoo as well. Good to know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's it's like what you bring a cannon
Speaker 1: on stage, right, you bring a volcano on into the picture.
Speaker 1: You know that volcano is erupting at the end of
Speaker 1: the film. Yes, so, but we'll get we'll get to
Speaker 1: that part. So and An you're right, Yeah, they set
Speaker 1: up camp. The tents are great, the AC units are
Speaker 1: passed out. We already talked about that. We get more.
Speaker 1: They spill more details about the Las city of Karen
Speaker 1: gets satellite gear set up, she checks in with Texas.
Speaker 1: They send her the creature analysis. They're like, we've we've
Speaker 1: done some work on the footage. It is gorilla alike,
Speaker 1: but maybe not a gorilla. And oh, by the way,
Speaker 1: that volcano is probably gonna blow up. And she's like,
Speaker 1: all right, fine, we can we can handle it. But
Speaker 1: they're not even able to finish the call because then
Speaker 1: Amy and Elliott come racing through the camp like children.
Speaker 1: They knock over the satellite gear and destroy it, like
Speaker 1: it's no longer functional.
Speaker 4: Yep, yep, just destroy her equipment. And this is also
Speaker 4: when the scene you mentioned when we see kind of
Speaker 4: this gear kind of overkill perhaps that Karen bought with
Speaker 4: the ac and the tents setting up with that. But yeah,
Speaker 4: now so now they're cut off from that and they've
Speaker 4: got to check through the jungle and they've got this
Speaker 4: volcano threat looming over them and a miss serious creature
Speaker 4: that is not a gorilla but close.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so we we get a fun scene at night
Speaker 1: where there are all these monkey sounds in the forests
Speaker 1: and everyone's a little wigged out except for Captain Monroe Kelly,
Speaker 1: and he has some some fun lines there, but then
Speaker 1: it rains, it mud slides. There's a ridiculous scene where
Speaker 1: somebody sees a snake and they're scary music and they
Speaker 1: chop the snake with a machete, a scene that serves
Speaker 1: no purpose in the film, just to say that, like, oh,
Speaker 1: and they're also snakes, but don't worry, they don't factor.
Speaker 4: Into the plot, right. And this is also where we
Speaker 4: get the leach scene on the penis. This is kind
Speaker 4: of like a montage of all of the stuff, the
Speaker 4: terrain and environment they're having to deal with. Inexplicable singing
Speaker 4: scene where they all start singing is also in this
Speaker 4: kind of section.
Speaker 1: Yell California. Also, Yeah, we also get members of a
Speaker 1: native tribe show up, the Ghost tribe they describe them
Speaker 1: as and they're like, hey, they they're doctor Monroquel, I
Speaker 1: mean Captain Monroe. Kelly can speak their language, so he
Speaker 1: speaks with them and he's like, hey, they have a
Speaker 1: they have a dead man or a nearly dead man,
Speaker 1: and they want us to see him. They he has
Speaker 1: this TC symbol on his clothing. Karen quickly realizes, well,
Speaker 1: that's my company. We need to see what this is
Speaker 1: all about. And they check in on this kind of
Speaker 1: like tribal ceremony that some sort of a funeral rite.
Speaker 1: It seems like it's maybe patterned after a scene from Baraka.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure on that, but it's it's it's impressive
Speaker 1: to watch and then they realize, Okay, is this man Charles. No,
Speaker 1: it's not. It's Bob, someone else from that group. He
Speaker 1: wakes up, he sees Amy the gorilla and immediately just
Speaker 1: freaks out to death.
Speaker 4: Which is classic classic scene if you know, being scared
Speaker 4: to death of something. I do think this is one
Speaker 4: scene that did a disservice to the like payoff, And
Speaker 4: I know they wanted the final product to be really scary,
Speaker 4: but they just weren't that scary. So like the fact
Speaker 4: that he sees Amy and is like it just really
Speaker 4: it was like it built it up and you're like,
Speaker 4: oh my gosh, this must be terrifying. It killed him,
Speaker 4: It scared him to death. I mean it was really
Speaker 4: it was effective. It served a lot in terms of
Speaker 4: building your fear and anxiety around whatever it is they're
Speaker 4: going to eventually face, so they keep going.
Speaker 1: They're not going to be deterred by this. There are
Speaker 1: more zing revelations King Solomon's legendary Diamond mine and the Congo.
Speaker 1: Others have sought it, none have come back, and Hamolka
Speaker 1: insists that Amy knows where the city is the open
Speaker 1: Eye symbol. She saw it in her dream. So they
Speaker 1: keep going and eventually they're traveling by boat at night
Speaker 1: and this is like straight up Disney Jungle cruise adventure here,
Speaker 1: but we get this terrifying hippo attack where the hippos
Speaker 1: are attacking the boat and then a plane is shot
Speaker 1: down in the night. It crashes and they're like, well,
Speaker 1: I don't know what that's about. That's bad. They reach
Speaker 1: the volcano, they two orders have run away. Amy wants
Speaker 1: her glove and at this point navigation is becoming difficult,
Speaker 1: like her little multipurpose device isn't really working, and Homolko says, well,
Speaker 1: we should let Amy lead us. Let Amy lead the expedition,
Speaker 1: and everyone's like, you know, he's right, we should let
Speaker 1: Amy leave.
Speaker 4: That's Gorilla knows where it is. I love that line
Speaker 4: so much. Yeah, so they're all like, yeah, let's follow,
Speaker 4: Let's follow Amy. And this leads us to another one
Speaker 4: of my very favorite scenes. This is when they meet
Speaker 4: at big silver back gorilla. And this is after they
Speaker 4: kind of transverse what seems to be straight up a volcano.
Speaker 4: I don't know that their path makes a lot of sense,
Speaker 4: but anyway, they meet this big silver back gorilla. Monroe
Speaker 4: tells Peter like, don't run gorillas as a challenge, and yes,
Speaker 4: he doesn't run. The gorilla backs away, and that's when
Speaker 4: Monroe realizes, like, oh, he did run away, and then
Speaker 4: I love this. Amy tries to communicate with the grill
Speaker 4: and they look at her and they're like nah, and
Speaker 4: they walk away.
Speaker 1: But it's it's sad. You watch it and you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: he was trying to communicate with the gorillas and she
Speaker 1: can't because she's been trained in this new system, and
Speaker 1: it's it's it's sad, it is, but we're holding out hope.
Speaker 1: We feel like she'll probably get another shot at this.
Speaker 1: So they press on, and it should come as no
Speaker 1: surprise they do find the lost city of Zinge. We
Speaker 1: see this fabulous looking, ruinous lost city with a big
Speaker 1: We see this like this head statue with these big eyes,
Speaker 1: and Homolka is just in tears. Uh. The eye on
Speaker 1: his ring matches the great statue. These amber eyes, and
Speaker 1: we get some just wonderful scene showing by Tim Curry here.
Speaker 4: Yeah, because he really does have an emotional moment and
Speaker 4: for all the cowardice he has and I'm this is
Speaker 4: big you're telling of his character, because he's still a
Speaker 4: huge coward. But he says I must go because he
Speaker 4: wants to go in. He wants to find these diamonds.
Speaker 4: And it's just like the culmination of everything he's been
Speaker 4: talking about. And he does have a line where I'm
Speaker 4: kind of like, I don't believe this at all, but
Speaker 4: he says we can all share, we can all share
Speaker 4: the loops of the diamonds if we go in.
Speaker 1: So at this point we are here in the last
Speaker 1: city of Zine. Obviously we have reached the final portion
Speaker 1: of the film, last thirty minutes of the film, and
Speaker 1: everything is about to just get really wild. So for Starters,
Speaker 1: the guns are out now killing his team or inspecting everything.
Speaker 1: They're wisely on guard because they realize some serious violence
Speaker 1: has gone down around here and they don't entirely know
Speaker 1: what's behind it. And Homolka tells them this story about
Speaker 1: the establishment of Solomon's mine here and the city around it,
Speaker 1: about how the savageness of the guards was famous, and
Speaker 1: then about how this it fell into ruin. But when
Speaker 1: they perhap press and they're like, why did it fall
Speaker 1: into ruin, He's like, nobody knows. But they're like, okay,
Speaker 1: let's go in and explore. So we're in full blown
Speaker 1: ruin exploration mode. And some of these scenes are effectively creepy,
Speaker 1: like the lighting is just right, you know, it's the
Speaker 1: typical shots you have in films like this of people
Speaker 1: pointing their flashlights at hieroglyphics and checking out hallways and
Speaker 1: you're just expecting something to jump out at any moment.
Speaker 4: Yes, and that's built by the fact that Amy was
Speaker 4: not feeling it. She did not want to come in,
Speaker 4: so some of them, some of the members of the
Speaker 4: group stayed outside. Amy stayed outside. And then there are
Speaker 4: these hieroglyphics on the wall that doctor Elliott translates and
Speaker 4: it basically boils down to they trained these gorillas to
Speaker 4: guard the mines on a volcano whose activity is getting
Speaker 4: more intense by the way, to guard the diamonds, and
Speaker 4: then the gorillas turned on the people there, and I
Speaker 4: guess have just been living there guarding the diamonds. Getting
Speaker 4: more and more violins.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and perhaps like imbread like it's a very small population.
Speaker 7: Yea.
Speaker 1: Every time we see the gray gorillas like they do
Speaker 1: look diseased. And I don't know how much of this
Speaker 1: is like seriously trying to figure out, like what is
Speaker 1: the genetic decline of a small population of primates's going
Speaker 1: to look like? And then how much of it is
Speaker 1: like notes coming back or the or from the stiff
Speaker 1: from the studio or just the effects team looking at it, like, well,
Speaker 1: how scary can we make these gorillas? And you look
Speaker 1: at when you look at them, like the sort of
Speaker 1: freeze frame of the of the grays that they look.
Speaker 1: They look very frightening. They did a great job making
Speaker 1: monstrous gorillas. It's just when it comes to actually seeing
Speaker 1: them moving around, I don't know. I think it probably
Speaker 1: does come back to the lighting and just some of
Speaker 1: the you know that perhaps you can imagine these costumes
Speaker 1: being better utilized.
Speaker 4: I don't know, Yes, absolutely, And there they were trying
Speaker 4: to do a lot of things I will say in
Speaker 4: this movie with special effects and technology, and one of
Speaker 4: the most bizarre and jarring ones is in this section.
Speaker 4: Because so Richard had stayed outside with Amy, and then
Speaker 4: he runs in screaming and is killed by this big,
Speaker 4: angry killer gorilla. And the group you know, tries to
Speaker 4: to shoot at this gorilla and it's like inexplicable stop
Speaker 4: motion camera work, like it's out of nowhere. They don't
Speaker 4: do it again. It just felt like, oh, let's let's
Speaker 4: experiment with this, and I do again. I go. That
Speaker 4: makes me wonder how much of it was, Oh, this
Speaker 4: is new technology we could try, but also how much
Speaker 4: of it was these costumes aren't working out like we thought,
Speaker 4: or like maybe yeah.
Speaker 1: Or at least the resulting footage was not as scary
Speaker 1: as we thought what it might be. What can we do,
Speaker 1: Let's tinker with it until we have something that creates
Speaker 1: more of an emotional response.
Speaker 4: Yes, absolutely, I feel like that's another thing every review
Speaker 4: mentions is that, like where did that come from?
Speaker 1: Yeah? But at this point, like everybody's basically in the
Speaker 1: mode of like, Okay, I guess we need to get
Speaker 1: out of here because gorillas are attacking us. Amy shows
Speaker 1: up for a nice jump scare. One great gorilla has
Speaker 1: been taken down, but there are more. They leave the ruins,
Speaker 1: they find more bodies. Hamolka thinks this is whine the
Speaker 1: mines had to close down in ancient times. I guess
Speaker 1: makes sense. Killer gorillas. So they go back to camp
Speaker 1: and it's tech time because Amy gloves up and starts
Speaker 1: talking about the bad gorillas. And then in one of
Speaker 1: the I can't even honestly remember if this was in
Speaker 1: the book or not. I think it might have been,
Speaker 1: but at this point the team Karen and or the
Speaker 1: team remember, oh yeah, amid the gear that we have,
Speaker 1: we have automated machine gun drones that we can set
Speaker 1: up that use lasers to detect movement and will fire
Speaker 1: at anything. And they set this up around the perimeter
Speaker 1: of the camp. And I remember loving this in the
Speaker 1: film and perhaps in the book if it was in
Speaker 1: the book when I was younger, but especially now, you like,
Speaker 1: this is just so ridiculous. This is just ludicrous that
Speaker 1: they brought automated machine gun Like what was the original
Speaker 1: like rationale behind this was that just killer gorillas may
Speaker 1: show up in the hundreds, we will need machine gun
Speaker 1: drones because otherwise, it's, like you were, these are like
Speaker 1: weapons of war you're bringing into this other country, right.
Speaker 4: And people could have shown up, like anything could have happened,
Speaker 4: and they also have so Laura Lenny is cool as
Speaker 4: a cucumber during this part, by the way, and they
Speaker 4: set up a laptop, an old laptop, and she can
Speaker 4: like see their shapes on it, like see where they
Speaker 4: are and how many of them are. But it I mean, again,
Speaker 4: I think the lighting didn't really work in the scene.
Speaker 4: But it could have been really scary because you would
Speaker 4: just see like the guns turn shoot at something. The
Speaker 4: lasers were kind of goofy, but like the seeing this turn.
Speaker 4: You couldn't really necessarily see where the gorillas were, but
Speaker 4: they were all around. Like it ended up feeling very
Speaker 4: humorous and over the top where I think it could
Speaker 4: have been scary. I'm not sure that this movie ever
Speaker 4: succeeds really it being scary. I think it's much more
Speaker 4: a fun action romp. So I don't know that it
Speaker 4: would have worked anyway given the rest of what we've
Speaker 4: seen already. But yeah, it's like fireworks and lasers, guns
Speaker 4: and chiller rapes.
Speaker 1: It feels kind of like like this is Hongo the Ride,
Speaker 1: which isn't too much of a knock because what is
Speaker 1: a blockbuster film? Like, it's kind of like the approach
Speaker 1: to a big like Disneyland ride or a Blockbuster film.
Speaker 1: It's kind of the same energy, so I guess it's
Speaker 1: fine that they feel it feels much the same here.
Speaker 4: Yes, and then it's buttoned with Hermolka saying I've translated
Speaker 4: this phrase and it says we are watching you. So
Speaker 4: it's kind of this like goofy action set piece and
Speaker 4: then oh wait, go back to scary stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the next morning, people are missing, including Amy and Homolka.
Speaker 1: Amy's out wandering. She encounters the other gorillas again. They
Speaker 1: acknowledge her this time, but they're they're standoffish, so it
Speaker 1: seems like some progress is being made in Amy gorilla relations. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the team heads back into the ruins and they're just
Speaker 1: armed to the teeth. They just just bringing all the
Speaker 1: guns this time, and they find evidence on the walls.
Speaker 1: They find more not hieroglyphics this time, but more like
Speaker 1: actual images that are te like sequential art, and it
Speaker 1: seems that the gorillas were bred using gorillas and humans apparently,
Speaker 1: and to serve as guardians for the mines, but they
Speaker 1: eventually turned on their masters, and they find the bones
Speaker 1: of normal gorillas with crushed skulls.
Speaker 4: Yes, quite a few. Yeah, and this is when we
Speaker 4: see Amy, who's like the volcano it's shaking, it's about
Speaker 4: to go off. Some of the building collapses. So Amy
Speaker 4: is determined to help our human friends to fight these
Speaker 4: bad gorillas, grabs her asl gear and makes her way
Speaker 4: to the temple to the building.
Speaker 1: And so here we are the team. Eventually they have
Speaker 1: some trouble. It seems like they're the mines may be
Speaker 1: closed off, and then of course there's seismic activity and
Speaker 1: there are cave ins, and so they just keep going,
Speaker 1: you know, very very dungeons and dragons at this point like, okay,
Speaker 1: we got we got to keep the party moving deeper
Speaker 1: into the dungeon here and then they emerge into well
Speaker 1: dungeons and dragging theons wives. This would be when the
Speaker 1: dungeon master would pull out the feature map where the
Speaker 1: big battle is going to take place. It's this is
Speaker 1: apparently the mine. It's kind of this little valley with
Speaker 1: the stream going through it. They're all these like alcoves
Speaker 1: or cave openings in the walls, and the ground is
Speaker 1: just filthy with blue diamonds, like they're just poking up
Speaker 1: out of the ground like like big diamond baseballs.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you're right, that is very d and d like,
Speaker 4: look at these shiny things. I know you want them,
Speaker 4: no problem here, and Harmocha he can't resist. He's like
Speaker 4: immediately just shoving these diamonds into his bag.
Speaker 1: Yes, oh yeah, he kisses one of them. And meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the great gorillas are starting to file out there. It
Speaker 1: is kind of creepy at first because they are in
Speaker 1: the shadows a bit, but then they're they're they're actively
Speaker 1: coming out. They're like, okay, we're on this is what
Speaker 1: we were trained for. We did kill all of our trainers,
Speaker 1: but this is why we live here. And so yeah,
Speaker 1: great shots of great gorillas creeping in the dark. We
Speaker 1: see some flashes of their monster faces. And now Homolka
Speaker 1: has gone too far. He realizes too late that he
Speaker 1: was too concerned with scooping up diamonds and that death
Speaker 1: is all around him now.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and he does have probably the most one of
Speaker 4: the most violent doths we see on the screen, because no,
Speaker 4: the killer gorillas are not happy about this, and they
Speaker 4: they kill him quite violently. And this is when the
Speaker 4: rest of the party is like, oh wow, there are
Speaker 4: a lot of these killer gorillas they're going to kill
Speaker 4: us all. So they all start getting out their weapons.
Speaker 4: They discover a geode, a giant diamond, and they also
Speaker 4: as they're kind of running away trying to find a
Speaker 4: way out, they find Karen's ex Charlie, amongst a bunch
Speaker 4: of like other bones and stuff, and she takes his
Speaker 4: satellite gun thing and puts a diamond in it.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, she has a laser gun.
Speaker 4: And now she has a laser gun.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so the battle, Yeah, the battle continues to rage here.
Speaker 1: It's soldiers and party members versus killer Greg gorillas. Looks
Speaker 1: like they're deaths on both sides, and you know, we
Speaker 1: found Charlie, and it seems like the gorillas are are
Speaker 1: gaining ground. They're they're killing left and right, and it
Speaker 1: looks like they're moving in to kill Elliott. And then
Speaker 1: Amy jumps into the rescue and she says, ugly gorillas,
Speaker 1: Ugly go away. And this is a nice moment because
Speaker 1: you kind of expect when this happens, you're like, oh, no, Amy,
Speaker 1: they don't know what you're saying. They're not going to
Speaker 1: listen to you. But the Greg Gorillas are thrown off
Speaker 1: on this. They're like, whoa wait, this is a gorilla. Guys,
Speaker 1: we've got to at least hear her out, or they're
Speaker 1: at least confused by it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think that's what. I think. It's inn rosa.
Speaker 4: It's like they don't know what to make. They don't
Speaker 4: know what to make. They're just confused. And here in
Speaker 4: comes one of the best lines because Laurel Annie doctor
Speaker 4: Karen Ras shows up with this laser gun and she
Speaker 4: says of the like great killer apes, put them on
Speaker 4: the endangered species list, and then starts shooting them with
Speaker 4: a beam of blue laser, just like arms flying off.
Speaker 4: Body's getting cut in half, and when asked what she's using,
Speaker 4: she calls it the latest thing in communication. It's just
Speaker 4: wild and ludicrous and absurd. Just this killer gorilla is
Speaker 4: getting just decimated by a laser.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just straight up cut in half by this thing.
Speaker 1: And then we cut to the outside and the volcano
Speaker 1: is erupting, and it's I think I laughed at this
Speaker 1: point because the footage or the or the sequence we
Speaker 1: see from Afar of the volcano erupting is so intense
Speaker 1: that I felt like, well, there's no way everyone would
Speaker 1: just be killed instantly by this thing. They're like inside
Speaker 1: this volcano or inside the mountain when this level of
Speaker 1: a volcanic event is taking place. But it's a movie volcano,
Speaker 1: so the rules are a little different, like lava is
Speaker 1: not actually hot unless you're in it, and other rules
Speaker 1: like that apply.
Speaker 4: Yes, and I do think it is a rule in
Speaker 4: these action adventure movies you got to have your classic
Speaker 4: like the set is falling apart at the end, like
Speaker 4: everything is collapsing and you've got to get out. And
Speaker 4: so that's what this scene is is very much like
Speaker 4: you know, ground, the ground is falling, pieces of like stone,
Speaker 4: all these structures are falling. We get to see another
Speaker 4: odd scene of like gorillas jumping in the lava. The
Speaker 4: killer Gorilla's jumping in to the lava and dying. But yeah,
Speaker 4: this is very much that, like, oh, we're in the
Speaker 4: end game now the entire set is collapsing.
Speaker 5: Yep.
Speaker 1: We also get us sing. They make it out of
Speaker 1: the mountain and of course the ground opens up. There's
Speaker 1: this huge chasm that opens in the earth, and so
Speaker 1: Karen whips out that laser gun again use it to
Speaker 1: cut down a tree to make a bridge that they
Speaker 1: all escape over. And meanwhile, the city of Zene is
Speaker 1: just crumbling into ruin behind them.
Speaker 4: Oh inge, yes, and this brings us to one of
Speaker 4: my very very favorite things, because I can't stress enough.
Speaker 4: They escape via a hot air balloon. Yeah, and on
Speaker 4: my rewatch one too many rewatches, they do hint at
Speaker 4: this hot air balloon throughout Yeah, yeah, because earlier on
Speaker 4: they kind of joked with doctor Ross like do you
Speaker 4: really need a hot air balloon and she said no,
Speaker 4: well here they are.
Speaker 1: And but before that happens, though, she does check back
Speaker 1: in with Houston though. Remember she she gets some gear
Speaker 1: off of that crash that second plane, she fixes her
Speaker 1: satellite system, calls back, and this is a nice little
Speaker 1: sequence where she touches base with Travis and she tells
Speaker 1: him about his son. She's like, yeah, Charles's dad, I
Speaker 1: have to confirm this. And of course does Travis say,
Speaker 1: take a moment to reflect on this. No, He's like,
Speaker 1: tell me about those diamonds. I want those blue diamonds.
Speaker 4: Yes, And I mean he doesn't even ask about the
Speaker 4: crew because everybody on that plane was working for him, Like, yeah,
Speaker 4: there's a blind earlier where Laurelinni is like, this is
Speaker 4: such needless loss of life. But yeah, He's immediately like,
Speaker 4: did you get the diamond? And she Laurel Nnie, She's
Speaker 4: got a good cold, like calculated face, is realizing this
Speaker 4: and she says, you remember what I told you. If
Speaker 4: I ever got the hint that you sent me out
Speaker 4: here for anything other than Charlie, I would make you sorry.
Speaker 4: And then she does a bunch of technobabble that doesn't
Speaker 4: make any sense. I'm convinced, but she puts it in
Speaker 4: the coordinates of the satellite into this diamond laser gun
Speaker 4: and then Presto blows up his very fancy satellite.
Speaker 1: She blows up a satellite. Yeah, yes, yes, yeah, and
Speaker 1: then she's like yeah in transmission obviously, and moves on
Speaker 1: for then may bust out the balloon. They get in
Speaker 1: the balloon and at this point, yeah, it's just what
Speaker 1: it's Ross Elliott and Kelly.
Speaker 4: Oh.
Speaker 1: But before that, Amy goes off into the wild. We
Speaker 1: finally gets a third try. Will the gorillas accept me?
Speaker 1: Will the silverback gorilla potentially marry me? And yeah, she
Speaker 1: goes They say yeah, come on, and so she moves
Speaker 1: on to be with the silverback gorilla and is like
Speaker 1: three other wives.
Speaker 4: Yes, it is a very touch and good vibe between Peter,
Speaker 4: doctor Elliott, and Amy, who he had been adamant throughout,
Speaker 4: like this is where she belongs, even though she'd have
Speaker 4: these clear signs that it was gonna be difficult for
Speaker 4: her to adapt, and even her mocal was like, this
Speaker 4: is not gonna work. But he they have this fawn farewell.
Speaker 4: This is also a very funny part to me where
Speaker 4: suddenly his shirt is like wide open and I'm like,
Speaker 4: you were trying. You guys were really trying, very very nineties.
Speaker 4: But yeah, now it's the three. It's Karen, Monroe and
Speaker 4: Peter in his hot air balloon floating off. Karen asked
Speaker 4: Peter to throw away the diamond, which he does, and
Speaker 4: Roe is not happy about that. I did find it
Speaker 4: interesting that they kind of have this like lovely escape
Speaker 4: in hot air balloon, but like their plane had been
Speaker 4: shot down, like two planes had been shot down. I
Speaker 4: don't know, maybe these are not questions I should be asking,
Speaker 4: but yeah, that's I mean, the hot air balloon is
Speaker 4: what really got me. I was not anticipating that. And
Speaker 4: there's a lot of things. There was a lot of
Speaker 4: build up of like, oh wow, there's a talking gorilla,
Speaker 4: Oh wow, she drinks, Martine. There was a lot of
Speaker 4: things I could never have anticipated, to be honest, but
Speaker 4: that was the final thing where I was like, Wow,
Speaker 4: they are escaping. They a hot air balloon.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, they take off and they look at the
Speaker 1: diamond one last time and then they throw it over
Speaker 1: the side.
Speaker 4: Yes, and I think we get another We get one
Speaker 4: more shot of Amy who looks happy in her new Yes,
Speaker 4: her new crew. She looks like she's going to live
Speaker 4: a good life.
Speaker 1: And that's the end of the movie. That's Congo.
Speaker 4: What a ride? All right?
Speaker 1: Well, Annie, thanks for joining me here on this episode
Speaker 1: of Weird House. This was a lot of fun rewatching
Speaker 1: Congo and then discussing it with you here.
Speaker 4: Yes, thank you, thank you, Thank you so much for
Speaker 4: having me. It was so fun.
Speaker 1: Absolutely so again. Your your podcasts are stuff Mom never
Speaker 1: told you and Savor people can find those wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcasts. Have have you done any movie related
Speaker 1: episodes of either of the shows recently?
Speaker 4: Well, we do once a month. We do Feminist Movie
Speaker 4: Friday and sometimes Spoiled Saturdays on stuff I've never told you.
Speaker 4: We just did for Savior, we just did Pans Labyrinth.
Speaker 4: It's kind of like a nice Halloween because it's her savor.
Speaker 4: We do like foods in fictional proper, so I would
Speaker 4: recommend that for sure.
Speaker 1: Excellent. All right, well, yeah, you can find those shows
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcast everyone, And just a reminder
Speaker 1: that Weird House Cinema is a show on Fridays and
Speaker 1: the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed. We're primarily
Speaker 1: a science podcast, but on Fridays we set aside most
Speaker 1: serious concerns to just talk about a weird film. If
Speaker 1: you want to follow the films that we've covered here,
Speaker 1: I blog about them at simmutamusic dot com. But also
Speaker 1: we have a letterboxed account that's l E T T
Speaker 1: E R b o x d dot com. You can
Speaker 1: look us up. Our username is weird House and there's
Speaker 1: a list there and you can see all the films
Speaker 1: we've done in order, and also include links to where
Speaker 1: you can listen to them, and also sometimes go ahead
Speaker 1: and give you a preview of what's coming up next.
Speaker 1: Thanks as always to Seth Nicholas Johnson for producing the
Speaker 1: show here and stitching everything together. And if you would
Speaker 1: like to reach out and if you have anything to
Speaker 1: say about Congo, if you have suggestions, for the future. Well,
Speaker 1: you can email us at contact had Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: Your Mind dot com.
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