Mighty Peking Man
by Meng Hua Ho
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Product details
Actor: Danny Lee, Evelyne Kraft, Feng Ku, Norman Chu, Wei Tu LinDirector: Meng Hua Ho
Edition: VHS Tape
Audio: English (Original Language)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC
Running Time: 92 minutes
Release Date: 2000-11-07
Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Publisher: Walt Disney Video
Studio: Walt Disney Video
VHS Movie Reviews of Mighty Peking Man
Movie Review: No love like this
Summary: 4 Stars
I find the high-budget King Kong versions lack the "charm" or "love" of this D-grade counterpart, which is why I won't even own Peter Jackson's visual overkill (has no heart). To appreciate this one, you need to have a grasp of the heightened sense of drama, a caricature of its other lavish counterparts. Makes no sense that our hero Johnnie gets his heart broken when he catches his brother sleeping with his fiancee and then flies to India on a whim to find the Mighty Peking Man. Just like that. Like an extreme soap opera. But if you go with it, it makes a lot of sense. It's like the filmmakers are saying, "This is what comprises a hit movie." So with that formula, they also have the gorgeous Evelyn Kraft as Samantha the jungle girl. Apparently, in modern American pop culture, ANY blonde woman is considered beautiful, which is utter nonsense. Which is why it's rare to have this gorgeous blonde represent beauty. Major gripe for me though is that in the Hong Kong trailer (found on Youtube), there is nudity, but this Quentin Tarantino version is trimmed of it, down to a PG-13. Why didn't Quint just release it unrated, makes it more "underground"? Anyway, would have appreciated Evelyn Kraft's delights, but the movie's pretty fun either way.Movie Review: bombdest movie ever
Summary: 5 Stars
this junk was sooooo poorly made that it's become one of the greatest comedies ever. scenes are reapeated, obvious minitures were used, scences were done in reverse. im tired of typing now.Movie Review: Fun
Summary: 3 Stars
This is a really goofy giant ape movie, and after watching both A*P*E and the Mighty Gorga I was well prpared to pull this one to bits as well, but I have to say that although it's not a particularly good film, it does at least have a lot more going for it that those two pitiful efforts. "Mighty Peking Man" barely wanders from the well worn path that most King Kong imitators follow. Suffice to say that a giant ape-man awakens during an earthquake and breifly terrorizes a jungle village before getting hunted and captured by mean and greedy big city people. After being put on display and humiliated, the ape-man escapes and runs amok, causing much destruction before climbing a tall building and is being finally shot down by the armed forces. You have to admire the gall of the makers of this film, they couldn't have slavishly copied the plot of the original much more closely than this!
I'm kind of torn between laughing at this film and actually enjoying it on it's own merits at the same time. So I'll give you my summary of how it works on both levels. First off, as a "so bad it's good" movie, the film scores highly. The film uses A LOT of miniature model sets in the scenes of Peking Man (this is how he is referred to in the movie) rampaging about, and these are nearly always pretty awful. The model village that gets destroyed by earthquake right at the start is dire, it really does look like a load of 6-inch high toy huts that someone is throwing handfuls of dirt over. The shockingly poor rear projection special effects don't help much, either. As for Peking Man himself, well at least the monkey costume is a lot better than the ones in A*P*E (that one didn't even fit properly) and "The Mighty Gorga" (worst ever -and they only showed the top half). In this movie, we see lots of shots of giant ape hands grabbing the cast, and they look quite good, as do his big monkey feet when he stomps on people. There appears to be a model prop head used for extreme close ups of Peking Man snarling or otherwise emoting, and this looks kind of...monsterish. Shame it doesn't really match the costumed actor's gorilla mask, but I quite liked it. OK, next off, the acting is generally pretty poor, plus the English dubbing is appalling. In fact the soundtrack in general is quite bad, most noticably in the noises that Peking Man himself makes - his roar sounds like a woman's scream mixed in with various bird noises and a cement mixer!
So as a spectacular monster show, the film falls a bit flat, due to all the bad special effects. But here's what goes some way to make up for this - the film has definitely got gusto - all the onscreen mayhem is churned out almost non-stop, and it hardly ever lets up. As long as Peking Man is onscreen, there's always something being destroyed or exploding, and although the effects are poor, there are loads and loads of them, so it's hard to complain of boredom, which is one thing that stops most bad films in their tracks. Secondly, the film really does have a heart. Peking Man's love interest in this story is a beautiful blonde girl who has grown up in the jungle after being the sole survivor of a plane crash as a child. He is very attached to her, and actually allows himself to be taken from the jungle and put on display on her request (she has fallen in love with the hunter who came in search of the monster). Now the actress playing Samantha the jungle girl is not great, but she makes an appealing alternative to the usual city dame heroine type, because she starts the film as the ape-man's friend, with his well-being already on her agenda. And even Peking Man himself has character, with the monkey-suit actor actually managing to portray some semblance of emotion without looking totally daft, and the scenes between him and Samantha can be quite sweet, even if the pathos is laid on with a trowel.
The trouble is that so much of the film is such baloney that any good aspects get swamped. There's too much time spent on rubbish special effects and miniature sets which are always totally deserted, or scenes with Samantha running around Hong Kong in her fur bikini and bare feet without attracting the slightest interest, or the awful "love scenes" of Johnny the hunter and his ex - in fact that entire sub-plot is terrible. The list goes on, and these things just disable the film's otherwise commendable efforts at being a good piece of entertainment. Still at least this is one "bad" movie you can watch for laughs and still come away from NOT feeling that you have just totally wasted 90 minutes of your life. I thought it was a lot of fun.
Movie Review: Let's Not Get Crazy
Summary: 2 Stars
I watched this movie on IFC or the Sundance Channel because I wondered why this movie would be on those channels. I guess Quentin Tarantino is a fan or there's a DVD of this movie with "Quentin Tarantino Presents" on it or something.
What does QT see in this? I don't know.
This is a terrible movie. Think of the worst American monster movie made in color on a $1.98 budget and then make it five times worse. Ed Wood would've turned this project down. I grew up loving Godzilla movies and I still didn't like this.
The only thing this movie has going for it is the stunningly-hot blonde running around in a skimpy outfit she can't keep on straight. The only drama, the only tension, the only interest I could maintain in this lame movie was what was going to pop out next on the native girl.
But is this so bad that it's good? I didn't think so. It's definitely not in the big leagues with GODZILLA VS. THE SMOG MONSTER (the Big G fights a giant booger to the death) or the original HUMANOIDS FROM THE DEEP (mutated salmon chases human women for some strange).
Maybe the folks at "Mystery Science Theatre 3000" could pull a classic episode out of this.
Movie Review: Mighty Entertaining!
Summary: 3 Stars
If you are reviewing this film with a critical mind you are wasting your time and that of your reader. "The Mighty Peking Man" is pure Daikaiju (Giant Monster) fun from start to finish. If you see a "man in a suit" as many do, that's another obvious reason to avoid this film. Of course it's cheap and not as expensive as American films but it has some great moments worth mentioning. Many people tend to lump all Daikaiju films together because they don't get the concept so I can't read those reviews either. These are the same people that see Animae as being cartoons. Need I say more. Gamera & Godzilla are not in the same category as this film....next lesson.
You know the plot from ALL of the other reviews. Giant Ape and jungle girl meet with disaster in modern civilization. Twenty minutes into this film and you can see why The Shaw Brothers were brilliant Grindhouse film makers. It's no wonder Tarantino's Rolling Thunder Pictures got it released. Many reviewers fail to see the connection between modern day cinematic homages to low budget films like this one. There was a style of producing/editing despite the obvious cheapness that makes this a pleasure to view.
Dramatic orchestra scores and funky soulful disco ballads collide with some nice sets and priceless dialog that you will not find in modern movies. I don't care what the Shaw Brothers intended, it's brilliant parody and fun to watch.
Don't be critical and miss the point. Compare this to APE being sold alongside this film. APE is SO BAD it's surrealistic. Who knows where the film producers were going with that movie. Call me crazy but this movie is a guilty pleasure and far more fun than most of modern Hollywood's CGI effect films. It's more fun than the seventies American remake of King Kong too.
Buy it, rent it, love it, it is what it is....entertaining and not to be reviewed as a landmark cinema classic, but rather a look back into the day when when we could go with our familys to drive-ins and not 20 unit stadium seating Cineplexes of doom! We watch these old movies because they remind of happy times...he said turning 40 in a month!
Summary of Mighty Peking Man
What makes Mighty Peking Man such a trashy delight? It's not just the absurdly obvious special effects and atrocious dubbing--those are the easy laughs--it's the over-the-top romantic and dramatic moments that really push this movie into camp heaven. When a gigantic ape-man destroys a village in a remote jungle, a fiendish promoter decides to capture this prehistoric creature and put him on display. He hires Johnny (Danny Lee, who resembles current Canto-pop superstar Andy Lau), a heartbroken adventurer, to hunt Peking Man down. Hardly five minutes go by without some life-threatening danger; in just the first half-hour there's an earthquake, a tiger attack, and a fatal mountain-climbing accident, and that's in addition to the rampaging man-ape and bottle-blond jungle queen Samantha (the lovely Evelyne Kraft), who occasionally falls out of her already skimpy jungle attire. It seems that Samantha survived a plane crash that killed her parents and was kept alive by Peking Man--though where she finds her mascara is never explained. After falling in love with Johnny, she helps him bring Peking Man back to civilization. By the time Peking Man is unleashing devastation on downtown Hong Kong, the movie has reached a giddy delirium that defies all logic. Part soap opera, part monster madness, Mighty Peking Man is completely entertaining. --Bret FetzerMonster Movies Video
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