Movies

Cat Girl (1957) Multigenerational curse of unknown origin causes mental bond between woman and leopard. Not quite a transformation film - she thinks she turns into a cat and there is a vague blurry sort of a transformation scene at one point, but mostly it is gloom, atmosphere and stiff British dialogue. Not very exciting or interesting. 4/10

Konga (1961) Michael Gough, one of the great overactors of the cinema, is the mad scientist whose plant serum transforms a tiny chimp into a gigantic gorilla suit. Takes a very long time for the gorilla suit to become gigantic so for the most part it is a conventional gorilla suit movie, with the requisite stranglings, and lab apparatus being swept off tables. When the gorilla suit finally becomes gigantic it bumbles feebly about, or stands immobile, roaring at the hundreds of rounds of gunfire zipping past it because something that large is so difficult to hit. The moral of it all is that those who use science to justify their sociopathy are destroyed by their own creation, but I heard that before. It's all pretty flat, leaving lots of time to admire the way the lighting on the sets doesn't appear to come from any of the visible light fixtures. 3/10

Kongo (1932) There is also a chimp in this movie but everything else is different. Walter Huston is a scar-faced wheelchair-bound white witch doctor who controls his lackeys with drugs and violence, and the natives with simple stage magic, while nursing a grudge against the man who stole his wife and broke his spine. The natives are props and plot devices, the whites uniformly filthy and degraded, though bearing a tiny spark of humanity. Lupe Velez is oiled up and lustful, always on the brink of losing her top. A truly perverse production of a lurid and deranged melodrama. 8/10