Page 47 - Alternative Europe Eurotrash and Exploitation Cinema Since 1945

They-Do-The-Conga as an unlikely happy couple. The precise nature of their relationship is left
tantalisingly vague.
Queen Kong (1976) is a cheap, incompetent and, until recently, almost entirely unseen Anglo-
Italian spoof of King Kong (1933), intended to cash in on the publicity for the big-budget 1976
remake. Directed by Frank [Farouk] Agrama, otherwise known to film buffs for the gore film, Dawn
of the Mummy (1981), Queen Kong is, chiefly notable for its obscurity. R K O and Dino De Laurentiis,
who produced the official Kong remake, blocked the release of Queen Kong on the grounds of'passing
off, in a case settled out of court in 1977. The film was subsequently never seen in cinemas (except,
briefly, in Italy, where copyright laws appear to have been more flexible).1 Finally surfacing on bootleg
video in 2000, Queen Kong acquired minor cult recognition before its legitimate D V D release, first in
Japan and then in the United States.2

CRACKING QUEEN KONG

Given the film's awfulness and historical insignificance, why bother to write about it at all? Certainly,
with its scattering of British cult figures such as Robin Askwith, Valerie Leon and Linda Hayden, it
deserves the attention of any fan of nostalgic rubbish of the 1970s. One might even take a certain
nationalistic pride in Britain's producing so striking an entry in the annals of trash cinema, a
category or genre otherwise colonised by American tastes and, in particular, the tiresome ideology
of transgression. (Most British exploitation was not a cinema of excess and unhinged marginal
expression, but one of timidity and impoverishment - suburban, middlebrow and hamstrung by
censorship.)
Then again there is the 'Everest principle'. Kong must be conquered merely because she is there;
the value of the exercise lies in being the first to bag, tag and possess her. (This completist fetish is
an affliction equally of film buffs and (mea culpa) academics on the publish-or-perish treadmill. In
spite of the D V D , Queen Kong is still a pretty rare and inaccessible specimen, and worth the effort of
display and exploitation.) Finally, Queen Konghas symptomatic interest as an allegory of race, gender
and national decline in the 1970s. With film and context properly aligned, Queen Kong casts off the
shackles of mere exploitation and is revealed as a bold articulation of the political unconscious of that
troubled period.
As Cynthia Erb remarks in Tracking King Kong, her overview of King Kong's journey through
popular culture, by the 1970s King Kong had become an established camp icon. 3 The film's sexual
and racial implications were toyed with not only in parodies such as the play, Gorilla Queen, and The
Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), but also the somewhat camped-up 1976 remake directed by John
Guillermin. Recognising the material as inescapably queer as well as rich in allegorical uses, it clumsily
gestures towards Kong's subtextual possibilities: Kong as 'male chauvinist pig ape'; Kong as super-
hippy; Kong as symbol of corporate exploitation of the Third World. 4 In opting fot knowingness and
camp pastiche, Queen Kong was in the mainstream of Konglote, rather than an unexpected subversion
of it. Indeed, the 1976 Kong is not that different from Queen Kong. Only the vast difference in the
budgets squandered by each film disguises similarities of production (Agrama and De Laurentiis have
roots in Italian exploitation) and creative means (the remake includes a brief, wholly unconvincing

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