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6.1/10
Senior Film Conservator
A definitive 6.1/10 rating for a film that redefined the boundaries of cult cinema. King Klunk remains a cornerstone of transgressive art.
Honestly, only if you have a soft spot for 1930s animation experiments that don't quite know what they want to be. If you like your cartoons with a side of surreal nightmare fuel, you’ll dig it. If you’re looking for a polished story, keep walking.
The whole thing feels like the animators saw the original King Kong and thought, "Yeah, but what if the monkey was more of a bouncy ball?" It’s chaotic. It’s loud. And man, the proportions in this thing change every five seconds.
Pooch the Pup is out there trying to be a filmmaker, which is meta enough for a cartoon this old. Watching him scramble around Africa with his little camera is surprisingly stressful. The background art has this weird, flat depth that reminds me a bit of the stuff they were doing in A Dream or Two Ago, where things look solid until you look too closely.
The giant gorilla—King Klunk himself—doesn't really feel like a threat. He feels like an oversized toy that someone forgot to deflate. There’s a specific scene where he’s stomping around, and the perspective shift is so wonky I actually blinked twice to make sure I wasn't seeing things.
It’s not trying to be high art. It’s just trying to fill a screen with moving ink, and half the time, it barely manages that. It feels a bit like The Swell-Head, just way more sweaty and jungle-themed. You can tell they were rushing through the production cycles.
I found myself wondering if they even had a script, or if they just made it up as they went along. The pacing is a total wreck. One minute they’re on a boat, the next they’re knee-deep in vines, and the gorilla is suddenly just there. No buildup. No tension. Just monkey.
It’s not as slick as later stuff, but that’s the charm, I guess? Or maybe it’s just sloppy. Probably a bit of both. 🐒