The Dogg Zzone by 1900HOTDOG - Dogg Zzone 9000 - Episode 89, Congo with Lydia Bugg

Episode Date: August 31, 2022

Brockway is putting a team together to find a legendary diamond. On apes, it's Seanbaby! On lasers, it's Lydia Bugg! No further things are required! Welcome to the Congo podcast.

One nine hundred hot dog. One nine hundred hot dog. Our podcast slams with maximum hype. Say hot dog podcast work. Yeah. When you taste that nitrate power, you're in the dog zone for an hour. Come on.

You know the number. One nine hundred. One nine hundred hot dog. One nine zero zero. One nine hundred hot dog. One nine hundred. One nine hundred hot dog. One nine zero zero zero.

Yeah. Nine thousand. Welcome to the Dog Zone Nine Thousand, the official podcast of one nine hundred hot dog, America's last comedy website, Rest in Peace Comedy. I'm a kind of European that never existed, Robert Brockway.

And with me is my partner who communicates exclusively via PowerGlove. It's Sean, baby. I'm so bad. Perfect. You need a little more robot. I'd be like, I'm so bad. So bad.

And our guest, the sparkling diamond at the heart of our podcast, which we use to power a laser that burns animals. It's Lydia Bug. Hello. Thank you so much for having me on this podcast. That is perfectly impossible. So it's great.

It's here. If you hadn't guessed by now, this is the Congo podcast. There's somebody in our discord that does a ritual every single week for us to do this. It worked. You did it. You did it.

Oh, I didn't know it was so in demand. And I swear to God, if you didn't do it today, I'm going to pull the podcast. I'm going to rip it right down. We'll just put 90 minutes of fucking dead air on the internet. Everybody will know you failed specifically. Anyway, now that we have just specifically called out one of our fans and sicked the others on them,

we figured it was time because Lydia, there's something very special about Lydia. She had not seen the 1995 ape road trip comedy Congo, but she had read the book like a nerd. Isn't that right? Yes. I got really into Michael Crichton and read all of his books. I would like five or six Michael Crichton books in a row

and then never read another one again. And like the second one I read was Congo and I loved it. I thought it was a really good book. I liked it too. One of my favorite Michael Crichton's maybe. You read it too, Sean? I do. I think I've read all of Michael Crichton's like pre-1999 probably.

Was that before or after you saw the movie? Before. I saw it. So you have the same experience as Lydia, just more time to process. I was not expecting the lasers. And I think my first reaction was like, no, yes, like the lasers was a good choice.

Like I don't usually like stuff to get changed so dramatically. I'm not like that type of nerd, but if there's a change that big, I'm like, why did they do that? And then I realized, oh, because then they could shoot all the apes with that laser. And I thought, yeah, that's a good decision. Why did they do all eight of these subplots at the same time?

Why would they do that? See, for me, the movie kind of gaslit me into thinking like, was the book bad? I don't remember. And then I like looked up the Wikipedia plot for the book and read it and tried to like remember the book better. And I'm like, no, no, no, much of this did not happen in the book.

Certainly Tim Curry's accent did not happen in the book. And that's why it's, it's lesser. I mean, my God, I kind of live in fear of exactly what happened to Michael Crichton here and that he wrote just his damnedest. He wrote the best he could. And then somebody else wrote the screenplay and did it so much better, at least that ending.

That ending is just like, you got to be sitting in the theater watching that for the first time going fuck. Oh, fuck. Why didn't I put lasers in? I'm never working in this town again. This guy took it. He's Michael Crichton now.

Well, he wrote the book in 1980 and it took 15 years to get it made. But Fox actually optioned it before he finished the book. He's like, guys, I got an idea for a book about gorillas. And they're like, we're in and they were going to let him direct it. Like he was all on board. And then it just came,

it kept getting delayed because he demanded Amy be played by a real gorilla, which is insane. So that it just never happened. And eventually they just made it without him. But like how much better would the movie be without the gorilla puppet? Like he was right. It shouldn't.

It would have been better with a real gorilla. There's a few hints that this wasn't going to work. And then it's that nobody checked to see if a gorilla was even allowed to be in a movie for six years after giving him $1.5 million to write this movie. So it wasn't until like that was 1979 where he came up with an outline for the screenplay.

That's it. And it was so he and Sean Connery could work together again. He wrote Ernie Hudson's role just for Sean Connery. So if you're wondering why Ernie Hudson is Sean Connery in this movie, that's why. He's doing a weird Sean Connery impersonation. He's doing the best Sean Connery. Impression I have ever seen.

And he also, Michael Crichton also wanted to... You've got the tools and we've got the talent. He also wanted to... That's if Ernie Hudson was playing Sean Connery in Ghostbusters. That's the impression I was making. That's why that was so weird. So many layers to that, yeah.

It's going to skip right past it because I did not get it. I'm glad we screeched to a halt. Power perceived. There's power achieved. That's Ernie Hudson as Sean Connery. The principle. It's a big marshmallow ghost. I don't know why it's from...

Yeah, that's from Ghostbusters too. That's word for word, that line. That's what Sean Connery said. Nobody remembers Ghostbusters too. You can't prove me wrong. He wanted to riff on King Solomon's minds, but he was also very keen on research, on sign language for primates.

So he figured surely I'll find a way to work those two together. And that's how the outline for this movie came to be. When he pitched it, they bought it, and then six years went by as he insisted, we got to have a real gorilla for this, and everybody was like, I don't want to work with a real gorilla,

and they never entertained it. Finally, somebody was like, okay, we'll get a gorilla. And then only then in 1986, I have his quote here, we went into pre-production. So they started making the movie and discovered that there were no gorillas at all

anywhere in the world which were available for work in a film. There are some gorillas used in research. We attempted to hire them, and we couldn't. Gorillas aren't like chimps at all. They are an endangered species. That's Michael Crichton. I just like to imagine that they said no,

because they could speak in sign language, and they were like, I do not like Michael Crichton books. Amy, hate Michael Crichton. Hate Michael Crichton. Also, this nearly destroyed his entire mind. My favorite thing about Congo

is how much fun it looks like. I swear to God, when I saw the movie, hadn't read the book, had no idea. Everybody showed up here doing whatever accent they wanted. I'm convinced they just improvised not only all of their lines, but the entire story.

And it looks like a blast. Everybody's just having a whole lot of fun. I couldn't imagine a scenario in which this whole thing was carefully planned. But the $1.5 million they gave Michael Crichton to write this destroyed his mind immediately. And he said he became not only blocked up on this, but every project he retreated to an isolation tank.

And he spent hours and hours and days and days in this isolation tank, building the entire story for Congo while floating in a black void separated from his body. An experience which he describes as torment. I love the story.

It's like King Solomon's mind with gorillas. It's like they go to the jungle and there's some gorillas and there's treasure. He cracked it. Got it. On the way there's other hardships. I mean, yeah. What's cool about Michael Crichton's books is that he does like technical jargon

really well so that it sounds real. And it's actually interesting to read. But I don't know why you need to separate from your body to do that. It seems like that would be something that would just be you researching for hours and hours. It has to have been story stuff, right? That he was floating in this tank to do.

And the story of Congo is not great. It's the other stuff that makes it good. So he's just torturing himself for nothing. This is what it took. He had to remove himself from reality and come along with the void to come up with monkeys to have an adventure. Why would he tell anyone that?

I could see thinking, oh, my process is so interesting. But if you throw out everything good, which is what he must have done, or just like, hey, yeah, I put myself in this tank. They're like, right, but you just wrote King Solomon's mind. You're like... With gorillas. Yeah.

But that's the thing. It was the gorilla. Get in a pod. A weird pod. I have a little sympathy for him. Imagine just winging it in a meeting and you're like, ah, I got something. I got something like King Solomon with gorillas. And they're like $1.5 million.

Fuck. That is more than my idea is worth. What else is it about? I couldn't possibly imagine. You can't ask me that question. Eventually, he pulled the plug after that, after he realized, again, his actual quote, gorillas aren't like chimps at all.

They are an endangered species. It took him six years to realize that and he dropped it immediately. We were going to kill 11 of them. Minimum. They were going to hire them from research centers. They're like, yeah, you rent them out, right? But you guys...

We're not like hosting makeup on them. You can't screw around with our gorillas. But maybe I can. Benjamin Franklin, he's got anything to say about it. Do any of them know how to work a parachute? Just... Listen, I almost died in isolation tank. Did he just want a gorilla for Amy?

Because there are so many gorillas in this movie now that I'm thinking about it. Even the good gorillas, there's a whole... All gorillas. The most gorillas ever in a movie is what I want. He's not just like, I need a gorilla. He's like, I need 56 gorillas. And some of them have to be...

And a few of them have to get shoved into lava. Yeah, some of them have to be evil. He pulled the movie, he walked away. It was real gorilla or no gorilla, which is... this is the origin of that phrase, real gorilla or no gorilla. He offered the movie to Spielberg and even John Carpenter, who both struggled with it and decided Congo was too much for them.

And it finally went to this guy, Frank Marshall. He's not like some chump. He's one of the founders of Amblin, Steven Spielberg's home production company, who have done massive, skilled, really good, ambitious films. And the guy who wrote it was John Patrick Shanley. He won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 1988 in Moonstruck, which is a really good movie.

Oh yeah, I love Moonstruck. Yeah, Moonstruck. I lost my hand. I lost my wife. Johnny has his hand. Johnny has his wife. Now do it as Ernie Hudson as Sean Connery. I lost my hand.

I lost my hand. I am becoming a monster. I lost my wife. It's like a harmony. Beautiful. And this was only like a couple of years after that, 1988-20 started work on this that took a very long time. He wasn't like burnt out selling his soul to Hollywood.

This was fresh off of the thing that won him the Oscar. And he went and he wrote this. And Frank Marshall, who knew better, directed it. And it was just, and then they were convinced that it was specifically the ape technology you see in this movie, the final product of this movie, that convinced them now is the time. They saw Jurassic Park and they just said,

okay, surely we can do that with apes. Did you find the LA Times story in your article where they like revealed the ape to the executives? Yes. It says, okay, I don't know how much I believe, but it says that they just said, meet our new star and open the door. And an ape came in and all of the studio executives like

jumped up and kind of backed away like, oh shit, loose gorilla. I knew the state would come. I've been prepared. I also have that in my notes. They can't possibly be true. But what a world it must have been where anyone anywhere believed it and wrote it down in an article that these studio executives thought the gorilla was real.

The same gorilla we see in the movie though, you're sure. The one that looks like a mockery of gorillas. That looks like it's science making fun of gorillas. And this is a person who lives in Hollywood and is used to seeing animatronics like all the time didn't recognize this as an animatronic. This, the gorilla.

It's incredible. And perhaps the biggest twist of Congo is that it cost $50 million to make, which in 1995, money was a billion dollars. A lot. A very expensive movie. And it only grossed $152 million. It was a massive, massive success.

Can you imagine going to see that expecting Jurassic Park and getting that gorilla? And then telling all of your friends, you have to go see this. It's the best movie I've ever seen. Yeah. It just, that kind of success. I remember making fun of it so much.

We left the theater just thinking that was such a shit movie, but really enjoying how the big decisions, like the lasers especially, just like, they threw an ape out of a fucking plane. Oh my God. That shot is when they jump out of the plane with the ape. I'll remember that forever. See, I rented it when me and my friends watched it.

Again, expecting a horror movie or something. And I laughed so hard, I feel like I might have passed out a few times. And it was just instant love. And I think this was 1996. And I've been completely in love ever since. It's no wonder it made 100. Nobody knows what the fuck I'm talking about.

I don't even people my age when I talk about Congo. Nobody's seen it. And yet it was like the biggest film in the world for a time. Hollywood should have just been beating. Well, they were beating monkeys to death for this movie. But they should have been beating the premise to death. It should have just been nothing but women lasering apes for like six years after this.

God, I wish. Do you think that they thought it was a little bit of a comedy at least though? Like there were definitely jokes in it. And they let Tim Curry do that voice. They might have assumed that everybody was losing their shit. They're like, oh, that one liner really landed. Instead of just the ape doing a flip.

They might have just been like, they must still be reeling from Loreline saying like, put them on the endangered species list. Yeah. Or like when the guy gets a leech on his penis, I'm like, OK, that's a joke. Like they're probably still thinking about that. That's why they're laughing.

Yeah. Has that 90s thing where like every line is kind of trying to be too big and too like zany and funny, but like the tone of the movie is not that. So again, it's just it's it's so weird. The tone of the movie is very much we're going to save these noble creatures. Yeah.

And then there there are like two noble creatures that they they propose to save. And then there are I want to say like 50 that they just laser into oblivion. Which are more endangered, which are more endangered. They're the most endangered like new species. Fucking see you in hell. I was going to talk about how this movie opens on Bruce

Campbell's expedition and it has like this very long like glamour sequence of satellites and communication towers because making a phone call from the jungle in 1995 is something that like audience would have been like pure science fiction. Fuck on. Get out of here. So like, OK, we'll we'll build this world so you will believe

us that you can make a phone call from the jungle. And they show Bruce Campbell like demonstrating the laser early. He's like, hey, check out this gun. You put the diamond in the gun. Shoot the laser round off into the jungle. And I'm like, this is I think it's probably the best to check off his gun in cinema.

Like having Bruce Campbell blasting a laser gun for no reason in the jungle. The logic of that scene. Like they skip right past it and you're like Bruce Campbell rules. It's a jungle phone call. Oh my God. They skip right past it and rightfully so because what he

does is he finds what he says is chemically flawless blue diamond sand. And that's what he puts in the gun. It fires off a laser. But when they're talking about it, they need the clarity of the diamond to be this perfect to like focus it as a lens. So they've already established that this this laser eats diamonds for fuel.

Like they're like right off. Perfect. I'm on board. And in the book, there are way more chapters about that satellite system and the communications from the jungle than there are anything about the killer monkeys, by the way, like, like three fourths of the book, I swear, is them just explaining the satellite technology.

And then there's a chapter that's like, oh, and there were also evil monkeys. And then it's the end of the book. Yeah. That's Michael Crichton. All right. That's Michael Crichton. Got into his research.

I do like how when he's making the phone call back, I like it cuts out and in that time it cuts out. Bruce Campbell swims to find the secret Congo ruins gets ambushed by apes. The whole camp is torn apart. And then the feed comes back on. So like just in like the time the phone goes out and comes back on like Bruce Campbell has his own whole movie.

And like, it's so funny to compare that to the book where Michael Crichton is like, how about seven chapters of satellite dish technology? I went to my local science center and got all the information. So it's just a it's a good demonstration of how much better the movie is in the book because it's also just a tragedy because the reason that whole thing happens is Bruce Campbell auditioned for the role of the doctor, the main guy.

And he was given this small like trophy part instead. Oh, come on. That's the only that's the only thing wrong with Congo is that there was a version of it in some sliders universe. If we could hop through the portal, we could we could find the one difference being Bruce Campbell was the lead in Congo and it made $600 million. He would have had sex with the gorilla.

That's I think why they made the right choice. I mean, they're constantly implying that the dude had sex with the gorilla. They say it like 12 times and I would definitely I if before Bruce Campbell, I'd be like, yeah, he did. I see why they're all saying that. If it were Bruce Campbell, I'd be like, I understand why that was consensual.

There's a in my notes. I have another thing that's weird that happens in the scene that it stays weird. The whole movie is a Joe Don Baker's like, I want those diamonds anyway, and he will not believe that those are gorillas. Someone's like, yes, I just saw one of the gorillas just like broke some shit on camera. And he's like, I wasn't a gorilla gorillas.

Don't do that. And that's the theme of the movie is that some people are like, hey, gorillas don't do anything. That's preposterous. They're not dangerous. And other characters are like, no, gorillas can kill you. And so that argument just goes on for two and a half hours. The myth of the killer ape is true.

Let me take that again. The myth of the killer ape is true. Very nice. I needed four more accents. The fucking gorilla charges up to the doctor and Ernie Hudson's like, oh, here's what you do when this happens. It's like, this happens so often that just going into the jungle, you have to know what to do when gorillas attack you.

Or they will murder you is the implication. Yes. So I don't know. In the text of the film, they're saying these gorillas are perfectly safe, but also here's all the ways, all the tiny things you must do to make sure they don't murder you. Very dumb. It feels almost like a parable as if there are people out there

that are like, I think sharks are perfectly fine. And we can swim with them and pet them. And it's trying to like warn us against that. No sharks can eat you. No, that's a myth. You can high five a jungle ape, any jungle ape. And it's perfectly fine. I love that Joe Don Baker plays the callous billionaire,

which is just at such a refreshing change from every single role he's ever played as just a drunken hillbilly. Just insert bike, private eye. And he plays the callous billionaire as a drunken hillbilly. It's great. I do like all the ticking clocks they set up where it's like, they need to find Bruce Campbell before he dies because we don't see the body, right?

Zaire is going to close the border. The volcano is about to go off. And I don't even think this was in the movie, but in the book, there is a lot of like technical arms race, like a lot of companies were trying to get these diamonds for like technology. I think he mentions that. They might mention in the movie.

As a throwaway while he's listing all six of the other ticking clocks, he's like, oh, here's another one. I worry about that one. I think in the books, the Russians were coming after it too, but the Chinese were keeping them out. I was like looking through that at the board at the book earlier and I was reading about that. Right.

But that was, I think, the main, if I remember, the main ticking clock in the book is that if they don't get these diamonds very quickly, you might as well never get them because someone else will have the technology first. Right. And that's why they have to hijack the research flight that is already scheduled instead of putting together their own thing.

I thought that was in the book. I thought that they just took the gorilla with them. I thought that was part of the plan. I don't remember the whole elaborate thing where they hijacked the research plane. Oh, I'm just going off the movie. I have read the book because I'm not a huge nerd. I am, but we're going to pretend for a minute.

But yes, they have to. So they have to hijack an expedition, which is movie speak for let's put together the ragtag team. Because nobody is fucking prepared or gels well with the others. I don't know. I really like that to send them on their way before just before that happened. There's a scene with Joe Don, which I love.

So I really like Joe Don Baker. He does. He does his best as just a big beefy ogre of a man. Are they him and Laura Linney? And she says, tell me you love your son. He just goes, well, I do. And that's why we're going. Well, it is.

That's all. That's all he's willing to put into that. That's all he's capable of putting into it. Well, and then later she's so angry when it turns out that that's not true. And it's like, yeah, you bought that performance. She put together this entire expedition based on it is. Yeah.

And Laura Linney's like, all right, but like, if, if I'm going and you care more about the diamonds, the Bruce Campbell, I'm going to be very upset. All right. Anybody got a beer? You got beer in here? There's some, some pointless presentation on how Amy's sign language glove works, which I love how because the book that was

pointless. It's at Berkeley in the Ape Department of Berkeley. Okay. I always thought that like Michael Crichton is sort of a dumb person's idea of a smart person. And so like seeing stuff like this is very much like, okay, Michael, you looked up some stuff in the encyclopedia. You don't need to put all of it into the movie, buddy.

But like, one thing that was actually good in the book is that there was like an ethical discussion of teaching our gorilla to talk that I recall that was nowhere near this movie. They're, they're like, the only ethics in this movie were like, should we drug the ape before we throw it out of the fucking plane or not? Constantly drugging that poor ape in this movie. I am convinced it's a, it's like a riff on the A team, right?

And on how they have to constantly drug BA to get him anywhere. They even do it in a plane to like throw her out of a plane. So this is an A team reference, which don't think about it too much or it gets really problematic if that's true. That's, yeah, that's trouble. But I guess that would make Ernie Hudson face. No, Hannibal. Attawally would be, Attawally is definitely face.

Cause every time they blink, Attawally like runs off frame and finds something. He's like, guys, I found everything we need. I guess we'll, we'll get to him later, but like, so yeah, I think they, they kind of have some good A team. Ernie Hudson is absolutely George Papard in this movie. He's like half George Papard, half Sean Connery. I have never seen an episode of the A team.

One of their running bits is that they, they have to, every time they have to fly BA hates to fly and they have to drug usually his milk to get him on a plane. And he falls for it every time and he wakes up. Really mad. Every episode? Every three episodes. Yeah. It probably happened 50 times in the show.

Eventually you would stop drinking around these people. Not, not his milk. Mr. T would never, that that takes way more is back to get Mr. T to stop drinking milk. Cool. I do want to mention that during the sign language presentation, the gorilla starts talking and everyone's like, Oh, that's very interesting.

Except for one guy's mind is totally blown. It's the bad guy from dirt bike kid. And he brings the same bad guy from dirt bike kid energy to his role here in this blockbuster film. He's just hamming it up. This is a talking gorilla. Mr. Ed. And this presentation again, we're skipping past it like

everybody's seen Congo. The presentation is that a guy that looks like Steve Gutenberg, but lesser, somehow lesser, invented a cybernetic arm that turns sign language into a computerized voice. And they, so you just do sign language and it recognizes the motions and does. I am talking to you through the miracle of science kind of

thing. And if anyone's in sign language, they know this wouldn't work. So, so Amy comes out and she, they, they made it into a badass power glove, like possibly literally a power glove that turns the sign language into super clumsy gorilla speech. So it doesn't smooth it out.

She comes out and says, Amy, pretty gorilla. Amy want lunch. Amy lunch. Yeah. That's what a gorilla would say. That's why we don't talk to gorillas. Amy kill everybody. Amy myth, myth of killer gorilla, real.

They, they, they say that that's going to like enable her to teach other gorillas to speak sign language. Like great gorillas language. Why would that be the case at all? Because we want to ensure the downfall of mankind. The time biologists thought there was a thing called a morphic field, which is almost magic where they think that animals can learn from animals that are like geographically

isolated from them. Cause like some scientists say, Hey, these chimps are using sticks. And then some other scientists say, Holy shit, the chimps over here using sticks. And they're like, they're speaking through the magic of the mind. And so through Gaia, I've seen Captain Planet.

I know what's happening here. So it would be likely that even yeah, it could be like actual monkeys. These students were like, if you taught a gorilla sign language, other gorillas would learn sign language magically. Like that, that could have been in papers at the time. Okay. That's wild.

But yeah, the point of the expedition, he wants to release Amy and they're like, you just fucking spent like $8 million teaching the same sign language and building a power glove for where you're not going to release her in the jungle. And he's like, well, she could teach other apes sign language. Okay. He was just like concerned about, and how does that make us money?

Remember, I was concerned about the money that it would make us well. It sounds like the opposite of that. You could negotiate apes for cheap ape labor. You could maybe like put them in movies. No, apes will never act. They could write their own contracts if only they could speak sign language.

So Tim Curry, we meet Tim Curry's character here. He's in the audience and he gets this very sinister idea and pulls out like an evil blood red leather bound journal and an ancient ring of power and. Someone is loading up the clip. I have her come home or homo cause intro. You have to hear it to believe it because I was like, what is like that was when I was immediately like so upset by this

movie. He's great. He's just, I know he's supposed to be Romanian, but I had, I listened to a Romanian accent. He's not even trying it. He's just doing, I think he's either doing, my theory is he's doing an accent that never existed and he's just making it up as it goes.

Or sometimes it's like he's doing every accent on the entire continent of Europe at once. So I'm not sure. And there is a moment, and I don't want to skip ahead, but there is a moment where it seems like they're going to reveal that he's doing a fake accent. Right. And my husband and I were both like, oh, okay, like this, this

makes so much sense. And then they're like, no, that's his real accent. And I was so pissed. They do so many fakeouts like his whole reveal with the evil journal and the he like is lit from below to appear villainous. And then it turns out he's the comic relief. And you're just, it's such a great turn. And it happens like almost instantly, like in the intro,

Sean plays, that's the next thing. It's like, nope, that's your comic relief. He's not the villain. Sorry to fuck with you like that. Never happened again. He's also kind of like the, the wizard, you know, he kind of knows all these secrets that no one else could possibly know because of his weird obsession.

But he's not like, I wrote, is Tim Curry a wizard? Why does he have a wizard vibe? Tim Curry just has a wizard vibe. Like all the time you see him in interviews and you're like, he's going to do magic, right? He's going to do some math. I don't know that I've ever seen him do magic, but. I love that.

He's like a financier with no money. Like almost immediately he's like, I can pay for your expedition. Like, nope, you can't, but they keep him on. So now our team is this Romanian weirdo with no money, a talking gorilla, fussy ape nerd. That fussy ape nerd's terrified assistant and Laura Lenny, who's like a corporate predator with a heart of gold. Who already is being implied.

She's like a seat, former CIA badass. Right. She's like a tough, tough gal. And she shows up. Yeah. To hijack, to hijack the expedition that Tim Curry was hijacking, which again was to bring a talking cyber ape to the jungle, to build an ape society.

It's a steal an African diamond to power a space laser. Yes. That's Congo. That's like 15 minutes. We've set all that up. It's amazing. It's great. And then there's another little wrinkle in the plan.

Like nobody knows who they are, who the other people are. Nobody trusts each other. The ape is very jealous of human women. So the apes talking shit at Laura Lenny like, you're ugly, ugly girl. Ugly woman, ugly, ugly woman. She throws an egg at her. I did, um, uh, pull a clip of the monkey talking. Jungle.

Me. Jungle. That's right. Jungle. Jungle. Home. Why does he keep saying that? Peter.

Tickle. Stick it in. Peter. Stick it in. Well, and yeah, then all the guys that are loading the plane are immediately like, oh, he's fucking that monkey. Everyone who sees those two together is like,

this is the only romantic chemistry in the film. It's true. Which is great. Yeah. She freaks out about flying an asphalt green drop drink green drop drink. Because apparently there's no sign for martini, which I refuse to believe.

Just make a martini shape. Right. Full martini and a glass with olives and everything. Teach an ape the concept of a martini. And then we just watch an ape drink a martini for a while. And it's great. And this is not a comedy. Okay.

It's perfect. It's just a perfect scene to linger on. I had to have pissed off the animatronic guys. Like, hey, in this scene, the robot ape needs to drink a martini. They're like, no, that's gonna, you can't just throw a bunch of fucking martini into a robot, guys.

The same thing that would happen. Some guy who's in that suit. If you put a bunch of martini into a real ape, it's going to freak out and kill everything. That's a myth. The myth of the drunk killer ape. It's drool. So they land in the exotic country of Central Africa.

You're actually skipping past one of my favorite scenes in the movie. Oh, Lord Lenny and Peter. They have a philosophical discussion between altruism and capitalism and just the most childlike attempted character development. They're like, I think we should help people. No, I think we should take all the money. Huh, we're really different. Lord Lenny, we sure are.

Imagine that. Imagine coming from our backgrounds. Why we're different? Anyway, the ape will bring us together. Perfect. So they land in the exotic country of Central Africa, which is not me being derogative. There's a super that comes up and it just says Central Africa.

I think someone mentions where they are. I think they're in Uganda. They mentioned it later. They're trying to get to Zaire. Yeah, when they just say just Central Africa. And the trader from the matrix picks them up. The first person they meet is a Brooklyn MOOC. Yes.

It's Joey. Joey pants over there. He's talking at him. That's talking. That's the first person they meet in Africa. He offers to be their guide. And then he offers to sell their gorilla on the black market. And then Amy talks with her hand.

And he says, whoa, a talking gorilla. I can hear the money hairs on my neck going. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Which is. He had to. He had to. Right. There's no way somebody wrote that down.

I wrote that down, but only because he's. I don't even get why that guy was in the movie. He's not just have it be Ernie Hudson. He's their guide to bring them across with the exposition. Like they land. He's like, here's what's going on in Africa. Listen closely. Oh my God.

I want to buy that. That's the kind of thing. Fuck what's going on here. My new guy. Who are you? Is that a talking gorilla? Okay. It's true.

He drops all of the exposition about Africa. He's the guy that explains what's going on in Africa to them is the Italian Moke. The character. I feel like as a person, as an American in 1995, if you say Africa, you picture one of two things. You pick picture corrupt warlords battling each other or like we are the world.

I think that's like the media attention that Africa had gotten at that point. Those things are in this movie. Yes. We would have just assumed. Oh, there'll be like a magic ghost tribe. And then there'll be war torn, like corrupt warlords. I don't know.

Yes. And both of those things do happen. But Joey Pants here has the very important job of being their guide through the airport to the other side of the airport where their real guide Ernie Hudson is waiting. That's literally what he does in this movie. Yes. Why not just have it be Ernie Hudson the entire time? I feel like that guy won a contest to be in that movie.

I love how we first meet Ernie Hudson. And the first thing he does is pull a gun on a guy in a truck. It's like, give me a fucking truck. Go away. And it works. I think that's how you sign the paperwork on a new truck in Uganda. And then there's a really cute moment here where the truck is turning and they pull back and it's just one of these massive like Hollywood blockbuster scenes where

there's just 80 extras running around and explosions in the distance. And Joey Pants is in the little luggage car and starts backing it up. Like he does not know how to work this, but he's doing his own driving stuff and almost drives straight into the fucking principal cast's truck. And then he like kind of panics. Like if you watch this scene, it's so funny. I rewound it like three times. Like did he almost fuck up this whole shot by just gunning it and reverse into the truck?

Anyway, it's pretty funny if you're watching this at home. So they get to a military checkpoint and then we properly meet Ernie Hudson. I have a clip here. I'd like to play. Monroe Kelly, I'm your great white hud over the strip though I happen to be black. How bad is the snooze for us? I love that because it was written for Sean Connery and they're like, we got to rewrite it now that it's a black guy.

They're like, I don't know. What? How about we just add this to the end of I'm your great white hunter? Don't change the line. Just add though I happen to be black done fucking clap your hands at that fucking. That's like doing a like a finder place to change every how do you do to what it is? It's just the fucking soul. Less effort.

Less effort than that, I would say though I happen to be black. And that's why Ernie Hudson says that's his favorite role that he has ever played in his career. No shit. He really said that. No. He thought this was magical and I just I believe it now because he's having so much fucking fun saying all that shit.

Yeah, he always seems very relaxed. He's like, oh, we're going to get killed by giant apes. Okay. They say we're bringing this to the jungle and that's why all these people have to die and he's like, you're going to take her back to the farm now that she's seen Paris. I think it's pretty cool. He is like a black Alan quarter main, which is probably a huge civil rights moment. I think in 1995.

Yeah, probably. It was a bit was a big deal because Alan quarter main like that the whole jungle hunter, the great white hunter is those are problematic stories. Yes. He explicitly like he was a great white hunter of black people. I mean, not all the time, but sometimes. So, so they're captured and they're brought to Delroy Lindo, who's a corrupt military officer who just knows everything about everybody.

He knows Ernie Hudson. He knows Herkimer Hamulka. Did we forget to explain that his name is Herkimer Hamulka Tim Curry's character. We ever said his name is Herkimer Hamulka because it's so because of course it is of course his name is Herkimer Hamulka. I have a very nice clip of Delroy Lindo's take on Herkimer Hamulka. Here, I'll play here. Stop eating my sesame cake.

Stop eating my sesame cake. Oh, no. What are you doing in my country? Bag of shit. Bag of shit. Come to the place. I only wish to explore and discover. This fellow is a big bag of shit.

You should shake this rat from off your neck. Delroy Lindo, he really brought it to the here the way roses are. Shake this rat off your neck. Yeah, everybody everybody does their own accent as hard as they possibly can. That's why just you had to have been everybody's like two drinks in on this set and just having a great fucking time. There's no way somebody saw this. It just sounds like he's doing a Count Chocula impression the entire time.

You want a bag of shit? No, like Tim Curry when I heard him say I just want to explore. He's totally doing Count Chocula. Canonically from Romania, it's an accurate accent. Here's what I think. Everybody in this movie. Where they kind of overstepped the tough girl stuff where some guys kind of playing with Loreline's hair and it's like gross and she fucking elbow strikes him in the dick while

she's carrying a bag of like $300,000 cash that everyone can see. I'm like, I feel, I feel like that's not the moment you just go for the dick strike while you're someone's prisoner. I don't know. I liked it and I like how Delroy Lindo is like, okay, great. I like how you hit that guy in the dick. Funny. But like, it seemed like overly dangerous.

I don't know. Besides she gets so many better moments. I just, that's one, another of my favorite thing about Congo is like everybody gets one line or one moment that you can see the actor reading it, being like, okay, I'll take this bit part. If I can yell at Tim Curry to stop eating my sesame cake over and over again. Oh my God. He does, he has a moment in the scene where Delroy Lindo takes the $50,000 that give him

and he like really clumsily, but like purposefully puts it in a old paper bag and then pulls the staple off the dining table and like staples, it shuts. It is so weird. They put like $10,000 out and he just smiles at them and goes, more. Yes. See, yeah, I kind of read that scene is everybody has done this before. Like the one lady's in the CIA, she can read a room really good and she's like, he's, I'm going to give him some and these guys are more like, she's familiar with the situation.

Yeah. Oh, it's been a half hour and it's so good. They go, now they're in Tanzania. Is this the airfield? I just don't want to skip over the airfield. Yeah. They're meeting at a Wale Akinoya and he's like a really smiley dude, very friendly guy. And this is the guy who I think would be their team's face because every time he leaves the

frame, he comes back with like the next plot device. I mean, he's also clearly the handsomest of the younger because like it's not going to be lesser Steve Gutenberg. I didn't even look up. I looked up everybody else's name. I didn't look up Stephen Gutenberg. I just did. I did not give a shit.

I'm never going to need to know anything else about you. Yes. Most people know this guy because he was Mr. Echo Unlost. He was at a B.C. in Oz. He's like, you know, very famous. I'm talking about lesser Steve Gutenberg. Yeah. He was at a B.C. in Oz.

He'd be a great at a B.C. and like tiny little hat stuck on the little side of his head. See, I didn't want to skip past the airfield scene because in the background, you can see their pilot and it's Jimmy Buffett. There was a Jimmy Buffett cameo in this movie. No. Yeah. Their pilot is Jimmy Buffett. Is that a real thing?

That's a real thing. It's not a guy that looks like Jimmy Buffett. It's actually Jimmy Buffett. And he, I'm assuming he had a bigger part in this movie and then just Jimmy Buffett at it, just right out of the movie because you see him like kind of look at the camera a little bit and then walk away without saying anything. And then later you see an empty seat where Jimmy Buffett should be and they say, he's gone and that's Jimmy Buffett's role in this movie.

Yeah. I thought that was so weird. They were like, well, the pilot's gone. I'm like, where did the pilot go? There's only, we've established there's only one door. But yeah, Jimmy Buffett, they just needed to cut Jimmy Buffett's fucking scene. That's what happened. I bet he had to go home.

He was like, you know what? I changed my mind. He just left. I like to stop putting the margarita in frame, Jimmy. He's like, no, that's not very Buffett, guys. But the gorilla gets a martini, but the gorilla gets a martini. Jimmy can't get a margarita, but the gorilla gets a martini. He just got the guy in the gorilla suit trash and then they both went home.

There's a scene at the, at the airport where Monroe, the Ernie Hudson reveals that Tim Curry, I gotta say, Herkimer, Hamulka, is looking for the lost city of Zinge, which is Solomon City built on the diamond mines and his entire last expedition died, which I love that you get to deliver that exposition. But then, then Tim Curry's character suddenly snaps and goes, shut up, you filthy. Yes. And then Ernie Hudson cuts him off. But what a fucking tonal shift out of nowhere, Congo.

Yes. Again. And his voice changes. He loses the accent right there. Yeah. Because like it's not a fun thing to say and count chocular voice. I want to remind you that again, this was going to be Sean Connery. So they said, okay, if this is going to be Ernie Hudson, um, I don't, maybe I'm racist,

but I think one of the characters should call him a filthy. And like, that's crazy to me. They're like, the writer, the writer added this specifically post Ernie Hudson. He's like, okay, if he's black, someone's got to say this to him. Yeah. We got to write in the racism now at this point. Right. And you think that's like, it must be a reason.

It must be foreshadowing. Never comes up again. There's never like a racial thing with, with Tim Curry's character. If anything, he's just back to being broken. Because earlier in the movie, Ernie Hudson's like, do I know you to her? And he's like, uh, I do a lot of traveling, but like Ernie Hudson carried this fucking guy out from like the, the worst exposition expedition he'd ever seen. Like he knows who he is.

He's explaining to us, the viewer who he is. It's like, what, what the fuck was that earlier then? And I don't think there's any reason for it. I think it's just a hundred percent like an older version of the script that he just forgot to fix. Yeah. Nobody, nobody's reading through the script again, looking for canonical factual accuracies in Congo.

Oh, does, does she have the diamond laser at this point to laser the apes? Shut the fuck up nerd. We're lasering. So they, uh, I guess now they're, they're flying to Zaire and as soon as they cross the border and they're in the Zaire airspace, they just start getting shot at with RPG rounds. They do drug the gorilla Ernie Hudson calls it gorilla prozac. So we do the, he gets a banana, put some gorilla prozac in a banana and that's

I believe that was a joke. I think in 1995, uh, just the word prozac was a punchline. Yeah. It's just a sedative, but that's his first thing they get start getting shot at. And he immediately is like, we got to drug this fucking gorilla, which I would argue, good call. First good call in the movie. You don't want a rampaging gorilla in a plane that's being shot down.

Even though they can shoot the rockets that are being shot at them with, I want to say flare guns. They were foiling the heat seeking. Fucking awesome. I thought this was great. I was like, this is finally a real adventure movie. They're adventuring. Yeah.

That's what they were doing. I thought they were just like shooting the rockets. No, they say they're heat seekers. And so Laura Lenny and Ernie Hudson grab flare guns and kick open the door and lean out of the plane and fire the flares at the missiles that, you know, intercept them and explode. And it's just such a bitching scene. Like this is like, again, going back to that moment where Dillard Lindo gets to say stop

eating my sesame cake. This is this is the one that made Ernie Hudson take it. I think he's like, I got to lean out of a plane and fucking shoot down missiles flare gun. Hell yeah. I mean, Laura gets to do that too. But we know the scene that got her on board. Now, see, I watched the air wolf when I was a kid and air wolf had a few like anti missile

tactics. Like he could drop chaff and he could throw out flares to distract heat seeking missiles. So I knew exactly what they're doing from here. Cononically, canonically, I don't think a flash pops off enough heat to distract a missile from a plane. Just for the record, I don't think this would work if you're going to try this at home. What did I say about shutting up nerd? Bring the wrong mindset.

Nobody gets Peter is very understandably confused. He's like, uh, what guys are you starting to jump out the fucking plane? I have a talking gorilla with me that is asleep. Thanks to your drugs. What the fuck? And so Ernie Hudson's like, no, don't worry about it. I'll strap the unconscious gorilla to me. And then he jumps with the Ghostbusters skydives with an unconscious gorilla.

And again, just a great thing to watch for a while. It's just legitimately laugh out loud. Funny. It really makes me laugh out loud when I'm watching it by myself. It's so funny. I do Google that scene. If you watch, don't want to watch Congo. You still, you have to watch that scene where Ernie Hudson has the puppet strapped to him

and he's jumping out of the plane and skydives. I do have some script notes. I want to stop here and talk about two ideas I have on how they couldn't not necessarily improve the scene, but like, uh, maybe make it better. I don't know how to put this, but like, here's my ideas. The first one would be, uh, you have the gorilla use her incredible gorilla strength to hold on to one of the tougher guys. Right.

And so Peter would sign, like have this moment where he's like really leveling with the gorilla. Like, okay, just close your eyes. Amy, don't let go. And then they jump out and she's like, have been onto him and they're falling. Then when they land, Amy's like super pumped that she just went on a parachute ride. And she's like, Amy fly. Amy love at a while. I know.

Yeah. And then it's like movie magic. And now the gorilla has a second best friend. So that's my first idea. Now, Ooh, I love that. My second idea is the plane is crashing. Right.

Amy's still not drugged. That's, I think that's a bad move for the script. So they give her own parachute and they teach her how to hold the ripcord. And Amy's like, Amy, ready, Amy, ready. One, two, three, Paul. And while she's pulling, that would probably be the sign language word for Paul. So she'd be talking while she's doing it. Then she joy rides to the ground.

They fucking. Maybe there's a drunk guy in the jungle. He looks up and says like a parachuting gorilla. And they like, looks down at his liquor bottle and throws it away. I tell you, it's, it's better that way. One of the natives has big coke bottle glasses and takes them off and cleans them. There's a woman and she's like, I'll marry you when gorillas parachute out of the sky. Yes.

I'm glad we did this script doctor section. Oh, so I'm not a smoke jumper or a paratrooper or anything. So, uh, I'm not sure, but I do know that if you throw a bunch of untrained people out of a speeding plane, just a couple of stories over a dense jungle, you're not seeing 40% of those people ever again. But, you know, especially one of them is carrying a gorilla. But then here they just really all land in the same clearing. They're like, that was, that was fun guys. That was great.

There's a moment here where Laura Lenny whips out like a primitive GPS and Ernie Hudson walks up next to her and says, video game? An insane moment that, that will pay off later, I guess. Why? Sort of, maybe. Oh God. Yeah, I love the idea that she's just going to pull out a Nintendo right now and knock out a couple levels of Mario.

Yeah. Like anyone would think that. So they're just having a nice nature hike with no thought to the army that just shot them out of the sky and watched them parachute into their borders with a gorilla. And Herkimer is like kind of forming this theory that the gorilla was painting her own dreams and that those dreams will magically lead them, lead them to the lost city of Zinge. Yes, the gorilla is their real guide. Even though they have an actual, a video game that will take them directly to the city.

Yeah, they have GPS. They don't need the gorilla. But he's convinced that the gorilla will be the key and he is wrong. Yeah. Yes, very wrong. It's like, what are you going to rely on? GPS or a gorilla's dreams? Again, this was like, at the, when we first meet her, we see those paintings of her

and the painting this mysterious eye and Herkimer pulls out the ring that has a mysterious eye. It's like, oh my God, she's going to lead them to the city. And then the movie forgets. The movie just forgets to do it. They just follow the GPS to where Bruce Campbell was killed, which again, we already know by the gorillas, this is the secret city. Like we have been shown it in the cold open of the movie. Bruce Campbell is sitting on the steps of the secret city eating a chocolate bar

when a gorilla whips an eyeball into the back of his head. And they're like, oh, okay. So I'm glad you brought up the gorilla attacks because it helps the audience remember that that's what happened earlier. And then it kind of repeats it again in another moment that always makes me laugh out loud. We're during the video call, like Laura Linney is calling back home to Joe Don Baker and she's like, all right, cool, we're here. We're almost to the, you know, to Bruce Campbell spot. And during the video call, Amy's just fucking around and she rampages through the equipment and Joe Don Baker is like,

no, God, not again. Like he thinks he's second in expedition has been murdered by apes. His reaction is, oh, God, not again. He's like, not murdered by apes again. No reason to believe anything else has happened. And then they never get the equipment back on. So that's just like what he thinks happened for the rest of the movie. Now, what actually why Amy was rampaging is we're doing like a lot of character building scenes around camp,

except for our main character, the lesser Steve Gutenberg, who just has a tickle fight with Amy that sprawls through every other scene. And it's just, yes, they're fucking, we get it. We get it. We get the word. You know, this is why this is why their columns are destroyed in their cutoff is because this guy's ape foreplay got out of hand. Speaking of that night in camp, they're kept up all night by monkeys having sex. And that's kind of just it. Then they just go back to bed.

Ha, listen to the monkeys fuck. But like in the book, they were besieged by the evil gorillas, and they did this whole scheme where they had Amy learn the language of the evil apes. And then they broadcast go away in the ape language to get rid of them. And I'm like, that's a crazy awesome sequence that in the movie, they're like, what if instead some monkeys had sex off camera? And I'm like, maybe the book was better in this case. Yeah, like they come up with different like three or four phrases from her to broadcast. I remember that. Yeah.

That was cool. This way, Ernie Hudson gets to explain when the moon comes out, every monkey for 200 miles thinks he's Elvis Presley. Just such terrible writing. So now Peter wakes up with a leech on a stick. We mentioned that earlier. Very zany. And nobody has any concerns Ernie Hudson gives him a cigarette to burn it off. And he gives it back.

He's like, hey, I burned the leech off my dick. You should cigarette back. Which adds nice touch. Very 90s movie comedy. And then here come the ghost tribe, the mozumu tribe. And they are straight out of Looney Tunes. They are just completely covered in white powder. So they look like skeleton men.

And they lead everybody over to one of Loreline's coworkers who's cantotonic from a gorilla shock. And there's just 80 of them in a circle like chanting at him. Well, when they first, when they first show up, there's a great moment that tells you everything you need to know about their tribe. And that they are immediately spotted. And then Ernie Hudson has to explain, pretend not to see them or it'll hurt their feelings. They're like toddlers playing hide and seek. You've got to pretend they're really sneaky. But they're like wearing all white in the middle of the jungle.

Like they painted themselves white. We're ghosts. We're the ghost tribe. They'll tell you their dinosaurs. Go along with it. And the way they explain and get them to follow is they say, there's a dead white guy in the jungle. You guys probably want to see that, right? But he's not dead. He just got so scared by the evil gorillas that he's catatonic. And he wakes up almost immediately when, or Lenny, just when any human contact is pleasant that she's like, hey, wake up, buddy. He's like, oh, oh, I'm so scared of gorillas.

And then here comes fucking Amy. And he's like, that's a gorilla. Die. Die of fucking fear. It's a fright. Probably what is like a three foot child in an electronic eight costume that you would see on a sitcom and be like, oh, no. Like what are you a movie executive at Paramount? You just freak out when Amy walks in the room. So I guess by the movies logic, if you see a bunch of killer gorillas, like that's that maxes out your shock levels, right?

And if you see anything else monkey related that's scary ever again in your life, that's it. Your body can't take any more fear dead. So just we have a limit of monkey fear in our systems. Perfect. I'm glad we I'm glad we did that scene. Because again, that's it. That scene leads to no other scenes. It does not unlock anything that helps us find the city. We've just it's just they had 200 nude men to make that scene. That probably was like an eight day shoot in probably Burbank.

Did careful choreography with what I'm pretty sure is the language they made up on the spot. Yeah. And all that to be like, that's how scary these monkeys are. Which is really weird that the monkey that he survived at all. Anyway, let's get to let's skip ahead to the scene where all the Africans sing California dreamin to the ape while it does a bunch of drugs and kind of drifts off to sleep. Yeah, that's kind of nice. Because that scene happens and that's great. That was sweet.

What else? There's a hippo attack. That was kind of nice. They lost a couple guys in the hippo attack. But if you're going to have like a little adventure. Yeah, great looking hippos. Should have used that hippo. They should have been hippos guarding just evil, evil hippos guarding the diamond mine. Yeah, they looked way better than the monkeys. That's for sure.

And then you have one friendly smaller hippo. I guess that you've taught to speak. Yes, this is hippo Congo. Yeah, you're writing hippo Congo. They find a crash plane of Laura Lenny's people. And like they're all dead. There's no survivors. And Laura Lenny's, oh, they sent another expedition after me.

Like they didn't trust that I would get it done. But this completely invalidates the entire act one where it was really hard to get an expedition going. And that's why they're fucking here with Robo Monkey and Herkamo Hormoka. So apparently it would have had to been on the same timetable because it's been like one day. It's been exactly one day. Yeah, Laura's not behind schedule. They're just, they just sent another expedition. And there happened to be another guy taking an ape to the jungle to teach sign language to other apes.

And he was leaving five minutes after her. No, that's hippo Congo. We'll run in parallel. Hippo Congo to back to the jungle hippo style. So that whole scene, again, why? Because it never comes back to do anything. It's just maybe just to demonstrate how they're just throwing money at the problem now. And they don't care about the human life.

So I guess that is character setup for Joe Don Baker. They meet some gorillas. They think Amy's a weirdo and they find the old camp. So the entire premise of this journey is now invalidated where they thought they would at least are in teacher teaching teach them sign language. She showed up tried to teach them sign language and they were like, fuck you. Well, yeah, I gotta say the look, the look that the gorillas give Amy is the best. Like they spent so much time on that look that just says like this girl's a nerd.

Fuck off out of here with your fucking power glove. Bringing your power glove to school. Nobody thinks that's cool. Yeah, like someone animated that so well on that puppet. Like, you know, those apes hate Amy instantly. The best ape expression in the movie. And they now they find the old camp where Bruce Campbell died and someone or maybe no, it couldn't be, but maybe just maybe some ape has taken all the equipment and bodies away.

And then they start talking about it. And like out of all he leaves for two seconds comes back. He's like, boom, I found the lost city of Zinge. And I have a clip here. What is this? It is the city of Zinge. That's it. Right.

It's just a great line for Tim Curry specifically to deliver as Count Chocula. He could make one J into four syllables in this movie. It's beautiful. Zinge. Zinge. And now they're in the last city of Zinge, which is actually kind of a beautiful set. There's like, it just looks like an old very high production adventure movie. There's a detail I really love here where they're going into the city and some set designers

just draped a couple of wet snakes across the fake rock. I'm like, this, see, they tried hard that they got some live snakes. They're kind of dressing up the set with them. And it's at this point where just everything goes wrong. There's gorillas picking off their weakest members. They immediately find a dead end and they're like, wow, there's nothing here. Volcano starts erupting. Gorilla comes storming and throwing a human head at them.

Whips like human head. At a tent immediately with that gorilla. So they kill that gorilla, but they come outside and the whole team is hamburger. Like every porter they had is just shredded. Just fantastic. The stakes have been raised so high at this point. I love that the grill is no enough about terror to like rip off the human head. Then take it with them and just football run down the stairs into the city all the way up

and be like, I'm going to nail that human with this shit. Check this out. And that's the end of the plan. It didn't have another step to the plan. It's just stood there and got murdered. They had a kind of predator internal logic where they clearly are having a good time. There's something about this is like a game or a sport. They're not just savages.

But because like, for example, that night they set up camp and they have machine gun turrets. And so like, it should be over. The evil apes will just get mowed down by machine gun turrets. But they're like outsmarting the perimeter. They're like open at it like a destiny raid learning a new boss. They're just like, what's that? What happens if we do this? And the volcano, I guess, is stopped.

I think the volcano only goes off when someone's about to grab a diamond. So they're safe for that. But the, but the gorillas are a real threat who are just toying with their machine guns. I love that they have machine guns. We had to have Ernie Hudson going video game to explain GPS. We had to have like eight scenes at the start to explain a phone call and zero scene to explain laser guided night vision monitored automatic turret machine guns that we set up in the jungle to form a perimeter. Although it's such a good scene. It's like, it's like tremors and aliens and predator just covered in monkeys, which is, which is great.

It's a great thing to just watch for a while. Yeah. And Amy, Amy sums it up when she says, bad gorilla, bad gorilla, which, which is perfect. And her comer sums it up when he says, so that's why Solomon's diamonds were never found. The myth of the killer ape is true. Why do you get to say it? I love it. And then they speculate on my like, oh yeah, Solomon's minds.

They probably like bred these gorillas to like the attack dogs. And then they turned on their breeders. Yeah. They speculate. They read Solomon. That's true. We trained apes. We bred apes to be evil geniuses who love fighting.

The Wikipedia page for the book says that in the book, they, they suggest that they bred the apes to be like more aggressive by breeding them with chimpanzees and humans. So someone was fucking the apes. Somebody's into that. Somebody's like, I know what this means. I can, I can translate this part. Yes. Which I don't remember anyone having sex with the apes in the book, but apparently according to Wikipedia, they did. So I don't know.

That might be one Wikipedia pervert that just snuck that in. We should maybe add a citation needed to that while we're here. I noticed that like when the set started adding diamonds, it kind of looks like it's kidding. Like it looks so cheap after they start adding diamonds to the floor because they, they get to the point where they're like, let's just throw these giant diamonds all over the floor. And it just kind of looks like they're on Mars and somebody sprinkled the set with glitter. Like looks somehow the diamonds made it look really cheap. And yet very legends of the hidden temple at that point. Yes.

And yet the diamonds used specifically for that scene were actually real. They were borrowed from the Herkimer diamond mines in Middleville, New York. Or they, they gave them two ended quartz crystals, quartz diamond crystals that are only found in two places in the world are incredibly rare. They were the only gems they decided they were the only gems that would look enough like perfect diamonds and be that large. And they were so hard to get a hold of and so valuable that as a tribute, they named, they put Tim Curry's character in the movie and named him Herkimer based. No. That's why he's named that. That's why he's named that.

Why they also named him Hamulka is because it was funny. Yeah. Lady, while you're on Wikipedia, look up to see a Brockway's leg because there's no way. No way. That's true. You're not alive. Oh, there's just a whole page called Brockway's life. Nobody's allowed.

Nobody's allowed to Google until I'm the fuck out of here. That's the rule. No, that's true. I just don't Google it yet. Just follow up questions yet. This is going to sound like I'm a monster, but the other part of this movie that makes me laugh out loud every time is when Herkimer gets beaten to death by the gorillas. Because he's kind of walking into this very well lit set and then these really fake apes come up and kind of like bash him in the butt. They've made it.

Hold on. The set is Gorilla City. They have turned the mines into bitchin' little congos and they live in a city in the middle of this volcano surrounded by diamonds. Oh, funny. I think that was meant to be funny. I think they wanted you to laugh at Tim Curry getting beaten to death. He wouldn't drop the diamonds. He's like making his Tim Curry faces as he's getting grabbed by apes and he's like...

Well, their very first blow, an ape runs by and clotheslines him in the butt. That's the first thing that they do. You can't tell me that's not fucking funny. It's an ass clothesline. Just how they take him down. And it works. This works. Works.

This gorilla battle is amazing. They're just everywhere. We lose every single good guy. But nobody cares until Atta Wally dies and then Ernie Hudson at him. He's like, oh no, not him. Meanwhile, all of the apes are doing like in between kills. They're doing rad aerial stunts. They're doing fucking sideways flips.

They're just having a blast. Parkouring up all the cave walls. Because they don't know what Laura Linney signed up to this movie to do. She says, buy me two minutes to set up her diamond powered laser. She runs into a little sub cave. They find Bruce Campbell's corpse. Oh no. So sad.

Nobody mourns him for a second. They just immediately find the perfect diamond, plug it into the laser. And my God, the beauty and majesty of this next scene. So Amy, Amy first find a way for an ape to die. Amy leaps down to use her cyber glove to just confuse the apes. And it works. Like they're just like, I don't know what to make of that. She also says that the lesser Steve Gutenberg is her baby.

And then everyone's like, oh, they're stopped by motherhood. And before anybody can think about that. Like while everybody's saying that and talking about it, just right there, they laser the first ape in half. And everybody looks over like, holy fucking shit, Laura Linney. Did you just laser an ape in half? And she's like, I'm going to laser fucking every ape in half. With one beam.

It's just the most overpowered weapon. And she uses it like so often in movies. They're like, no, no, it's got a break. We've got to like up tension. No, the movie's like, there's no tension from here on out. We're just fucking killing apes. And Laura Linney is just lasering off hands, legs, the tops of skulls. Just there are apes that are trying to run away.

It looks like it. She's just lasering them in half. And that's when the volcano erupts and you're like, yes, this had to happen. Right. Right. The lava that spills into the room is so far beyond 1995 special effects capabilities. It just, it just looks like wet Jell-O.

And the apes are fucking starting an ape party. Like some of them are literally jumping in doing flips. They're having so much fun. Some of them are kind of showing the other side of the way. Yeah, they're having. I love it. It's such a magical scene that I wish everyone could see. Because they would rather do a sweet flip into the lava lake

than get lasered in half by Laura Linney. That's the choice that this movie has left them at the end. It's like, you're an evil ape. One of two things are happening. You can do a fucking six 360 into this volcano, which is your call. Or you can let Laura Linney just fucking sex laser you right in half. Just blast you into little pieces. It's like X games and then they jump.

They die like that so you could remember them how they lived, which was doing rad flips. Yes. So this is the most maximum climax action scene has ever had. There's apes jumping into lava. And Ernie, Laura and Peter and Amy are the only survivors. They run out and you're like, cool, it's over. But then they still kind of try to do some shit.

So they're like, oh, what if they almost fell off a cliff and Laura had to save him by lasering a tree bridge down? Like, you know, nobody gets a shit. It's fucking over. Wrap it up. Like that should have ended on a freeze frame of that ape doing a flip. Like sideways over the lava, giving two thumbs up. And the rest is just like a Bollywood style musical number over credits.

Just animal house style. Like just catch us up on what these apes are up to. Which of these apes survived? What are they doing today? That would be great. But I think it should just be the whole cast. Like, Herkimer, her moka died. Or show like the post-ape attack.

Herkimer, where he's just hamburger helper all over the floor. Those are the only good endings to movies. That or Jackie Chan style bloopers of like all the stunts that went wrong. All the times they tried to do like a sideways flip in an ape costume and just ate shit. They had to take the ape head off and people run around. God, what I wouldn't give for that footage of the apes, of people learning how to flip in the ape costumes.

That must be just solid gold. But they really think we need to wrap up more. And like, so Amy goes off with her new ape family, who up to this point have never liked her at all, but now need to embrace her. And it's such a great movie that they need to wrap it up. Gutenberg, lesser Gutenberg there asked, will they be all right?

And Ernie Hudson says, they know what to do. It's us I'm worried about. Do they, Ernie? Yeah, like, there's no way all of those gorillas died. They all got volcano, which is an exploding volcano. Trust me, wild apes know what to do in case of volcano. Is what Ernie Hudson said to the ape expert. And he believes it.

He's like, this guy knows. He knew about those monkeys at fuck at midnight. Laura calls Jodan Baker back. And remember, Jodan Baker is supposed to pretend that he cares about Bruce Campbell. And he's like, did you get the diamonds? Shut the fuck up. Did you get the diamonds?

And he's like, oops, he kind of gave it away. And so she's like, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to use this diamond to shoot down the company satellite with a laser for Charlie, for Bruce Campbell. And like this, it's just that scene on the plane pays off. Yeah, her shooting that laser or her shooting the satellite with the laser from Earth, just like looking up and knowing.

Well, they threw it in that she'll put in the satellite's phone number or something. She can target anything. Michael Crichton, yada, yada. The other thing about Michael Crichton is in the second half of his book, all of the science is much more yada, yada than the first half. And so I'm going to put in the satellite dish's phone number

and the laser will aim right at it and shoot it. Also, it seems like Michael Crichton would know that blowing up a satellite creates a lot of debris that's going to blow up seven-rate. Other satellites is going to blow up seven-rate space stations. And you know, it's not a great idea. This is like a disgruntled Tesla employee,

like blowing up a couple of blocks of Palo Alto, either quit. It's fucking crazy. It's way too much, Laura Lenny. I think that's why she signed up to blow up the laser, the space station. No, it was lasering the apes. 100%.

She had to read the 15 pages of script that were just detailing how and which apes are lasered and why and into what pieces and then fucking volcano comes by and she's like, and I get to do all of that? Yes. If I were her, I would have signed up for this movie under those circumstances. Where I blast capitalism out of the sky with my fucking

repurposed volcano diamond laser ape. And I get to work alongside Ernie Hudson, who's using Sean Connery's lines, but with weird stuff about him being black added on to the end of every sentence. OK, OK. I do love this ending because it's like the last three human survivors from like a party of 48.

And they like, they get in a balloon and they just start floating off into the unknown. They're like, hey, there's wind. So we'll probably be fine. But they're floating over airspace where they shoot down everything. No questions asked. Hoping to get back to world where they face any number

of criminal charges from hijacking military equipment to destroying millions of dollars worth of property. Certainly some apes. Gorilla molesting. Yeah. Murder. They don't know that they didn't murder all those people. They just show up in a hot air balloon and they're like,

oh, yeah, there's these crazy killer gorillas that are maybe some humans fucked them in the past. And now they're super smart. They have no proof of that. Stop adding in the thing about humans fucking them, Gutenberg. Nobody else saw that. You just started insisting.

Just any movie that ends with everybody floating away in a hot air balloon is perfect. But there's one more thing. One more thing they do. It's somebody else going to run over. The very last thing they do in this movie. I don't even know what you're referring to. Do they show the apes?

No, they show any of the apes. They look at the multi-million dollar super rare diamond and are like, ah, who needs this thing? And Steven Gutenberg whips it off into the jungle and Ernie Hudson says, ouch. Also they can end on a little quick laugh. Yeah, like why would they not give that to Ernie Hudson or put it towards more apresearch with the apresearch guy?

There are so many good things they could have done with that diamond instead of just chuck it into the jungle. Are they expecting us to believe that the only thing anyone would do with that diamond was killing lasers and that we shouldn't have ape killing lasers? That's all it's good for. And if we bring it back home, we're going to annihilate every goddamn ape just because we can.

Now, I mentioned earlier that Congo cost $50 million film and banked $152 million and there should have been just endless ripoffs of Congo after this. Maybe one of the reasons there wasn't was in that hot air balloon scene when they tossed the diamond out, that special diamond that was lent to them

by Hurricane Remind, so rare they named a main character after the mine and Justin thanks for letting them borrow it. They really did eat it right out of a hot air balloon and fucking lost it in the jungle forever. It was never, it was never recovered. So you know what this means, right? We have to arrange a 1900 hot dog Congo treasure hunt and I call drunken cyber ape.

Correct. Correct. Yeah. The craft is not trapped. It's not under. Send it to the dogs. For an hour. Come on, John.

You can do it. 1900. 1900, Frankfurt. 1900, New York. 1900, Frankfurt. 1900. 1900, Frankfurt. 1900, New York.

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