Der Koloß von Konga (1977) Online

Man, these B gems are fun to watch. Shaw Bros Studios definitely pay homage to the King....Kong that is. Beware the Mighty Gorilla suit!

This movie teaches you so much! When heartbroken, sign up for a dangerous, life threatening expedition which probably means getting only a one way plane ticket. Danny Lee is good as the hero and for donning those crazy big lapels. Other times, he looks like he had a fun time with Evelyne Kraft since he's always got his hands all over her! There's also a weird triangle going on...don't mess with a gorilla's woman. The big guy likes to watch. Kraft as Ah Wei is pure eye candy and she works well with Lee (I had to laugh at the sappy love chase scenes in the deep jungle...of INDIA??? I thought we were in Peking!). Also, Shaws pulled out all the budget stops with model villages and miniscule downtown Hong Kong. It just gets the film more points in the shlock category. Laughter ensues during the stampede guns firing at the rear projection screen. One villager really gets a "leg" up during the goofy tiger scene. 15 minutes into this one and you get a feeling who the sleazeball is going to be. Was it just me or was there a lot of sexual innuendo with Ms Tarzan and the tree/light pole straddling?

There's also reckless carnage, a crazy hellbent army commander, millions of dollars in property damage...well, maybe $100 worth of model kits. Watch for that big hairy hand and the kooky Tonka dump trucks. You know, despite the fact that there's a 6 story massive gorilla in the city, the people of Hong Kong took it very well.

Great kampy fun here, Shaw style!

Words cannot describe this movie, it must be experienced! Things to watch for: the explorers climb a cliff with no supplies, but somehow a huge tent filled with sleeping cots is set up in the next scene; the plane diary is in English in a Chinese movie and although the jungle girl can only grunt, she can read the handwriting in the diary with no trouble; the "costume" she wears keeps peeling off when she runs...you can even see some of the glue peeling in a couple scenes; AND, the tree-climbing scene is NOT to be missed!!!!!

This is not just any King Kong rip-off... this is a King Kong rip-off from the legendary Shaw Bros! Filmed in Shaw Scope! Shady Chinese guys try to find a giant ape in India. The "exploration" is wonderfully ridiculous. Then, just when you and your friends think you can't possibly laugh any more, amidst all the Chinese actors appears a beautiful blonde westerner! Raised in the jungle, she swings through the trees like Tarzan with a crazy scream. Her top is glued on... barely.

Lots of bad, generic 70's music accompany all of this.

When she shimmies up a tree, legs akimbo, the hapless Chinese explorer guy gets quite an eyeful.

She can control all the jungle animals. The tigers, cheetahs and elephants all love to frolic with her. Except the snakes. One nasty snake bites her high on the inner thigh. Pretty close to the danger zone. What's the hapless Chinese explorer to do while she writhes in pain? Why stick his face down between her legs and suck the poison out, of course! The miniature sets are fantastically cheap. Not one of them would have qualified for a Godzilla movie. They don't help matters by offering lots of close-ups of the miniature trees and fake streams. You keep expecting a Lionel train to whistle by.

Samantha (the girl) doesn't command much of any language, preferring grunts. She is so grateful to the hapless Chinese explorer that they make love in her cave. Cue more 70's music.

Oh, and Samantha, raised in this harsh jungle since a child, wears a lot of make-up.

The Peking Man changes size a bit, depending on the sets. He seems to range from 20 to 100 feet tall.

If you enjoy campy trash, this is a must see! Our group has watched a lot of bad movies together but very few have given us as much joy as Mighty Peking Man.

The Mighty Peking Man (1977) stars Danny "The Man" Lee as an anthropologist who's searching for the mythical "Peking Man". Funded by a wealthy investor, Lee and his associates travel to Northern India to find the behemoth. Along the way he encounters a jungle girl (Evelyne Kraft who's so friggin' hot that she broke my babe-o-meter) who just happens to have the Peking Man as her guardian and companion. The original Hong Kong version of this film has a very sad and depressing overtone to it (unlike the badly dubbed "international" version). The original version plays out like an updated Mighty Joe Young. I liked this movie very much. Danny Lee is my hero!

Another entry in the Shaw Brothers attempt to go international. The movie is not as bad as people make it out to be. Don't believe the hype people. A cheesy movie with loads of fun!

Highly recommended!

Evelyne Kraft is hot!

Honest speaking, this movie is really bad, however some awful movies are somehow very attractive and possess some kind of mysterious charms, and this Mighty Peking Man is one of those movies. This is a Hong Kong version of King Kong, who is able to change his size according to each scene, which is miracle! I laughed a lot from the beginning to the end. Samantha is gorgeous and love scene of Johnny and Samantha is very memorable with awesome music, "Could it be I'm in love? Maybe~" I wonder if the director was serious about this movie or he actually intended to make funniest comedy of the decade. Anyway, I really love this movie and if you are reading this and you haven't watch Mighty Peking Man, run to the nearest video shop and grab it. If you can't find it there, try the furthur video shop! It's worth it. Finally I would like to thank Quentin Tarantino for brings back this movie to life.

One of the worst movies ever made...thus making it one of the best movies ever made. Everybody who loves awful movies, must go see this movie. I saw it at a midnight show, and got a free fortune cookie! This is basically an awfully funny version of "King Kong." They ripped off the plot, the ending, and anything that might be ripped off. I liked the gratuitous, no-nudity sex scene. Go see this movie for the music alone. It is total seventies crap. The dubbing sometimes comes after their mouths have stopped moving. Total ineptitude. Great movie. The special effects are not-so-special. There are animals galore that are mean one minute, tame the next, and can rip off a leg, and make it disappear in a millisecond. Also watch for the bad acting in the flashback scene (yes, they even used flashbacks, it ruins them all.) For the guys, there is a jungle babe that only has a small animal skin that sometimes is glued on (only one arm strap) and sometimes falls out of. I personally like her makeup...in the jungle at all times, it's perfect! I don't know whether to give this movie one star for not really trying too hard, or 9 stars for being so entertaining.

Mighty Peking Man was done in the seventies after the last Godzilla film of the original Godzilla series (Terror of Mechagodzilla, 1975) and this totally takes up the slack. It's even at least as entertaining as the last Godzilla films easy. It's a rip-off of King Kong and Godzilla but never tries to be anything more than it is, and that's what makes it honest and fun.

The miniatures is this film are fantastic, especially near the end where the giant is walking around the city and elevated roadways. The action even starts early, no waiting an hour for the monster's first appearance. This is one of my personal fave giant monster films, definitely gonna buy it on DVD! This even had a recent successful midnight run here in New York City. Don't miss it!

"The Mighty Peking Man" has it all. This was always an elusive flick for me, until I finally found a poor VHS copy of it under the title of "Goliathon." Quentin Tarantino had this released on DVD (my very first DVD ever purchased) and there it was, finally in all it's beautiful glory.

This is exactly what these films are supposed to be - nothing but non-stop fun, and lunacy. The story is similar to "King Kong" but this flick stands on its own. It's a very bombastic movie - the music is loud and dramatic, and there are a LOT of explosions and fires, all done to the max in deep sound, a decent sound system will do this one justice.

The inconsistencies are hilarious of course - everything seems to change size, from the monster to rocks to the buildings (depending on how big the monster is in any given scene). The gorgeous jungle girl wears makeup and is nice eye candy. And even though Peking Man is in the area, making a LOT of noise destroying buildings, stomping on cars, wrecking highways and causing explosions, people almost right next to him just go about their business casually, until they actually SEE the creature (maybe they need their ears checked).

One big plus is that the model/miniature work is nothing short of spectacular - there are a lot of very impressive miniature sets and models built. One array of buildings and elevated highways is especially fantastic, as is the destruction.

The film moves fast and is never dull. Even though Godzilla movies were no longer being made at this point, some interesting giant monster movies came around this time frame, a few good (like "Yeti: Giant of the 20th Century") and some bad (like "A.P.E." and "Queen Kong") but this is probably the best. "Peking Man" is an absolute must-see.

Before Danny Lee made it big in The Killer, he played Johnny Feng

in... The Mighty Peking Man!

Beginning with an earthquake & an initial attack by the ape man,

the film becomes a jungle fantasy for a while, with an elephant

stampede, death by quicksand, Samantha the blond jungle girl, a

romantic flashback, and a battle between a leopard and a cobra

(as Johnny sucks poison from Samantha's inner thigh!) When Johnny, Samantha and Utam the giant ape go to Hong Kong

the film switches to King Kong mode, with Utam becoming a

sideshow act, taking part in a tug-of-war with what look like Tonka

Toy trucks (as the locals throw fruit and prod him with sticks.) Utam finally runs amok when he sees Samantha being molested,

and the film culminates with Johnny, Samantha and the Peking

Man atop a high-rise building, getting buzzed by army helicopters.

This movie is hampered by shoddy process shots, and a sub-par

ape costume, though close-ups of Utam's face are more successful, but the film more than makes up for this with the

inclusion of Samantha (who seems constantly to be on the verge

of popping out of her animal skin costume), impressively-made,

large-scale model shots of downtown Hong Kong, and one of the

best endings of a giant ape movie.

*Spoilers* In this particular tale, the girl DOESN'T leave the shot-up primate's

side and dies, the creature's final, fur-in-flames moments are

more violent than Kong's many demises, and the movie finishes in

a downbeat fashion.

Mighty Peking man(aka:Goliathon)is a clever film from hong Kong and India about a search for the missing link,called the mighty Peking man, which looks like a 60 ft tall yeti.an adventurer;johnny(Danny lee)finds it along with a sexy blonde bikinied jungle woman(evelyne kraft)who was raised by the giant Peking man.this movie is a personal favorite of Quentin Tarantino and i kind of enjoy it,even if it does have some flaws.its a beauty and beast tale.in the USA it was released as goliathon in 1979.i remember seeing the trailers at the plaza theater in Paterson new jersey.where i saw endless Godzilla,kung fu and b movies.evelyne kraft was stunning,sexy and wild.a must see.5 out of 10.

This movie is terrible, I am not even moderately kidding. However, because it is so, so bad you have to see it. I laughed tonnes through the movie. Big guy in a gorilla suit, blonde jungle girl in an animal skin bikini with blue eye shadow, tonka trucks and other cheesy models, cheesy green screen scenes, blattant edits, lots of bad dialogue ('kill peking man, anyway you can') and a complete king kong rip-off.

I guarantee you'll laugh all the way through.

1/10 as a real movie 9/10 as a bad B movie

At one time, this was the most expensive movie in the history of Hong Kong cinema. It's campiness exceeds words. It is hard to believe that the filmmakers were actually serious when they made this hilariously horrible movie. The film is good as a comedy simply because of its being so terrible. I saw the re-release of this film at QT3 in Austin and the audience laughed their asses off.

A sleazy (and we'll find out just how sleazy later) Hong Kong based businessman hires a man named Johnny to lead an expedition into the jungles of India to find a giant, mythical, ape-like creature. One disaster after another strikes the party and they're separated. Johnny is rescued by a bikini-clad, blond, Tarzan-like woman named Samantha (Evelyne Kraft). Samantha introduces Johnny to her protector, Utam – the giant beast Johnny was hired to find. In no time at all, Johnny and Samantha fall for each other, they set off for Hong Kong with Utam, and, as you could probably predict, Utam escapes and destroys a good chunk of the city.

A few months ago, I went to the theater to see Kong: Skull Island. I wrote that Kong was, "Big, dumb fun. If you went into Kong: Skull Island expecting much more than that, you were in the wrong theater." The same holds true for The Mighty Peking Man. With a giant ape smashing Hong Kong, a British army officer willing to destroy the other half of the city to get the creature, Evelyne Kraft and her leather bikini, and some truly amazing looking miniatures, I can't imagine expecting much more than big, dumb fun.

Instead of rattling on about what I liked or didn't like about The Mighty Peking Man (you can read any number of better written reviews on the internet), I want to spend the rest of this discussing what I feel is the stupidest character ever put on film. The giant Utam is already in a bad mood. He's chained, caged, and kept away from Samantha. The sleazy business man I mentioned earlier picks this time to show us just how sleazy he truly is. He abducts Samantha and attempts to rape her. But does he do all this in some out of the way place like a dark alley? No. Instead, he picks a location just feet away from where Utam is being housed. The apartment or whatever is right at Utam's eye level. Utam can clearly see what's happening. This guy has to be the most incredibly stupid individual imaginable. He decides to rape a woman in the presence of her giant protector who is already in a foul mood. Dude – you've got a death wish. Bye bye sleazy business guy!

An unintentionally hilarious King Kong rip-off courtesy of Shaw Brothers studios, The Mighty Peking Man stars Danny Lee as adventurer Johnny Fang, who leads an unscrupulous show-biz promoter and his men into the jungles of India in search of the giant ape-man that is rumoured to reside there.

When faced with the horrors of the wild—savage beasts and quicksand—all but Johnny flee for the safety of civilisation, after which our hero is attacked by The Mighty Peking Man (played by a man in a moth-eaten monkey suit), only to be rescued by sexy wild woman Samantha (stunning Swedish blonde bombshell Evelyne Kraft, in a barely there jungle bikini), who has a special rapport with the oversized simian, having been raised by the beast since the plane crash that claimed her parents' lives.

Romancing Samantha, Johnny convinces the beautiful jungle babe to come with him to Hong Kong, taking the ape-man along for the ride. When the villainous showman who hired Johnny claps his eyes on The Mighty Peking Man, he wastes no time in exploiting the creature, leading to the inevitable climax in which the monster escapes to trash the city.

Boasting laughable special effects (shonky back projection and unconvincing Tonka toy models), terrible dialogue, and dismal acting, The Mighty Peking Man is hugely enjoyable trash from start to finish, the film made all the more watchable by the presence of the almost naked Kraft, who might not be much of an actress, but who cares?

7.5 out of 10, rounded up to 8 for the part where a man has his leg torn off by a jungle cat, Kraft's gratuitous shimmying up a tree and a lamp-post (the camera giving us a long good look at her ass), and for the surprisingly downbeat ending, in which Danny is left cradling Samantha's lifeless body.

Championed by Quentin Tarantino. A Shaw Brothers production (Runme Shaw and Vee King Shaw). Directed by Meng Hua Ho (The Oily Maniac, many others).

The back cover write-up on a recent dual format (blu/dvd) release refers to this film as the Shaw Brothers attempted cash-in on Japan's success with Godzilla. True enough, I would think, but the story really has more in common with the original King Kong...okay, with a bit of rampaging Godzilla action as well.

Highly entertaining if you're in the right mood. Some of the romantic and other jungle scenes in the first half of the film are downright hilarious. I wasn't expecting the beautifully captured scenic shots in the first half either but that was another plus. And the action in the latter half, when it comes, is pretty entertaining as well. A lot of the practical effects still hold up quite well. A couple of the effects are just plain goofy but it's all part of the film's charm.

Not sure why it took me so long to finally see this one but I'm glad I was able to watch the fully restored uncut version on Blu-ray...a very clean print.

It's one to kick back and have fun with. I did.

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.

"The Mighty Peking Man" its a very enjoyable and entertaining "King Kong" rip-off, its exactly what you would expect out of an exploitative version of "King Kong", and its probably one of the best "King Kong" rip-offs out there, its a really fun monster flick.

The special effects may look cheesy at times, but they are really good for this kind of movie. The characters are decent and they are likable, the villain is a total sleazeball, which is always great. I never felt bored while watching this film, its very entertaining.

The editing may be a little too awkward at times, but its nothing too distracting. I watched this movie with the Spanish dub, so I don't know if the English dub is any good, but the Spanish version its OK.

I would recommend it to those who are looking for a fun and cheesy monster movie, it has gore and nudity, and its well-made (for this kind of film).

Holy Kong-Knockoff Power! This is bad! But it's also glorious! (and yeah I felt the need for more ape madness after Kong: Skull Island, but that's neither here nor there).

So let's address something right out the gate: Evelyne Kraft is a (conventionally) attractive blonde 'hottie' woman... and she and her character are treated to one of those most over the top depictions of sexism I've seen for a movie like this. It's almost to the point that I wondered early on after the movie introduces "Samantha" (yes, it's her name, but I'm using quotes anyway), in her outfit that is so skimpy that it seems to be teasing what is acceptable as a "family" movie if the director was doing a parody of skimpy girl-in-almost-nothing clothing movies. Seriously, if you have a problem with your kid seeing even the tiniest bit of breast, let alone nipple, in your ultra-cheese monster movie knock-offs from the 70's, you've been warned.

And yet I'm not sure if it is a parody though, because there is a stretch of film here - oh I'd say about ten minutes, give or take another ten - where the movie practically stops so that our main guy Johnnie Fang (Danny Lee, a Bruce Lee surrogate of sorts, ideal for a Kongsploitation) from literally frolicking, at 60 frames per second, with Samantha along with her 'pets' being the tigers and leopards and elephants. It's almost as if the filmmakers somehow saw the early rushes of the movie ROAR and thought they could do one better - or simply less awkward and more silly - by having it that this woman Samantha, who was a little girl when her parents died in a plane crash (she doesn't scream or yell at all about this as a little girl by the way, she's totally placid) and then 'Mighty Peking' (that's not his real name, don't ask me what it was now) raised her as if she was his own... which included specially made clothing to just barely cover her lady parts.

In other words, this director I think means all of this sincerely, and if there is a tongue in cheek it's so firmly planted it's wagging out the side of his mouth (and as realistically as one of the toy cars or tanks that make the toys in the Godzilla movies look like ILM creations). But this isn't a downside; on the contrary, The Mighty Peking Man is a fantastic monster movie when you take it on its ridiculously stupid terms. It's no wonder that Tarantino was involved in its re-release - though I recall, from owning the VHS years back of the Rolling Thunder release, that he didn't do an intro to this like the other films, for shame Quentin! - as it certainly appeals to what he (as well as I) want in a ridiculous Asian monster movie that sometimes is in India and sometimes is in Hong Kong.

There's an affection I can't shake off for this kind of movie-making, for all of its dopeyness and all of the bad dubbing and all of the nonsense from the villain of the film (who sometimes wears some amazingly sparkly t-shirts as he plots his 'we must get to Hong Kong or else' and 'we must fill up the stadium' and 'oh, I must rape you now' moments... yeah, that happens) and how completely wild the climax of the movie gets, which seems to last for about 20 minutes. This is cinema that involves mattes and rear-screen projection and those shots where it's clearly processed to where you can see the black lines separating parts of the screen from the foreground and the background, and you can see the man inside the ape suit's skin around his eyes. And with all of this, there's some work and skill put into this cheese... at points.

Sure, there are times, especially early on, shots don't cut well together, and the animal actors look probably doped up to the gills. And through it all, every actor plays it completely straight, and so every irresistibly nutty beat is sold all the more. On top of all of this, the ending gets surprisingly dramatic and tragic, as if Meng Hua-Ho has to top how sad and tragic it got at the end of King Kong (or the 76 King Kong too, can't forget that, which I could bet this is as much a rip-off of, probably more, since that was a fresh blockbuster at the time). Like, the poster that you see for this movie, it's one of those times that's NOT a reaction, there really IS a leopard or cheetah or whichever that the lady of the movie just has around her shoulders and back like it's a pet, and there's nothing at all seen unusual about this by Mr. Johnnie.

(oh, and there's also a teary subplot involving Johnnie being cheated on by his long time girlfriend and then he goes away and comes back with the blonde white lady and then his ex is jealous and sad and oh neverf****ingmind).

Wacky, if obvious, Hong Kong made update of the classic King Kong story. The title character is an enormous ape, discovered by an expedition into the Himalayas. Naturally, Mighty Peking Man is soon brought back to civilization where he goes on the expected rampage. Evelyne Kraft plays Samantha, an incredibly sexy blonde jungle woman who's fond of the big guy.

While the tone is sometimes more serious than expected, this is still quite the agreeable diversion, with enough things in it to make its audience laugh. It even gets reasonably energetic and exciting, with MPM doing an amount of damage to HK that easily rivals anything Godzilla ever did to Tokyo. A production of those reliable folk at Shaw Brothers, this is very nicely shot in widescreen, and its special effects are quite amusing and entertaining overall (with much use of miniatures). The music, credited to Yung-Yu Chen and "DeWolfe", is suitably rousing.

The acting is of the "not so hot, but admirably sincere" variety. Kraft is extremely appealing, both as a performer and a scenery attraction. Danny Lee is likewise ingratiating as Johnnie Fang, the adventurer hired to lead the expedition. We have an appropriately disgusting human villain, as well as an enjoyable title antagonist. Sometimes MPM has some pretty priceless expressions on his face.

Director Meng Hua Ho gets right down to business, with MPM terrorizing village residents in an uproarious opening action set piece, and delivers brainless thrills for a well paced 91 minutes.

Seven out of 10.

With changing times, the Shaw Brothers studio found themselves forced to explore different avenues in the late '70s and early '80s aside from their usual kung fu fare. This led to many weird and wonderful horror productions and also this film, a cheap cash in on the De Laurentiis KING KONG remake which ironically turned out to be far more entertaining than the movie it was ripping off! The reason that THE MIGHTY PEKING MAN is so darned entertaining is due to the no holds barred atmosphere of the film, in which everything is over-the-top and everything goes. This film reaches new heights of cheesiness which only a few of the Toho GODZILLA epics managed to reach.

The first half of the film is set in standard jungle territory with an explorer befriending a sexy jungle girl while a back-projected man in an ape suit occasionally turns up to wreck a few model villages. The production values are low but the film manages to pack in lots of cheesy incident including attacks by stampeding elephants, tigers, snakes, and even a pit of quicksand for some hapless extras. This section is easy to watch thanks to the appearance of the Swedish actress Evelyne Kraft who plays Ah Wei, the leading jungle girl. Now Kraft may not have very strong acting abilities but she manages to be very fetching, not least due to the incredibly skimpy animal-skin bikini that she wears for the entire length of the movie.

At around the halfway mark, the film hilariously slows down (literally) for a slow-mo love scene followed by some very cheesy slow-motion shots of our two young lovers dancing and cavorting in the woods. Immediately afterwards, the Mighty Peking Man of the title is inexplicably easily captured and taken by boat to Hong Kong, where he is abused and ridiculed by the crowds. After escaping, he wreaks havoc amongst the local populace, which basically means he destroys lots of model buildings, roadways, and toy cars. After the toy tanks fail to stop him, the Peking Man climbs to the top of a skyscraper (sound familiar?) where he is absolutely peppered with bullets by the army and exploded too for good measure, ending the film on a downbeat note.

Aside from Kraft, none of the other actors really leaves an impression aside from Danny Lee, who is pretty good as the guide who becomes her lover, and the Caucasian guy playing the army general who gets to shout choice dialogue like "Kill him! Kill him! We have to stop him!". Oh, and Ku Feng is there for a bad guy role to boot. The special effects are pretty awful, ranging from lots of cheesy back projection to a cheesy moth-eaten man in a monkey suit, but again this just makes the movie more of a guilty pleasure. THE MIGHTY PEKING MAN is delightfully over-the-top entertainment, especially the delirious firepower-packed finale, and as such gets the thumbs up for bad movie buffs in my book.

"Mighty Peking Man" is not a movie one can just stumble upon after a particularly hard day and hope to enjoy as a straight-laced monster movie. You have to go into it knowing it's shoddily made, knowing you'll be roaring with laughter more often than you'll be oohing and awing. It deserves to be viewed on a Sunday morning following a partytastic night out with a coupla friends, after a marathon of Prehistoric Glamazon Huntress "MADtv" sketches. You must be in a certain euphoric mood to have your intelligence vomited on, after all, and "Mighty Peking Man" requires a viewer with the IQ of a gnat.

Granted, you most likely don't have the IQ of a gnat; I know I shouldn't be recommending bad movies to you, but if you were going to die tomorrow and your final wish was to watch one final bad movie, you may as well pick "Mighty Peking Man". It isn't Jack Hill bad (unpleasant, sorta kinda humorless); it is Ed Wood, Claudio Fragasso bad, unwittingly awful but so good at being awful that even Russ Meyer, post-viewership, might take a minute from objectifying nubile young woman and pat himself on the back for actually being good at what he does. We can agree that "Mighty Peking Man" is garbage, but it is successful in one (one) thing it does: it set out to be a cheap "King Kong" knockoff, and it doesn't just succeed, it prevails, as a cheap "King Kong" knockoff.

The film follows a group of Asian explorers trudging through the strenuous jungles of India in hopes to find the Mighty Peking Man, a legendary (and massive) ape-like creature who stalks the territory with reckless abandon. Leading the way is Johnny (Danny Lee), a man still recovering from the infidelities of his ex-fiancée. Moments into the trip does Johnny get separated from the group; near instantly, he is almost killed by the Peking Man himself, until — WAIT! — buxom wild woman Samantha (Evelyne Kraft) comes to the rescue. In a terribly conceived flashback sequence, it is revealed that, as a little girl, Samantha's parents were killed in an airplane accident. In the years since, she has attended to a rustically decorated cave, and, more or less, has considered her ape pal to be a brother, a father.

Johnny quickly falls in love with her, but he can't just go back home and claim her as his bride: he also has to bring the ape back to Hong Kong by the force of Lu Tiem (Feng Ku), a ruthless promoter. And just when things start beginning to look like "King Kong", coincidences start to tread into territories of unparalleled duplication, right up until the film ends in a predicted showdown atop a helicopter swarmed skyscraper.

"Mighty Peking Man" has more of a fascination with Evelyne Kraft than its titular monster, obsessing over the heaving possibilities of a nip-slip (she wanders around in a sure-to-be taped-on animal skin bikini top akin to Lil' Kim's '99 VMAs outfit), obsessing over slow- motion sequences where she gets to make orgasmic faces at the most cringeworthy of times (like when she gets a snake bite a few inches to the left of her crotch and Johnny must suck the poison out).

But alas, "Mighty Peking Man" isn't high art; at times, it works more as schlocky (if not, accidental) comedy, and it's impossible to be anything less than shallowly amused. Perhaps the film didn't realize it was terrible while it was being made. But once again, any filmmaker that figures a myriad of doll house sized "sets" or an abundance of horrifying green screen special effects suggests anything resembling quality can't possibly be sane. "Mighty Peking Man" wanted to capitalize on the "King Kong" craze, economically and efficiently; and for all its appalling productional decisions (and I mean appalling), it works. Barely.

Well, I suppose I didn't do adequate homework before venturing into Meng Hua Ho's 1977 camp classic "The Mighty Peking Man." For some reason, I had thought the titular protagonist was a man-sized survivor of the Paleolithic Age; a caveman type; a troglodyte displaced in time. But as most psychotronic-film fans have long since discovered, this is hardly the case at all, and the film in question turns out to be nothing more than a cheesy Hong Kong rip-off of 1933's "King Kong"...or, perhaps, more specifically, a cash-in "homage" to the Dino De Laurentiis travesty of the preceding year. A production of the Shaw Brothers, whose "Infra-Man" of 1975 had proved to be so memorably jaw dropping, the film is a goofy, fast-moving and wholly enjoyable experience, with better production values than you might be expecting, and lovably ersatz special FX.

The picture opens with a tremendous initial 20 minutes, which not only shows us the awakening of the P.M. amidst a Himalayan earthquake around 90 seconds in (I would've loved this as a kid; back then, I always grew impatient with films that withheld a glimpse of the monster for too long), but also the subsequent destruction of the nearby native village, the P.M. running amok, the outfitting of an H.K. expedition to track down the beast, the hiring of lovelorn hunter Johnnie Fang (played by "Infra-Man" star Danny Lee), an elephant stampede, a quicksand scene, a tiger attack and a deadly cliff ascent. Whew! The film pauses for breath when Johnnie is abandoned in the wild by his fellow adventurers, only to fall into the grips of the P.M. himself, in all his 100-foot-tall, hirsute glory. Johnnie also meets the big hairy galoot's only friend: Samantha, a beautiful blonde Tarzan type who had been living in the jungle since surviving an otherwise fatal plane crash with her parents many years before. Samantha is played here by Evelyne Kraft, a Swiss actress who I had previously encountered in the 1972 giallo "The French Sex Murders"; an actress so remarkably beautiful that she easily held her own in that film alongside such stunning Eurobabes as Barbara Bouchet, Rosalba Neri and Anita Ekberg. Despite living in paradise with Samantha, Johnnie stupidly forsakes his jungle idyll in favor of bringing the girl and the P.M. (who Samantha, for some reason, calls "Utam") back to civilization; predictably, his money-making scheme goes horribly wrong, as Utam eventually goes wild with an unusual case of P.M.S. (Peking Man Syndrome) and lays half of Hong Kong to waste, before a doubly tragic conclusion....

In a film with so many memorably campy moments, two stand out especially for this viewer. In the first, Johnnie and Samantha romp through the jungle in a slow-mo montage, while a supermellow pop song that is most likely entitled "Could It Be I'm In Love, Maybe" is heard in accompaniment. This kind of love scene can work marvelously if done right (for example, witness the use of Roberta Flack's "The Last Time Ever I Saw Your Face" in Clint Eastwood's "Play Misty For Me" montage), but here, the result is pure hilarity. And my other favorite camp moment? During Utam's H.K. rampage, one citizen declares, "There's a giant gorilla!" To which his friend replies, "My wife is a gorilla, too!" (Granted, something may have been lost in translation here; the dubbing on this fine-looking Miramax DVD IS fairly horrendous.) And in a film filled with so many half-baked performances, perhaps the most convincing bit of thesping turned in is by Samantha's pet leopard, who really does look to be almost crying as his mistress leaves their jungle home. The film, to be fair, does seem to bust a gut to guarantee a good time for the viewer, and manages to also incorporate a high-seas typhoon, an eye-popping finale (I love it when Utam, standing atop H.K.'s highest building, grabs an attacking helicopter and sends it ablaze down into the streets) and even some surprising gross-out sequences (a safari member has his leg torn off by a tiger; a yucky close-up of Samantha's snakebite wound on her otherwise yummy thigh). Genially zany throughout, its twofold bummer of an ending does come as a real surprise, and one that surely serves Johnnie right. Viewers who are expecting a "happily ever after" windup here, a la 1949's "Mighty Joe Young," may be in for an unpleasant surprise at how things unreel. Perhaps, to prepare themselves and cushion the blows, they might use "The Mighty Peking Man" as a sort of drinking game, imbibing a snort every time Samantha cries out "Utam!" Even Ann Darrow didn't have to go through the punishment that this jungle nymph does!

Word of a monster ape ten stories tall living in the Himalayas reaches fortune hunters in Hong Kong. They travel to India to capture it, but wild animals and quicksand dissuade all but Johnny, an adventurer with a broken heart.

Unbelievably, Roger Ebert gave this one a positive review, writing, "Mighty Peking Man is very funny, although a shade off the high mark of Infra-Man, which was made a year earlier, and is my favorite Hong Kong monster film." And to think Ebert never would have seen it if Quentin Tarantino had not picked it up for distribution twenty years after it came out.

Can you beat these amazing punches and that amazing costume? No, you cannot.

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.

One of the "sweded" films in Be Kind Rewind, this starts out as a ripoff of King Kong, then switches to a Tarzan movie as Johnny (Danny Lee) discovers Samantha (Evelyne Kraft), an absolutely gorgeous babe that was raised by The Peking Man after her parents died in a plane crash.

Just like Tarzan, she talks to the animals, all except for a snake that bit her on the thigh, necessitating Johnny sucking the venom out very close to the jungle treasure. Of course, Peking Man arrives with special leaves that Johnny crushes up and applies to the wound. Miraculous! We go back to King Kong and Tarzan in Hong Kong, as they transport the Peking Man to the city. You can imagine the carnage as The Peking Man becomes Godzilla-like after he sees Samantha being raped (not really, it's PG-13).

Only Quentin Tarantino can bring us this much fun.