The Mighty Peking Man (1980)

As you know, I love monster movies. When I first heard and read about MIGHTY PEKING MAN I wanted to see it. After I watched it, I would say that it is a Frankenstein's Monster made up of the 1976 KING KONG remake, TARZAN (since there is a female jungle there), the original MIGHTY JOE YOUNG, EARTHQUAKE (the way the title appears on the land) and TOWERING INFERNO (the climax). The special effects are not bad, but the music consists entirely on stock music. For instance, the disco song that played at the TV station is an instrumental song by Franck McDonald & Chris Rae called "The Jam". The ending where the title fought helicopters on top of the building has Dmitri Shostakovich's "Symphony No. 5 in D Minor" playing. All in all, this is a pretty good movie. This is arguably one of the better KING KONG rip-offs. If you like kaiju films, cheesy movies and bizarre cinema, then give it a watch. You will like it. Rated PG-13 for violence, nudity, gore and some profanity.

This movie, while definitely not credible film making by any means(or worth ten stars), is good ol' fashioned, camp entertainment. You have a giant ape, a blonde babe whose nipple pokes out for almost the entire movie, gore, death, and destruction. What's not to like? That said, this is just an adventure movie, and it delivers what it promises: Action, romance, and a giant ape. And it's hilarious to boot! While it probably tries to be serious(well,maybe not) it just comes off as silly. And, this being a big budget Chinese release, the picture looks great while the movie is totally goofy. This is one of those movies that's better to find in the dubbed, Amercanized version. It just makes it sound even sillier. Definitely worth a look for all fans of silly cult cinema. Especially silly cult cinema.

This ripoff of "King Kong" has got to be one of the funniest movies that I've ever seen, just because of how it never takes itself seriously. When a Hong Kong magnate sets out on an expedition to find a prehistoric ape in India, he and the others find not only the ape but also a scantily clad woman (Evelyne Kraft) who's known the big guy ever since her plane crashed in the jungle many years earlier. This of course means that "Xing xing wang" - called "The Mighty Peking Man" in English - is really an excuse to show off the woman's body. And what a body! I bet that many a teenage boy went to see this movie just to ogle the hot babe and get as horny as possible.Anyway, this is a total exploitation flick, so it makes sense that Quentin Tarantino brought it to DVD. Any image that you have of corny '70s cinema can be found here. A real treat in every way. You're sure to like it. Especially the blonde gal in the skimpy bikini, natch.

The lamentably lousy '76 "King Kong" remake fortunately inspired a handful of hilariously horrible low-budget cash-in copies which includes the incredibly awful Korean cheapie "A*P*E*," the groan-inducing idiotic spoof "King Kung Fu," and this simply stupendous Hong Kong howler. Produced by the Shaw Brothers, who usually cranked out extravagant chopsocky costumers by the dozens and shot on a conspicuously paltry budget of what appears to be several rolls worth of quarters, this utterly inept, yet always entertaining and frequently sidesplitting tale of gorgeous jungle honey Samantha (the beautiful, curvaceous, flaxen-tressed Euro minx Evelyn Kraft, giving the viewers am amazing eyeful in a scanty, revealing fur bikini outfit that leaves precious little to the imagination) and the fearsome, village-stomping behemoth ape who's her best friend is not to be missed. Blessed with all the correct so-totally-wrong-it's-paradoxically-right schlock movie stuff -- clueless ham-fisted direction by seasoned journeyman Ho Meng-Hua, a crummy, leave-no-cliché-unturned cookie cutter script, meager (far from) special effects, laughably poor dubbing, proto-MTV buzzsaw editing which accentuates a manic rapid-fire pace over rhythm and continuity, unspeakably terrible dialogue ("Hey look -- it's Peking Man!"), ramshackle production values, a sappy romance between Kraft and dorky Oriental adventurer Danny Lee (who also portrayed the titular bionic superhero in the equally astounding "Infra-Man" around the same time), a breathlessly frenetic pace, an absurdly melodramatic score, a fantastic mondo destructo monster on the rampage sequence (WARNING: Possible *SPOILER* ahead - in one alternate version Kraft croaks along with the ape at the film's riotously botched conclusion), a few groovy Erutrash disco tunes (one's even sung to a cloying lovey-dovey jungle montage!), and, most importantly, a certain cheerfully off-target, yet still unyielding and unbridled go-for-it hearty gusto which blithely permeates every last fabulously fumbled frame -- this choice chunk of delectably dreadful cinematic cheese rates as essential viewing for hardcore bad film buffs.