Banglar King Kong

2010
Directed by Iftekar Jahan

The movie. The myth. The legend. Banglar King Kong! Yes, folks, we have an awesome treat for you today on TarsTarkas.NET! Straight from the heart of Bangladesh comes this Kong-tastic take on everyone’s favorite giant ape. The story of King Kong is timeless, and Kongs have appeared throughout the world, some more official than others. Is Banglar King Kong licensed and legal? Hell no! But it exists anyway and mirrors the plot of the King Kong films so closely that even without subtitles, you know exactly what is going on. The tale of King Kong will be one of those things that people 300 years from now will know. In future digi-hologram movies, Space Kong will climb to the top of the Space Elevator and toss around Starship Enterprises, and you know things will play out just like the 1933 classic. And it will be glorious.

Unofficial King Kong knockoffs have existed in foreign markets since 1933’s Wasei Kingu Kongu (和製キング・コング aka Japanese King Kong), which along with the 1938 King Kong Appears in Edo (江戸に現れたキングコング aka Edo ni Arawareta Kingu Kongu) are pre-WW2 tales that have not been seen since their initial theatrical runs. As we all know, Japan made two real King Kong films much later. Giant apes and Kong-ish story lines appear in such cinema classics as India’s Shikari, the Korean film A*P*E, the farcical Queen Kong, and the microbudget The Mighty Gorga. There might even be one in India’s 1953 film Gorilla. As far as I know, this is the first giant ape in Bangladeshi cinema.

The costume for Banglar King Kong is among the worst ape costumes ever put on film. I say among the worst, because there is no doubt a low budget Indian horror film (probably by Harinam Singh) that will have a worse ape costume. But it is by far the worse King Kong costume that ever existed. From the sneering mask to the visible spaces for socks, the whole thing is a Halloween disaster. Though I do give them props for the blinking eyes, that was a nice touch and made the ape have some actual feelings on display. We give credit where credit is due on TarsTarkas.NET.

The director Iftekar Jahan has directed several other films, of which I can find little information thanks to a billion sites copying the same Banglar King Kong article and clogging up Google. The actors is even a bigger mess, despite some of them having names spelled different every time I saw it typed out, I can find little information on any of them. What we do know is that Banglar King Kong was produced by Sharmin Osman for the Bangladesh Film Development Corporation (BFDC), the main government body that overseas much of Banglar cinema, so this is some government funded B-grade fun! TarsTarkas.NET has encountered Banglar film once before, the actionfest Banglar Hero. And one of the stars of Banglar Hero, Tubby Buddy, has a role in Banglar King Kong playing another comic relief character. I still cannot figure out who is playing him. Of the cast list: Munmun, Danny Sedak, Shamim Osman, Afzal Sharif and Kazi Hayat, I was only able to identify Munmun as Milly and Kazi Hayat as the lead female tribeswoman Tubby Buddy pairs up with.

When you watch Banglar King Kong, try to keep in mind this film was made in 2010. But between the scratches on the print, the mistimed dubbing, and the blue screen effects that fan films put to shame, you could swear up and down that this is a product of 1961. Only the musical numbers, which were shot with some sort of HD camera and with professional lighting, look modern. But even those snippets are transferred from a film negative, and have scratches – though not nearly as much as the rest of Banglar King Kong, which looks like the print was shot up by helicopters and dumped off the top of a random tall building.

The non-singing soundtrack is 100% stolen. I recognized the themes from Gladiator, Empire Strikes Back, James Bond, King Kong 1976, Last of the Mohicans, and 2001 among those that were playing. I’m guessing they weren’t banking on an international release… The vcd must have been encoded by the anipal monkey Buntoo himself, because it is rife with errors and digital trash. The images suffer as well, with this 2 1/2 hour film compresses to just two vcds. I did my best to get clear shots, but as you can see, there is no refined BluRay clarity. Sometimes the discs have sounds problems so bad we might as well be getting the audio from the next theater over!

Milly (Munmun) – An actress recruited to be in a film on a tropical island. Her father Rakul accompanies her on this journey, though he is killed on the island. She herself is kidnapped by the natives and given to King Kong, who falls in love with her. When Kong is kidnapped and displayed in Bangladesh, she tries in vain to save him from his predestined fate. Munmun is an actress of B-cinema in Bangladesh. One of her bigger roles was in a film called Moron Kamor. Rocky (???) – Rocky is a famous film star and we can’t believe how lucky the film crew was to score him for their weird nature documentary. But there you go. Rocky takes and immediate shine to Milly, and when she’s Kongnapped he does numerous rescue attempts in between musical numbers. Tubby Buddy (???) – Tubby Buddy is back and as wacky as ever! Goofy banjo music announce his entrance. Tubby Buddy works on the movie shoot and helps recruit Milly into the film. Captain Ashool (???) – The ship captain, who along with first officer Mr. Jones, take King Kong back to Bangladesh and put him on a stage show. This works as well as it does in all the other versions of King Kong, and Captain Ashool is soon squashed. Once the Captain goes evil and kidnaps King Kong, he’s suddenly wearing black! King Kong (Man in Suit!) – The King. He’s Kongtastic. The Great Ape. The King of Skull Island, or whatever island this is. He’s fought airplanes, Godzilla, mechanical doubles, helicopters, giant snakes, tyrannosauruses, all sorts of ugly things. But now he fights his greatest battle: $0 budgets! Buntoo (A monkey) – Buntoo is the film’s anipal, betraying the influences of Indian cinema on this Banglar film. Like all anipals, Buntoo helps the hero and is used to save the girl and to steal tickets to the King Kong stage show. I think Buntoo is the same word that Milly calls Kong, but thanks to lack of subtitles I can’t find the exact word.