At the premiere of SHOCK-O-RAMA, the latest movie from the same-named division of E.I. Independent Cinema, Fango got the scoop from the company’s Michael Raso about its latest genre parody. “Our Seduction Cinema label has decided to produce a blockbuster spoof of none other than KING KONG, called, of course, KINKY KONG,” Raso tells us. “It’s produced by myself and written and directed by John Bacchus, who has done most of our late-night TV epics like PLAY-MATE OF THE APES and GLADIATOR EROTICUS. Every year we look for something that’s sort of on the edge culturally—the same thing we did to PLANET OF THE APES with PLAY-MATE OF THE APES. It didn’t matter whether the [APES remake] was a big hit or mildly received or a bomb; we felt it was a cultural icon—everybody knew what it was. So now here we are with Peter Jackson’s KING KONG coming out, so what better to spoof?”
Unlike Jackson’s CGI Kong, Raso reveals that E.I.’s big monkey will be partially created with FX homaging the 1933 original. “Brett Piper is in-house with our Shock-O-Rama label,” Raso notes; the filmmaker directed SHOCK-O-RAMA, BITE ME! and THE SCREAMING DEAD for the company, as well as numerous other features, many incorporating stop-motion FX. “We sat down with Brett and told him we were doing this softcore extravaganza, and what did he think about doing the effects? He was like, ‘Great, I’m in!’ So although some of the effects are a man in a monkey suit in front of a greenscreen [pictured], there will be some stop-motion Kongs and dinosaurs.”
As for the human cast, “The girls include a brand-new star named Sabrina Faire in the lead, and we brought in [E.I. veterans] Darien Caine and AJ Khan, as well as Jackie Stevens, who’s also brand-new to the genre. We’re sort of entering the next phase of Seduction Cinema, where a number of our stars from the past—Misty Mundae, Julian Wells—have gone on to wanting to do more horror material, and are doing a lot of work for Shock-O-Rama and other studios, and we’re bringing in new talent for the softcore end. The people I work with are so talented that I can completely understand when they say, ‘I’ve had enough of this, can we do something else?’ And I feel fortunate that we have a horror label where we can really give them something to do with their clothes on. It’s a breath of fresh air for them, and, I believe, for us.”
So, after LORD OF THE G-STRINGS and now KINKY KONG, does Raso think he’ll be getting a phone call from Jackson’s lawyers soon? “I don’t expect to hear from them,” he laughs, “because knock on wood, what we’re doing is really not much different from what SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE would do, which is just aping it—no pun intended—and having a lot of fun with it. We’re sticking pretty close to the original 1933 KONG, although we’ve set it in the present day, unlike Peter Jackson’s, and are shooting in New York. We’ve substituted the Statue of Liberty for the Empire State Building, though. Because our Kong is a little on the horny side, and he sort of has a crush on the Statue.”
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