10 Double Movie Features From Hell
6. Congo And Mortal Kombat
This is autobiographical.
Summer, 1995. Bill Clinton was enjoying his first term. O.J. Simpson enjoyed a not guilty verdict for stabbing his ex-wife. Michael Jordan enjoyed a return to the NBA, and Toy Story was dominating the box office. Somehow, the local Tucson, Arizona drive-in was still in business, and Congo and Mortal Kombat were running in tandem.
No two films have more perfectly captured the worst eccentricities of 90s cinema, and the back-to-back airing only solidified their place as stark reminders. Congo, directed by Frank Marshall, was an attempt to prolong the money made from Jurassic Park. An adaptation of an earlier novel by Michael Chrichton, it was advertised as the spiritual sequel audiences were waiting for the writer to finish.
But the film is far removed from Jurassic Park or even its own source material. Rather than try to ape the success of that franchise-to-be, it hearkens back to old adventure yarns better suited to Indiana Jones - the kind of TV specials Richard Chamberlain headlined in the seventies.
It's a surefire blast for all the wrong reasons, with bizarre one-off performances from Tim Curry, Ernie Hudson and Delroy Lindo. But the stench of its marketing is overbearing, and Marshall's directing style is too Spielberg-lite to have any fun with the material.
Pairing such a misfire with Mortal Kombat, a film whose heart was in the right place but budget wasn't, only shows just how nineties money in Hollywood was misdirected.