It was directed by Frank Marshall and stars Laura Linney, Dylan Walsh, Ernie Hudson, Grant Heslov, Joe Don Baker and Tim Curry.

[3] Searching for rare blue diamonds that could enable a revolutionary communications laser, TraviCom employees Charles Travis and Jeffrey Weems discover the ruins of a lost city near a remote volcano in the Congo jungle.

Travis, Charles's father and the CEO of TraviCom, lose contact with the team while tracking their progress at the company headquarters.

Primatologist Peter Elliott and his assistant Richard teach human communication to a mountain gorilla named Amy, whose sign language is translated into a digitized voice.

On their journey via Tanzania and then Zaire, Monroe reveals that Homolka has led previous, disastrous safaris in search of the "Lost City of Zinj".

A native tribe leads them to Bob Driscoll, a wounded member of Charles's expedition who dies screaming upon sight of Amy.

At daybreak, they explore the city and surmise from hieroglyphs that the inhabitants bred the gray gorillas to guard the mine, but were overthrown by them.

Monroe, Karen, and Peter flee deeper into the mine, where they discover Jeffrey and Charles's bodies, with the latter still holding a giant blue diamond.

The mountain gorillas and gray gorillas are in-suit performed by Christopher Antonucci, David Anthony, John Munro Cameron, Jay Caputo, Nicholas Kadi, John Alexander Lowe, Garon Michael, Peter Elliott, Brian La Rosa, David St. Pierre, and Philip Tan.

[4] The film was envisioned as an homage to classic pulp adventure tales, and Crichton successfully pitched the movie to 20th Century Fox in 1979 without a fleshed out story.

The LaserDisc release is THX certified and consists of widescreen and pan and scan fullscreen versions, while also featuring a Dolby Digital AC-3 track.

The site's consensus states: "Mired in campy visual effects and charmless characters, Congo is a suspenseless adventure that betrays little curiosity about the scientific concepts it purports to care about.

Hal Hinson of The Washington Post called the film a "Spielberg knockoff...shamelessly lifting themes and ideas from a handful of Steven's greatest hits."

"[19] A video game based on the film, Congo the Movie: The Lost City of Zinj, was released for Sega Saturn in 1996.