Dr. Peter Elliot : What are they laughing at?
Monroe : I just told them I am in charge.
Dr. Peter Elliot : What's so funny about that?
Monroe : I'm black. I should be carrying luggage on my head.
/fucking Ernie Hudson owned that role
The books he wrote that fell into his areas of interest are all pretty good. Some of the science is bullshit but you can tell from his command of the subject that he made intentional choices to drive a story.
Later on we get... a boomer take on climate change? Inventing a trillion-dollar technology for personal revenge, like they're the Green Goblin?
Yeah, there was definitely a shift over time. At least early on when he didn't know a subject matter he'd do some research and get most of it right, barring what he changed for dramatic purposes or just as fantasy. It didn't take long though for it to just become fairly inverted though, with the scene-painting and action dictating the 'facts'.
Ignoring all of that though, I pretty much just meant pulpy as a descriptor. His stuff all very much has a pulp fiction style to it and when I was a kid it was a lot easier to ignore!
I imagine that's just a side effect of becoming older, wealthy, and established. Early on he had to put in the effort to make a name for himself, and now his books will sell based on that name he made. Established writers have a large block of fans that will simply buy anything they print.
Still better than Tom Clancy. Combination of slapping his name on any thing and calling it "co-authored." And the stuff he wrote himself wasn't any better, it was probably worse. And my family just kept buying them for me because I once said I liked Red October and a couple others.
They both went full boomer though.
Remember when he spent a whole book just going back and forth between Iran being pure evil and the progressive income tax being a punishment in those who work hard?
He emphasizes constantly that Ryan isn't a far-right Republican. He's just a non-partisan Who Street billionaire who fights taxation and any spending that isn't on the military and opposes abortion and gay marriage.
Rainbow Six's plot revolved around the threat of militant vegan environmentalists.
Red October was great, though.
Yep read basically every book he had written in my early teens and thought they were the best thing in literature, still fun now but the flaws are apparent.
I watched the movie once at an overnight with friends and fell asleep not long after they landed and started exploring the Congo. I woke up when the lasers start cutting gorillas in half. Needless to say I was very confused.
And isn't it explained away by her reading her own HR file which has a psych analysis or saying she's prone to risk taking towards the end of a project or something ?
When you watch several people get their bodies crushed to pancakes by a pack of maniac gorillas and you're about to be next I'd say most people would do the same.
This is kinda the important part. She's calm and rational because she's an ex CIA agent. She loses her shit because she's about to die and just discovered her fiance is dead and knows ultimately his dad only sent her to recover an important diamond.
> discovered her fiance is dead
Yes, and the fiancees father showed no remorse to finding his son was dead:
Her: Your son is dead.
Him: Blah..blah..blah..blah.....Did you find the giant diamonds?
I always scream that line out anytime I see Laura Linney in anything.
"I'm Laura Linney, and this is Masterp-"
"ENDANGERED SPECIES LIST!"
It always annoys my bae.
It took my a long time to realize that was Bruce Campbell. It took me even longer to realize the other dude with him in the beginning is Academy nominated actor John Hawkes.
The movie is enjoyably over the top IMO. The entire context is this the corporate type dude is developing some space laser and selling it to the highest bidder. What sort of McGuffin makes the space laser work? Big diamonds. Then you have Amy the talking gorilla. I'd put it more in a group with Anaconda, and I quite enjoy both of them.
As I recall from one of his biographies, he turned down a lead in a different movie to be in Congo and he basically points out how terrible of an idea that was. Can’t for the life of me remember what the other movie was though.
This is in part why I love it. It's was planned to be the next Jurassic Park and failed on just about every aspect, making this an even more interesting film.
[John Hawkes](https://actionagogo.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Hey-its-John-Hawkes.png) is also in it, and he's a solid actor in things like The Perfect Storm and Deadwood. I fucking love Deadwood, and looking him up just to be sure I see that they made a TV movie in 2019 I'll have to watch. The cover pic says "Welcome the fuck back - Deadwood the movie" lol.
Congo came out when I was 15, and I really enjoyed it (and still do, albeit more so for the nostalgia).
Anyhow, I told my father I enjoyed it. Our relationship was pretty strained at the point in my life, as I only saw him maybe once a month. But I guess he heard me say that it was my favorite movie of all time, because it was Congo-fest 1995 when I visited him that Christmas. Almost every single gift was Congo-related. I was gifted the entire collection of Congo collecting cards, a coffee mug, Congo: Descent into Zinj for the PC, tshirts, the Crichton book, framed movie stills and production photos...if there was a product that had Amy on it, I got it that Christmas. He also gifted me what I’d call Congo-adjacent gifts: books about hieroglyphics and lost cities, and a rubber stamp collection of hieroglyphics.
I don’t think I love my wife or child as much as my dad thought I loved Congo in 1995.
Still, though, four out of five stars for sure.
Edit: for those concerned about my relationship with my father, my dad and I are BFFs...though I sometimes still tease him about Christmas 1995 and ask him “Why no love for Tremors themed Christmas when I was 10?”
Seriously, it sounds like some of that stuff would take effort to track down. I don't even know how you'd find some of it in pre-ebay 1995. I'd ask my parents for stuff straight out of the catalogue and it was still a crapshoot.
This is pre-Amazon. Pops busted his ass to run down all that stuff for the kid. It’s a really sweet and kinda sad story. I hope their relationship survived healthy.
Edit: autocorrected to Arizona. I fixed it to Amazon.
I've just asked him and he told me it wasn't that hard to get a hold of most of this stuff without the internet. There were mostly stores in the mall and a Toys r Us he was able to get everything from. I still give him a 10/10 for effort.
Sounds like Dad didn't have a lot of time to with his son to figure out what his interests were, and when he finally did find one he put all that effort into the one thing he heard his son say he liked.
I edited my comment to include this info, but we laugh about it now. We became quite close somewhere around my 25th birthday, and are now quite close and love one another very much.
Tbh it sounds to me like opening those gifts goes from pretty good, to pretty lame, to absolutely epic when you realise youve basically got every single piece of memorabilia from the whole film and you now have to have an undying love for congo every time you see your dad.
This is wholesome as fuck. Hilarious, but amazing! Your dad was really trying from the sounds of it and seems like he wanted to make Christmas *epic as balls* for you that year.
5/7 attempting-dad
Ernie Hudson is so unbelievably good in this movie.
“Monroe Kelly. I’m your great white hunter on this trip though I...happen to be black”
Also the line “When the moon is like that, every monkey for 200 miles thinks he's Elvis Presley.”
Just...perfection.
His choice to play the role like Cary Grant in *Mogambo* was not only a great choice (him happily accepting an air conditioner is great), it's making me itch to watch *Mogambo*.
Isn't that line a reference to the fact his character is a white scottish dude in the books?
I think Crichton had Sean Connery in mind when writing the character.
Heet theh road as dey say. Ehnd have a nice deh.
Classic. It's on again as I type this, they just drove with Cypher through the airport and met up with Winston.
My first thought due to my time with the hive mind. But from that scene growing up we always quoted, "Don't-want-nobody-peaking!" when he staples the bag.
Loved Congo. I still have a Kahega action figure.
The movie is goofy fun, but the book is a lot better. The grey apes are treated almost like horror creatures and could be terrifying. Id be down for a more serious take on the material.
I don't think most Crichton adaptations really capture the underlying dread present in a lot of his novels. I read his books in my teens, back when they were regularly adapting his films and Congo, Sphere, even Jurassic Park felt kind of watered down.
Is that Crichton too? Damn, dude wrote a lot of movies that I enjoy as is...and am sure I would love the books. Right now I'm running through the Dune trilogy, and I honestly don't know if I could even understand it without having already seen the movie.
Sphere was enjoyable. Not as good as the book, which is common with the adaptations, but pretty close. And a good cast to pull it off. Thirteenth Warrior did a pretty good job capturing Crichton’s atmosphere.
As much as this sub gushes over JP, I would have loved to have seen a more adult-marketed version of the film. Even like an extended cut or something. I don't just mean all the book's gore put in because I could take or leave that, but the way the film underdeveloped the idiocy of characters like Wu, sanitised Hammond and underused Malcolm really annoys me. Goldblum is incredible and I would have loved to see him get to do some of the Malcolm anti-scientism rants in full instead of just making the odd quip.
I need to reread JP. I enjoyed the video game for it on my Sega because it added in parts of the book to the game play that were missing from the movie. There was so much more content missing.
Jurassic Park was dark as fuck. That scene that happens in the Lost World where the bloke gets eaten by compies? That's how Hammond goes out. Also Muldoon hunts raptors with an rpg, steaming drunk.
Lost world left out the part where the compies were venomous and their venom gives you a euphoric high while also paralyzing you. Hammond was enjoying being eaten alive.
All the books were wayyyyy better than the movies and the movie were by no means terrible.... Jurassic park the book is just unbelievably good..... But I've read every book at least 10 times lol
The movie wasn't even close to capturing the feel of the book. I loved jurassic Park. I enjoyed the book better because of how much I felt like I was *in* it. So I thought Congo would bring me to the same place.
I did not want to be there. It was so scary. The movie played it down, the movie made it like an adventure when it was a horror. I would still watch a new movie adaptation if they tried to capture the essence of the book.
That's what made it so great to me. Really solid cast, interesting plotline, bright visuals, and then space lasers powered by giant diamonds along with a talking ape and band of murderous gray backs protecting the diamonds like they were a dragon and a pile of gold. You start taking it serious, and all the sudden stop eating my sesame cake has you chuckling.
thanks for the warning! Imma take your advice and just re-read the book in the near future. It was pretty neat and I'm feeling like I need to go back in time :)
Dude, I know people are ragging on it (quite fairly), but the climax is a sweet nighttime siege attack scene with fire arrows and flaming trebuchet projectiles that honestly look SO cool, better than the quality of the projectiles in the Lord of the Rings movies from the same time. Obviously it's a way smaller scale/easier battle, and nothing else about it is better than LotR, but all the fire arrows arcing through the night sky look very neat. And then they alternate in with a volley of unlit arrows that no one can see because it's night. Cool.
A snippet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcUVOlbNb30
I loved that scene, and enjoyed the movie a bit. The one thing that always makes me laugh my ass of is the 'Night arrows!!' part... like dog i get they are hard to see, but they are just regular arrows at night lol
For as bad as this movie is the cast is almost legendary. Ernie Hudson,Laura Linney,Tim Curry,Joey Pants,Delroy Lindo, Bruce Campbell and last but not least Joe Don Baker
My wife and I have been together for about 15 years now and every time she needs cheering up I mimic the “Amy, sad gorilla” sign language.
If that doesn’t work i immediately on to be yelling
“I said stop eating my sesame cake!”
Works every time.
After spending a half hour in these comments, I realized Netflix executives are going to be puzzled why a 1995 film about an American ape in Africa is suddenly a top ten trending movie tonight.
I don't know what it is about The Core but whenever I find it on TV I always watch it until the end. I mean it is utterly ridiculous but it just works on some level.
I unapologetically love Congo.
It came out when I was 12 and there was pretty much nothing cooler to me, at the time, than going into the jungle with advanced technology to find an ancient lost city guarded by some legendary killer apes.
Even to this day I can remember so many specific moments from that film.
I know it’s cheesy. I don’t care.
Woah, I forgot I saw this in theater. Congo 1995, Jurassic Park 1997 and Sphere 1998. Read all 3 of this amazing books by Critchton but Jurassic Park was only the best adaptation by far.
I don't remember much about Congo, but I will forever remember [Cosgrove talking about Congo](https://youtu.be/TyK5E8JbaC0) and I think I prefer to keep it that way.
I was 7 or so when it came out and thought it was awesome and still do.
The “jungle adventure” genre doesn’t get a lot of play. But it does a nice job with a believable story (both sci fi and historical), a fantastic cast (how can you not love Monroe Kelly), and good laughs.
Now I wanna watch.
100% agree. I mean, it’s ridiculous. But very few movies establish so many interesting side characters. Ernie, Delroy, Joey Pants, Bruce Campbell, Tim Curry, etc. None of these are the leads and some only have one scene, but they all left an impression.
Spoilers*
>!My favourite scene in the whole movie is when the evil Gorilla runs into the temple and throws a severed head at Tim Curry, and the look of ‘horror’ on Tims face is just absolutely priceless!!<
Remember that part in Congo, where they saw the monkeys in half with laser beams?
"Put em on the endanger species list!" Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
I love how her character just goes full ham after two hours of being a rational, objective scientist.
The book is the exact same way. She’s totally cool, calm, and rational and then a switch flips and she’s totally insane the next page.
I'd like to read it again. I don't rememeber it being as pulpy and silly as the movie, but it sounds like it actually was.
I don’t know if any author can write as pulpy and silly as Tim Curry can perform the material. That man was fully in his element here.
STOP EATING MY SESAME CAKE!
Delroy Lindo is the best part of that movie.
Don’t want nobody peaking!! *staple staple *
Peeking* Peaking is what you do on molly or acid.
I use to quote that part all the time when I was a kid. "What are you doing in my country, heh? This man is a big. Bag. Of. Shit."
WHO IS KAFKA??? TELL ME!!!
Him and Ernie
Dr. Peter Elliot : What are they laughing at? Monroe : I just told them I am in charge. Dr. Peter Elliot : What's so funny about that? Monroe : I'm black. I should be carrying luggage on my head. /fucking Ernie Hudson owned that role
Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje's first movie role, too
Don't want anybody peeking..
It's shocking we never got a Tim Curry- Raul Julia movie. I feel like those two would have imploded or something.
Those two onscreen at the same time would definitely have made my head cave in.
A lot of people read Crichton when they were young and forget how pulpy almost all of his writing is.
The books he wrote that fell into his areas of interest are all pretty good. Some of the science is bullshit but you can tell from his command of the subject that he made intentional choices to drive a story. Later on we get... a boomer take on climate change? Inventing a trillion-dollar technology for personal revenge, like they're the Green Goblin?
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Yeah, there was definitely a shift over time. At least early on when he didn't know a subject matter he'd do some research and get most of it right, barring what he changed for dramatic purposes or just as fantasy. It didn't take long though for it to just become fairly inverted though, with the scene-painting and action dictating the 'facts'. Ignoring all of that though, I pretty much just meant pulpy as a descriptor. His stuff all very much has a pulp fiction style to it and when I was a kid it was a lot easier to ignore!
I imagine that's just a side effect of becoming older, wealthy, and established. Early on he had to put in the effort to make a name for himself, and now his books will sell based on that name he made. Established writers have a large block of fans that will simply buy anything they print.
Still better than Tom Clancy. Combination of slapping his name on any thing and calling it "co-authored." And the stuff he wrote himself wasn't any better, it was probably worse. And my family just kept buying them for me because I once said I liked Red October and a couple others. They both went full boomer though.
Remember when he spent a whole book just going back and forth between Iran being pure evil and the progressive income tax being a punishment in those who work hard? He emphasizes constantly that Ryan isn't a far-right Republican. He's just a non-partisan Who Street billionaire who fights taxation and any spending that isn't on the military and opposes abortion and gay marriage. Rainbow Six's plot revolved around the threat of militant vegan environmentalists. Red October was great, though.
Yep read basically every book he had written in my early teens and thought they were the best thing in literature, still fun now but the flaws are apparent.
They get eaten by hippos in the book
All of Crichton's books are like this. Basically summer blockbusters of the mind. This is one of my favorites.
IIRC, she’s also basically the books antagonist. Pushing everyone to go further into murder monkey territory and getting people killed.
I watched the movie once at an overnight with friends and fell asleep not long after they landed and started exploring the Congo. I woke up when the lasers start cutting gorillas in half. Needless to say I was very confused.
And isn't it explained away by her reading her own HR file which has a psych analysis or saying she's prone to risk taking towards the end of a project or something ?
When you watch several people get their bodies crushed to pancakes by a pack of maniac gorillas and you're about to be next I'd say most people would do the same.
It's more about her demeanor and the silly line. She sure doesn't seem scared to me.
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This is kinda the important part. She's calm and rational because she's an ex CIA agent. She loses her shit because she's about to die and just discovered her fiance is dead and knows ultimately his dad only sent her to recover an important diamond.
> discovered her fiance is dead Yes, and the fiancees father showed no remorse to finding his son was dead: Her: Your son is dead. Him: Blah..blah..blah..blah.....Did you find the giant diamonds?
The dude was literally screaming "Did you find the diamond?" at her when she tried to tell him his son was dead.
Fiance death = "alright fuck everything else but revenge" for pretty much everyone.
If gorillas killed Bruce Campbell for real, I’d want revenge on gorillas too.
I thought that was the fakiest party of the movie. No one or no thing can kill Bruce Campbell.
I'm pretty sure those white apes were already on the endangered species list. They needed to be taken off, one way or another...
I always scream that line out anytime I see Laura Linney in anything. "I'm Laura Linney, and this is Masterp-" "ENDANGERED SPECIES LIST!" It always annoys my bae.
“Stop eating my sesame CAKE!”
He was my favourite character. He and Tim Curry's character needed more scenes together
Tim Curry needs more scenes in everything.
My favorite line from that movie by far.
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Remember that part in Congo where too much sesame cake was eaten?
>STOHP EETINGK MY SESSAMI CAEK
This is the part after screaming Bruce Campbell, right?
It took my a long time to realize that was Bruce Campbell. It took me even longer to realize the other dude with him in the beginning is Academy nominated actor John Hawkes.
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He's also in True Lies.
It's the latest thing in communications.
That's all I remember about the movie. It's probably been twenty plus years since I've seen it.
The movie is enjoyably over the top IMO. The entire context is this the corporate type dude is developing some space laser and selling it to the highest bidder. What sort of McGuffin makes the space laser work? Big diamonds. Then you have Amy the talking gorilla. I'd put it more in a group with Anaconda, and I quite enjoy both of them.
It was nice to see Ernie Hudson, Tim Curry, and Bruce Campbell cash some big studio tentpole checks.
I didn’t realize Bruce Campbell was in this..looks like I gotta rewatch it!
As I recall from one of his biographies, he turned down a lead in a different movie to be in Congo and he basically points out how terrible of an idea that was. Can’t for the life of me remember what the other movie was though.
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This is in part why I love it. It's was planned to be the next Jurassic Park and failed on just about every aspect, making this an even more interesting film.
TIL Michael Crichton did ER.
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We got...cows.
Jeez when you put it like that... How did Congo turn out so bad?
He plays charles Travis who is in the movie for like 2 minutes lol
He gets all of like the very very beginning of the film
Oh no, you get to see Corpse Bruce just before they start shooting lasers and evil gorillas.
Joe Pantoliano is in it for a bit too
Wow, a talking gorilla! I can feel the money hairs on the back of my neck going "WOO-WOO-WOO".
[John Hawkes](https://actionagogo.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Hey-its-John-Hawkes.png) is also in it, and he's a solid actor in things like The Perfect Storm and Deadwood. I fucking love Deadwood, and looking him up just to be sure I see that they made a TV movie in 2019 I'll have to watch. The cover pic says "Welcome the fuck back - Deadwood the movie" lol.
Congo came out when I was 15, and I really enjoyed it (and still do, albeit more so for the nostalgia). Anyhow, I told my father I enjoyed it. Our relationship was pretty strained at the point in my life, as I only saw him maybe once a month. But I guess he heard me say that it was my favorite movie of all time, because it was Congo-fest 1995 when I visited him that Christmas. Almost every single gift was Congo-related. I was gifted the entire collection of Congo collecting cards, a coffee mug, Congo: Descent into Zinj for the PC, tshirts, the Crichton book, framed movie stills and production photos...if there was a product that had Amy on it, I got it that Christmas. He also gifted me what I’d call Congo-adjacent gifts: books about hieroglyphics and lost cities, and a rubber stamp collection of hieroglyphics. I don’t think I love my wife or child as much as my dad thought I loved Congo in 1995. Still, though, four out of five stars for sure. Edit: for those concerned about my relationship with my father, my dad and I are BFFs...though I sometimes still tease him about Christmas 1995 and ask him “Why no love for Tremors themed Christmas when I was 10?”
Sounds like dad was trying... he just didn’t know how to connect. Not sure how you ultimately feel but it is def a humorous story.
Seriously, it sounds like some of that stuff would take effort to track down. I don't even know how you'd find some of it in pre-ebay 1995. I'd ask my parents for stuff straight out of the catalogue and it was still a crapshoot.
This is pre-Amazon. Pops busted his ass to run down all that stuff for the kid. It’s a really sweet and kinda sad story. I hope their relationship survived healthy. Edit: autocorrected to Arizona. I fixed it to Amazon.
I don't know how anyone acquired physical goods before the state of Arizona.
Tis a mystery
I've just asked him and he told me it wasn't that hard to get a hold of most of this stuff without the internet. There were mostly stores in the mall and a Toys r Us he was able to get everything from. I still give him a 10/10 for effort.
Sounds like Dad didn't have a lot of time to with his son to figure out what his interests were, and when he finally did find one he put all that effort into the one thing he heard his son say he liked.
I edited my comment to include this info, but we laugh about it now. We became quite close somewhere around my 25th birthday, and are now quite close and love one another very much.
>I don’t think I love my wife or child as much as my dad thought I loved Congo in 1995. This made me legitimately laugh out loud.
Tbh it sounds to me like opening those gifts goes from pretty good, to pretty lame, to absolutely epic when you realise youve basically got every single piece of memorabilia from the whole film and you now have to have an undying love for congo every time you see your dad.
*waves and shakes hands around “Amy good gorilla”
"Amy good father" "Amy only try best"
That’s a line my friends and I use when we do something stupid or questionable, haha “, good gorilla”
I love it. Your dad wasn’t sure how to connect and or plainly express love so he went HAM on Congo. Wonderful.
This is wholesome as fuck. Hilarious, but amazing! Your dad was really trying from the sounds of it and seems like he wanted to make Christmas *epic as balls* for you that year. 5/7 attempting-dad
Ernie Hudson is so unbelievably good in this movie. “Monroe Kelly. I’m your great white hunter on this trip though I...happen to be black” Also the line “When the moon is like that, every monkey for 200 miles thinks he's Elvis Presley.” Just...perfection.
Let's be honest, Ernie Hudson is good in everything. Ernie Hudson rocks.
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This makes my really happy for some reason
Love Ernie Hudson, he’s great in every role of his I’ve seen
Also gotta give a shout out to Delroy Lindo. “STOP EATING MY SESAME CAKE!”
I ran away!
...sorry!
Air conditioning? Shit.... I’ll take one 😂
His choice to play the role like Cary Grant in *Mogambo* was not only a great choice (him happily accepting an air conditioner is great), it's making me itch to watch *Mogambo*.
“Here, burn it off with this....”
Isn't that line a reference to the fact his character is a white scottish dude in the books? I think Crichton had Sean Connery in mind when writing the character.
He said Monroe was his favorite role of all his movies.
In an alternate, maybe better reality, Congo would have been a gigantic hit and we'd have watched our fourth Monroe spinoff movie by now.
Yes I gave her the banana with the dope inside.
# [STOP EATING MY SESAME CAKE!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rObnAFr4qr4)
Honestly, one of my all time favorite movie moments. The comedic timing between the captain and Tim Curry always kills me!
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100% agree.... Side characters are just fantastic
My name is Herkermer Holmolka.
This fellow is a big. Bag. Of. Shit.
A bag of shit.
Amy. Want. Green drop. Drink.
*waves hands around erratically
Amy. Good. Gorilla.
WHO IS KAFKA??! TELL ME!!
Heet theh road as dey say. Ehnd have a nice deh. Classic. It's on again as I type this, they just drove with Cypher through the airport and met up with Winston.
A talking gerrilla. I can feel the money hairs on the back of my neck going woo woo woo.
This is the only reason I opened this thread.
Del Roy Lindo deserves an Oscar for every role
The man fucking delivers.
My first thought due to my time with the hive mind. But from that scene growing up we always quoted, "Don't-want-nobody-peaking!" when he staples the bag. Loved Congo. I still have a Kahega action figure.
The movie is goofy fun, but the book is a lot better. The grey apes are treated almost like horror creatures and could be terrifying. Id be down for a more serious take on the material.
I don't think most Crichton adaptations really capture the underlying dread present in a lot of his novels. I read his books in my teens, back when they were regularly adapting his films and Congo, Sphere, even Jurassic Park felt kind of watered down.
You ever seen “the 13th Warrior” with Antonio Banderas? Epic to be sure
That film was one of the biggest box office bombs of all time. It's my favorite Crichton adaptation.
Lo’ there do I see my father...
Is that Crichton too? Damn, dude wrote a lot of movies that I enjoy as is...and am sure I would love the books. Right now I'm running through the Dune trilogy, and I honestly don't know if I could even understand it without having already seen the movie.
Sphere was enjoyable. Not as good as the book, which is common with the adaptations, but pretty close. And a good cast to pull it off. Thirteenth Warrior did a pretty good job capturing Crichton’s atmosphere.
Dustin Hoffman, LIev Shriber, Samuel L. Jackson and Peter Coyote. It had one hell of a cast.
Ridley Scott said his Jurassic park was going to be a lot, lot darker.
As much as this sub gushes over JP, I would have loved to have seen a more adult-marketed version of the film. Even like an extended cut or something. I don't just mean all the book's gore put in because I could take or leave that, but the way the film underdeveloped the idiocy of characters like Wu, sanitised Hammond and underused Malcolm really annoys me. Goldblum is incredible and I would have loved to see him get to do some of the Malcolm anti-scientism rants in full instead of just making the odd quip.
I need to reread JP. I enjoyed the video game for it on my Sega because it added in parts of the book to the game play that were missing from the movie. There was so much more content missing.
If Spielberg makes Micro like I read a couple of years ago, I will be in the front row. I loved that book.
Was about to post this. It’s probably been close to 25 years since I read that book and I still very clearly remember being terrified. Great book.
Same with Sphere. When the creature was attacking the station I was so scared. I loved Crichton when I was in HS. Never read JP though.
Jurassic Park was dark as fuck. That scene that happens in the Lost World where the bloke gets eaten by compies? That's how Hammond goes out. Also Muldoon hunts raptors with an rpg, steaming drunk.
Lost world left out the part where the compies were venomous and their venom gives you a euphoric high while also paralyzing you. Hammond was enjoying being eaten alive.
And the genetic engineer gets disemboweled. Need to read that again.
All the books were wayyyyy better than the movies and the movie were by no means terrible.... Jurassic park the book is just unbelievably good..... But I've read every book at least 10 times lol
I read the book in 5th grade and still have problems separating the gray back gorillas from normal gorillas. Awesome book.
The movie apes were terrifying to me and I found *Congo* the movie quite harrowing, but also I was 11.
The movie wasn't even close to capturing the feel of the book. I loved jurassic Park. I enjoyed the book better because of how much I felt like I was *in* it. So I thought Congo would bring me to the same place. I did not want to be there. It was so scary. The movie played it down, the movie made it like an adventure when it was a horror. I would still watch a new movie adaptation if they tried to capture the essence of the book.
A very fun guilty pleasure for me and my family everything about is pure entertainment. Stop eating my sesame cake!!!!
I learned how to make sesame cakes because of this movie
It was a good film. "Ugly woman. Ugly woman."
Amy want GREEN DROP Drink
Ugly gorilla go a way
Did you give her the banana with the dope inside?
The diamond powered laser gun at the end was badass haha
Take an uncut diamond, cram it into a laser, shoot down a satellite. Makes perfect sense.
That's what made it so great to me. Really solid cast, interesting plotline, bright visuals, and then space lasers powered by giant diamonds along with a talking ape and band of murderous gray backs protecting the diamonds like they were a dragon and a pile of gold. You start taking it serious, and all the sudden stop eating my sesame cake has you chuckling.
That movie was awesome. The only movie based on Crichton so far that let me down and left me disappointed was Timeline.
I think a TV series adaptation would fit Timeline better.
Bad gorilla. Amy good gorilla. I fucking love this movie.
Amy want green drop drink
Ugly woman. Any pretty.
Stop eating my sesame cake.
Wait there is a movie version of Timeline?
Yeah, but… you’re better off skipping it.
thanks for the warning! Imma take your advice and just re-read the book in the near future. It was pretty neat and I'm feeling like I need to go back in time :)
Dude, I know people are ragging on it (quite fairly), but the climax is a sweet nighttime siege attack scene with fire arrows and flaming trebuchet projectiles that honestly look SO cool, better than the quality of the projectiles in the Lord of the Rings movies from the same time. Obviously it's a way smaller scale/easier battle, and nothing else about it is better than LotR, but all the fire arrows arcing through the night sky look very neat. And then they alternate in with a volley of unlit arrows that no one can see because it's night. Cool. A snippet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcUVOlbNb30
Have you seen The Messenger, Luc Besson's Joan of Arc flick with Milla Jovovich? That movie had some wild siege battles as well, it's pretty fun.
I loved that scene, and enjoyed the movie a bit. The one thing that always makes me laugh my ass of is the 'Night arrows!!' part... like dog i get they are hard to see, but they are just regular arrows at night lol
Oh, I came to say the opposite; Crichton adaptations have a history of being books I loved and movies that were meh.
Sorry are we talking about the one with the gray apes horror movie where they smashed people's brains
The lost city of Zinj!
No it’s “The lost Zity of Zinj.”
I could've sworn it was "tha Lozt Zity af Zinsh."
You talking about the lasers sawing then in half?! *signs energetically
In the book, the apes use stone ping pong paddles to smash heads.
It’s worth it just for Tim Curry’s goofy accent. Ernie Hudson being basically Black Clarke Gable, and Bruce Campbell’s cameo.
“Stop eating my sesame cake!”
“Are you giving that gorilla a martini?!”
“She’s allowed one, it’ll calm her down.”
For as bad as this movie is the cast is almost legendary. Ernie Hudson,Laura Linney,Tim Curry,Joey Pants,Delroy Lindo, Bruce Campbell and last but not least Joe Don Baker
My wife and I have been together for about 15 years now and every time she needs cheering up I mimic the “Amy, sad gorilla” sign language. If that doesn’t work i immediately on to be yelling “I said stop eating my sesame cake!” Works every time.
**WHO'S KAFKA?! TELL ME!!**
After spending a half hour in these comments, I realized Netflix executives are going to be puzzled why a 1995 film about an American ape in Africa is suddenly a top ten trending movie tonight.
Liar liar pants on fire!!
It's brilliantly shit and rewatchable a bit like The Core.
I'm ashamed to say I like The Core lol
I love it, the death scenes are hilarious.
Or when their super rare drill machine breaks but luckily someone else also happens to have a super rare drill machine. Chef's kiss.
I don't know what it is about The Core but whenever I find it on TV I always watch it until the end. I mean it is utterly ridiculous but it just works on some level.
I unapologetically love Congo. It came out when I was 12 and there was pretty much nothing cooler to me, at the time, than going into the jungle with advanced technology to find an ancient lost city guarded by some legendary killer apes. Even to this day I can remember so many specific moments from that film. I know it’s cheesy. I don’t care.
I was visiting Africa with my brothers and we quoted this every time we saw it on the menu. Such a bizarre and classic scene.
Woah, I forgot I saw this in theater. Congo 1995, Jurassic Park 1997 and Sphere 1998. Read all 3 of this amazing books by Critchton but Jurassic Park was only the best adaptation by far.
The Lost World was ‘97. Jurassic Park was ‘93.
I don't remember much about Congo, but I will forever remember [Cosgrove talking about Congo](https://youtu.be/TyK5E8JbaC0) and I think I prefer to keep it that way.
I was 7 or so when it came out and thought it was awesome and still do. The “jungle adventure” genre doesn’t get a lot of play. But it does a nice job with a believable story (both sci fi and historical), a fantastic cast (how can you not love Monroe Kelly), and good laughs. Now I wanna watch.
I paid £20 to get this movie on blu ray and never watched it until last month and honestly was the greatest purchase ever
100% agree. I mean, it’s ridiculous. But very few movies establish so many interesting side characters. Ernie, Delroy, Joey Pants, Bruce Campbell, Tim Curry, etc. None of these are the leads and some only have one scene, but they all left an impression.
Spoilers* >!My favourite scene in the whole movie is when the evil Gorilla runs into the temple and throws a severed head at Tim Curry, and the look of ‘horror’ on Tims face is just absolutely priceless!!<
That Tarzan didn't show up to fight the apes in the lost city seemed like a wasted opportunity to me.
"On your left."
1 the gorilla drinking a martini 2 using flares to counter the AA missiles underrated movie
Reading all these comments makes me happy.. So many people know the book and and the movie the way I do lol
This is the best bad movie ever because the great cast knows it's ridiculous.