The Ongoing Travels of King Kong

King Kong has been sighted in Bangladesh!

Yes, it’s an unofficial remake of King Kong, made in Bangladesh and released on 28 May 2010.

Banglar King Kong (Bangladesh-2010; dir. Iftekar Jahan)

Synopsis:

King Kong comes to Bangladesh in search of love, and finds it. (YouTube)

Kong might find love but so does the hero apparently:

Described as “comical action”, the film apparently doesn’t take things too seriously and from the trailer below contains all the singing and dancing and mugging at the camera that we might expect from a Bollywood-style Kong.

[Note: “Bollywood-style” means “in the style of Bollywood movies”. I never said it WAS a Bollywood film. I’m well aware that Bangladesh is not in India and hence not part of the Bollywood filmmaking scene.]

Trailer:

Produced by Sharmin Osman for the government-sponsored FDC (the Bangladesh Film Development Corporation), Banglar King Kong appeared with very little fanfare and apart from the pictures on display here and the trailer, Undead Backbrain’s main source of information is a small press release/article [see it here] — which is rather unfortunate as we don’t speak the Bangla language. However, with the assistance of correspondent Arafat Kazi we have extracted what information from it we could.

Arafat Kazi says that in the press release (or rather an article on the movie from a local newspaper), the director, Iftekar Jahan, “brags about the use of advanced CGI in the movie”.

“He also mentions that the gorilla suit was purchased from America, as were certain software packages used in the production. The movie has been shot in remote Bangladeshi locations (Teknaf, Rangamati, St. Martin and Cox’s Bazaar) and the main actors are: Munmun, Danny Sedak, Shamim Osman, Afzal Sharif and Kazi Hayat.” (Kazi)

A touch of the daikaiju Kong, some Jacksonesque face-scarring, colourful clothes, cross-species romance, song and dance, bananas. Looks like all the elements are there for a good time, eh?

As an addendum here is a rather effective image of Purnima Cinema Hall, Farmgate in Dhaka, where Banglar King Kong was shown, taken from a passing car. Click on it to enlarge. [Source]

It was also shown at ‘Jonaki’ cinema in Paltan.

More pictures in the Gallery at the end of this article.

Post Kong Kongs:

The iconic giant ape — created in 1933 by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, utilising the stop-motion brilliance of the great Willis O’Brien — has had a somewhat checkered career beyond the original classic. Sure there was a major official remake by John Guillermin and Dino De Laurentiis in 1976, where he was played by Rick Baker in a gorilla suit (with a cameo from a very dodgy full-scale animatronic model) and the even more lavish and expensive one by Peter Jackson in 2005 (utilising state-of-the-art CGI), but over time he’s also appeared in less respected form in various countries worldwide.

His international career began early in Japan in 1933 with a short film Wasei Kingu Kongu [lit. Japanese King Kong] (directed by Torajiro Saito) and a few years later in Edo ni arawareta Kingu Kongu [lit. King Kong Appears in Edo] (1938; directed by Sôya Kumagai). These films are lost now, but we do know that Kong was played by a man in a suit and from available stills did pretty much what he did in New York — grabbed the girl and rampaged. Japan took another shot at reviving Kongs film career in 1962 with Kingu Kongu tai Gojira [trans. King Kong vs Godzilla]. Directed by the great Godzilla director Ishiro Honda, this Kong became daikaiju-sized in order to have a chance of standing up to the Big G, and the film was extremely successful in its home country. Unfortunately it was completely mangled in the translation to American screens; Thomas Montgomery’s 1963 re-cut, King Kong vs Godzilla, turned a genuine comedy into a laughable and notorious crap-cinema abomination. In both versions, though, the Kong suit was rather risible.

But there have been quite a few international, low-budget and no doubt unauthorised Kongs over the years, even apart from giant ape movies that don’t use the name. Here are some:

Kingukongu no gyakushu [trans. King Kong’s Counterattack] (1967; dir. Ishiro Honda) [aka King Kong Escapes (1968)]
King Kong (India-1962; dir. Babubhai Mistri)
Tarzan and King Kong (India-1965; dir. A. Shamsheer)
A*P*E [aka King Kongui daeyeokseub; Attack of the Giant Horny Gorilla] (South Korea/US, 1976; dir. Paul Leder)
Queen Kong (UK/Italy-1976; dir. Frank Agrama)
King Kong Lives! (US-1986; dir. John Guillermin and Charles McCracken) — sequel to the 1976 remake
The Mighty Kong (US-1998; animation; dir. Art Scott)
Kongula: Affengigant des Grauens [aka I was a Teenage King Kong] (Germany-2004/5?; dir. Ralj Lorenz) — note: this one was never completed
Kong: King of Atlantis (US-2005; animation; dir. Patrick Archibald)
not to forget the Asylum’s King of the Lost World (US-2005; dir. Leigh Scott), which manages to rip off both King Kong and The Lost World at the same time.