a.k.a. KING DONG / SUPER SIMIAN
Hendrieth and Yoman Productions [1985] 33′
country: United States
director: Yancey Hendrieth
cast: Crystal Holland, Chaz St. Peters,
Dee Hendrieth, Felicia Fox, Mikhael
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Young Anna [Holland], after a fight with her divorced mother, heads out on a sailing trip to the South Seas with a few of her friends – a trip that ends in disaster when their boat crashes into a battleship! Anna and friend Alex [St. Peters] survive the incident only to find themselves marooned on an island populated with dinosaurs, Amazons, cannibals, and the Kong-sized giant ape Super Simian and her son [Buddy the gorilla, played by director Hendrieth].
This is a strange little independent production with a history so confusing that even I can’t keep it straight. Writer / director Yancey Hendrieth produced the film mostly out of pocket with a big focus on special effects inspired by the 1933 classic KING KONG. The three-man creative team of L. B. Carvelo, Keith Finkelstein, and David Dane, under the supervisian of Hendrieth, purportedly worked for 18 months in a 600 square foot studio to complete the post production effects.
I’m not entirely sure what happened next, but Hendrieth’s film somehow made its way into the hands of adult video producers. The result was that LOST ON ADVENTURE ISLAND was loaded with hardcore sex and marketed on video under the new title of KING DONG. Hendrieth has stated that he had nothing to do with the pornographic version of his film and, given his enthusiasm for the subject, I’m inclined to believe him.
KING DONG has been all but lost to the sands of time [it still pops up on gray market video lists from time to time], with Hendrieth now making available a family-friendly re-edit of the film under its original title.
Firstly, the good. The special effects, given that LOST ON ADVENTURE ISLAND was produced on such a limited budget, are rather well achieved. With a nod to the de Laurentiis KONG remake of ’76, a full-scale mock up of Hendrieth’s Super Simian’s hand was constructed and animated with an internal rope system [no fancy hydraulics here]. Buddy the gorilla is a typical man-in-suit creation, though better than many I’ve seen and capable of at least some facial expression. The rest of the effects are handled through stop motion animation and rear-screen projection with varying results. A plesiosaur fares best as far as the armatures are concerned, and the mattes used to relate more fantastic parts of the island [the Amazon's hideaway, for instance] are inspired if not terribly believable.
It’s unfortunate, then, that the rest of the film holds up so poorly. The simple fact of the matter is that with a running time of only 33 minutes [with several of those taken up by lengthy opening and closing credits] there’s just isn’t much here. We get lots of Alex and Anna running through the wilds of the Hawaiian shooting locations and a few sparse lines of dialogue [including some nods to THE WIZARD OF OZ] but little else to hold the picture together. Complicating matters further is the post-dubbing of much of the dialogue, which is bad to the point of distraction at times.
The bra-less chest shot above is the full extent of the adult material to be found in Hendrieth’s new edit of LOST ON ADVENTURE ISLAND, which is just fine with me – I doubt it would have been any more successful as pornography. The video quality of the screener I received is pretty bad and its obviously mastered from a VHS source [I suspect that the original elements are long gone by now]. The audio quality is about as good as the video would indicate and a few of the patches of dialogue are difficult to make out. There were no supplements.
I wish I could say more but there’s just not enough here to even warrant talking about. The special effects are neat and it’s obvious Hendrieth adores the films he emulates, but the rest of the film just falls flat and I can’t see anyone but stop-motion animation junkies [myself included] getting much out of it. Not recommended.
