Good story, Not enough for a whole film

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

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.

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.

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.

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.