Let’s
see ... We started with Crap-O-Scope
... Then came SpectaMation.
And now our Mad Mammoth Monkey Marathon
glides gracefully into the world of
Oriental goofiness, brought to you in
genuine ShawScope by the Shaw Brothers,
Run Run and Run Me, the undisputed kings
of Oriental goofiness.
We
open in the offices of Lu Tiem (Feng
Ku), an evil
entrepreneur,
who raves to his gathered cronies
about a recent documented sighting of the
legendary Peking Man. (And how
do we know he’s evil? He’s an
entrepreneur in a giant monkey movie;
that’s how we know he's evil.)
And not more than two minutes in, we
already have a flashback:
...As
Lu Tiem recounts the harrowing encounter
with the mythical man-beast, we pan over a
peaceful mountain village, where the
tranquility is suddenly shattered by a
freak storm and an accompanying earthquake!
Lightning flashes and thunder roars as the
mountain near the village breaks apart and
crumbles, allowing the Peking Man to
unearth himself -- in all his monkey-suited
glory! He then proceeds to do the Mash
Potato on the village, and as most
of the peasants flee, a
few remain behind and break out their
trusty catapult -- alas, with little
effect (-- the rubber rocks just
bounce off the equally rubbery suit),
and the rampage continues with plenty of
building crushing and native stomping
until the flashback abruptly ends...
Seems
that Lu Tiem is all a-buzz over this
account because he wants to form an
expedition to this remote area of
Indonesia, capture the Peking Man, and
make some money off of the beast. (See,
he’s evil.) Wanting Johnny Fang,
rumored to be the greatest hunter of all
time, to lead this circus, one of Lu
Tiem's Yes Men warns that ever since Fang
was jilted by his long time lover, he
spends most of his time at the bottom of liquor
bottle. But Lu Tiem still wants his man,
and they find Fang as they feared, drunk
as the proverbial skunk, who happily
agrees to to lead them all into the jungle
and leave the memories of his lost love
far, far behind him. And before you can
say Cue me up some stock jungle footage
and lets us find ourselves a giant monkey,
Fang, Lu Tiem, and the rest of the
expedition is knee deep in the jungle,
searching for said giant monkey. Upon
reaching the deserted village, an elephant
stampede happens to thunder through, and
once again, everyone wearing a Jungle Jim
suit is spared a grisly death while
everyone else bites it under the
elephant’s trampling feet -- we also
realize that Johnny really is the
greatest hunter of all time when the man
brings down a full size Indian elephant
with just a revolver!
After
they make camp, two other guys lucky
enough to be in the Jungle Jim outfits (--
sorry, I don’t recall their names --)
decide to cheer the morose Johnny up by
trudging over his painful memories by asking
what happened between him and his old
girlfriend. (Thanks, guys!) Johnny
bitterly answers, saying everything was
just wonderful and dandy until brother
Charlie, a famous TV producer, showed up,
triggering another flashback:
...We’re
back in Hong Kong with an extended montage
of Johnny and his ex, Lin Chang (Pin
Cheng), in a love-addled stupor,
frolicking around (-- buying
snow cones, splashing around in the surf,
etc). From what we see, this
love seems destined to last forever, but
Lin is an ambitious gal, who wants to
be famous, and is more than willing to
sleep her way to the top. Meaning, inevitably,
Johnny catches he in bed with brother
Charlie (-- ugh ... I hope it’s
HIS brother Charlie, as the film never
specifies --). Busted in the act,
as Charlie begs for forgiveness, Johnny
ignores him and focuses all of his rage
and hatred toward his now ex-girlfriend
instead.
Thus
endeth the flashback...
Seemingly
doomed from the start, Lu Tiem's safari
continues it’s streak of bad luck when
the local flora and fauna starts picking
them off with startling frequency:
And
I find it extremely amusing that every
time something bad happens, the members
of the expedition react the exact same
way: They all throw their hands up in
the air and run away, screaming, in
every direction. And yes, they do run
into each other while trying to get
away. Back to the film.
A
tiger springs from nowhere, scattering the
group, and before Johnny can wrestle it
off, the big cat severs the leg of one of
the native bearers. After Lu Tiem fires
his pistol in the air, frightening the
animal off, Johnny goes to get the first
aid kit -- but Lu Tiem, pressed for time,
just shoots the wounded man dead
(-- told you he’s evil --),
earning him a punch in the mouth from
Johnny, who says they could have saved
him.
Next,
we reach the extended rock-climbing
portion of our program (--
Aauugh! Rock-climbing!). As
they all take a separate route to reach
the top of a massive cliff, one string of
climbers doesn’t make it, resulting in
four dummies plummeting to their deaths.
Upon reaching the top, not realizing it
was going to be this hard, Lu Tiem starts
whining that he wants to quit and go back.
As the boss spouts sour grapes,
proclaiming the Peking Man doesn’t even
exist, Johnny rallies the troops to
begrudgingly continue. But wait! What’s
that over there swinging in the trees?
Could that be a jungle girl? (Oh,
lord, please, not another jungle girl...) Morale
perks up when the safari finds footprints
of the giant man-ape, and Johnny tracks
them until it gets too dark to follow the
trail.
During the night, while Johnny
sleeps, Lu Tiem and all the others abandon
him and head back to civilization. Waking
up alone, Johnny wanders around on some
terrain that looks suspiciously hairy --
and then the ground comes alive as the
slumbering Peking Man rights himself and
takes swipe at our hero, snagging him in
his massive paw. But Johnny manages to slip
free, and flees into the jungle until he's cornered
and knocked unconscious. And as the giant
man-ape closes in for the kill, suddenly (...dramatic
pause…), from out of
nowhere, comes a bizarre, reverberating
Tarzan-esque yodel, bellowed by our jungle
girl (Evelyne Kraft),
swinging in on a handy vine. Very
agile and very beautiful (-- and
very Caucasian when you consider where we
are), she orders the big
galoot to back off and not squish Johnny. (No.
Bad monkey.). She then instructs
the beast to pick Johnny up (--
gently, and don’t EAT him!),
which he does, along with her, and then
deposits them in her cave that resembles
Marshall, Will and Holly’s cave from The
Land of the Lost.
(I kept expecting old Grumpy to stick
his head in.) When
Johnny wakes up, Jungle Girl tries to be
hospitable while he makes a pig of
himself. Within five minutes, the language
barrier is conquered (--
Jungle Movie Rule #6), and
then she takes him to the site of a plane
wreck. Turns out this is how she came to
be in the jungle as we
have another, brief flashback and get to
see the plane crash. Seems Dad managed to
get a younger Jungle Girl clear before the
plane blew up, then the Peking Man found
her, raised her, and the rest is history.
And
as a viewer, we’re not really all that
concerned with how she got in the
jungle, we just want to know how in the
hell her gravity defying animal skin
tank-top refuses to fall off her left
breast.
After
Johnny finds a journal that reveals the
girl's real name is Samantha, they head
back to cave and stumble upon that tiger
again. But this time it doesn’t attack
because the cat Samantha’s friend. (It
also appears to have smoked some bananas
-- if you know what I mean.) They
also find a leopard (-- who’s
been hitting the bananas, too, apparently),
but the cobra must have kicked the
habit and it bites her! As Johnny
frantically sucks the venom out of the
wound, the leopard disposes of the cobra. (In
another disturbing scene of real animal
combat in film, and I don’t think The
Mighty Peking Man
got PETA’s stamp of approval.) Moving
Samantha back to the cave, who is
delirious from the poison, Johnny's
attention is drawn outside by a shower of
leaves, provided by the Peking Man.
Luckily, Johnny's on the ball and figures
it out, first grinding the leaves into a
pulp, and then applying it as a poultice
to Samantha's wound. Now all he can do now is
wait and hope they were in time.
We
then abruptly cut to Lu Tiem’s cement
pond, where several reporters gather and
ask about his failed safari. Of course, Lu
Tiem lies, saying the Peking Man is just a
legend. But that darned Johnny Fang just
refused to give up and come back. He also
firmly believes that all alone in the
jungle, alas, Mr. Fang is as good as dead.
Back
in the cave, as Samantha slowly recovers,
we get an extended romantic interlude as
the young couple falls in love. (Complete
with a disco musical serenade!) This
whirlwind romance culminates when a
peeping Peking Man catches them doing the
horizontal bop, causing him to pitch fit
until Samantha manages to calm him down ...
More time passes, and eventually, Johnny
talks Samantha into returning home with
him -- with the Peking Man in tow, of
course. She agrees, and after a tearful
goodbye to all the stoned animals, Peking
Man scoops them up and heads off toward
the coast ... Upon arrival, the Peking
Man’s first public appearance causes a
panic -- but the crowd calms down once
they realize that Samantha can control
him. Tracking Lu Tiem down, a forgiving
Johnny makes arrangements to take the
monster on to Hong Kong, where he'll be put
on public display.
Oh
yeah … I see this all ending in fire!
Chaining
the man-ape to the deck of a freighter for
transport, Samantha begs to have them
taken off, but Lu Tiem assures they're for
his own protection. After they set sail the Peking Man is most
definitely not
having a good time. Things
get even worse when the
Captain receive word that a
typhoon is bearing down on them. He then
wants to alter course to Singapore
to ride it out until the conniving Lu Tiem
points out that if he doesn’t get them
to Hong Kong on time, to a sold out
stadium that’s waiting for them, the
Captain will be financially responsible for
all monetary losses. So, storm or no storm, Hong
Kong it is ... Before the storm hits, Johnny
gets
Samantha to try on some modern clothes;
but she doesn’t like them and quickly
chucks them all out the porthole --
explaining why she's in the buff when Lu
Tiem barges in, who gives her the old,
lecherous stink-eye. Meanwhile, Johnny is
having second thoughts about exploiting
the big guy, but they’ve no time to
argue as the typhoon hits with all its
fury! On the deck, the Peking Man is now
mad and wet. (Man,
I’ll bet that stinks. And yes, there are
as yet undiscovered tribes in Africa that
knew I was going to use that joke.) With
the seas churned up by the weather,
several large waves push the boat onto
some rocks, where it promptly gets hung
up. Before they're completely scuttled,
Samantha and Johnny loosen the chains
enough to allow the man-ape to push them
free. Once clear of the storm, the rest of
the trip is relative uneventful.
Arriving
in Hong Kong with much fanfare, Johnny
also gets a call from Brother Charlie, who
wants to interview him. He happily agrees.
Now,
I’m really scratching my head at this
point in the film. I mean, Johnny has
basically been screwed over royally by
two men in this film: Charlie and Lu
Tiem. Yet he holds no ill will toward
either of them but still has major
issues with his ex. There's a
psychological term for this, and I think
they call it projecting.
Dragging
Samantha to the TV station, they meet with
Charlie, who invites them to watch the
musical number he’s filming. (We
also notice that no one is giving
Samantha’s jungle gear a second glance.)
As Charlie wraps things up, Johnny
receives a note from Lin, who wants to
meet. Leaving Samantha to watch the show,
Johnny finds his old girlfriend in her
dressing room. Begging for forgiveness, she
butters him up with a bunch of rigmarole
about how the affair didn’t mean
anything, and it was really him that she
was thinking about the whole time. Not surprisingly,
our dimwitted sap falls for this pitch.
Meanwhile, when the musical session ends,
everyone leaves, leaving Samantha alone in
the darkened studio. And when she goes to
find Johnny, guess which room she checks
first? Right. And the timing couldn’t
have been worse, either, as Lin throws
herself on top of Johnny just as she opens
the door. Seeing this, Samantha runs off
in a most righteous jealous snit. When
Johnny comes after her, she gives him the
slip and heads off into Hong Kong alone.
At
around the same time, over at the sold-out
stadium, Lu Tiem has a monster-truck rally
going, having chained the giant man-ape to
some Tonka trucks for a bizarre game of
tug-of-war. And since Peking Man doesn’t
seem to wanna play, the surly audience
pelts him with trash. (Is
that really wise?) Samantha
sees this bizarre, televised display
through a storefront and asks a nice
couple to take her to the stadium. (It’s
the films most surreal scene. The couple
doesn’t even bat an eyelash at this
half-naked Caucasian and agrees.) Arriving
just as some of Lu Tiem’s goons whack at
the reluctant ape’s feet in an effort
to rile him up, Samantha tries to stop this
-- but they knock her away,
which finally enrages the Peking Man. Lu
Tiem arrives and consoles Samantha, saying
everything will be all right if she'll
just trust him. Eyes full of tears, as Lu Tiem
escorts her back to his hotel suite
overlooking the stadium, Samantha promises
Peking Man that they’ll soon go back to
their jungle home. Once inside, he locks
the door and tries to give Samantha a
drink. When she refuses, he becomes
belligerent and tries to molest her. And
it’s at this point that I'll mention the
suite is right at Peking Man's eye level,
and the huge picture window is open,
allowing him an unobstructed view!
Seeing
that his girl is trouble, the
man-ape goes bonkers, breaks loose, and
punches his way into the room. But using
Samantha as a shield, Lu Tiem escapes,
tosses her into a car and roars off. Lost
in his rage, Peking Man begins to demolish
the city while looking for them. As he
stomps his way downtown, the ape spots his
quarry as he flees into another building,
where Tiem tries to molest the girl again
until Peking Man comes to the rescue.
Smashing his way in, he seizes Lu Tiem,
throws him to the ground, and then stomps
on him.
...Hey.
Where’d Johnny go?
Peking
Man’s rampage has also drawn the
attention of the local military, led by
thee crankiest commander since General
Grayson took on Reptilicus,
who gives the order to shoot the damned
monkey on sight. With Lu Tiem dead, Peking
Man's onslaught doesn't stop, and while
Samantha tries to catch up with and stop
him, Johnny makes his way to a local
police precinct. Claiming he can stop
Peking Man, all they have to do is help
him find Samantha.
This
leads to a hilarious APB bit about
finding the girl through her description that
is truly a priceless piece of B-cinema
history. Seriously, I had pop coming out
of my nose. Now everything smells like Diet
Dew.
As
the carnage continues, the military tanks
and helicopters engage and attack.
Wounded, the ape keeps on swinging until
night falls, rather abruptly, and the
Peking Man climbs to the top of a tall
building. (My,
but this looks familiar...) When
Samantha, Johnny, and General Cranky all
converge on the building at the same time,
Cranky comes up with a hair-brained plan
to fill the water tanks at the top of the
building with gasoline and then blow them
up, killing the monkey. (I
assume the inspiration for this came from
reverse-engineering The
Towering Inferno.)
But when Johnny
and Samantha swear they can stop Peking
Man without killing him, General Cranky
promises to hold fire while they try ... Making their way to the roof, Samantha
bursts into tears at the sight of the
bloodied Peking Man, who takes her in his
paw, where she again swears they’re
gonna head back to the jungle. And though
she does manage to calm him down, down
below, General Cranky (--
the schmuck --) breaks his word and
orders his helicopters to attack. These
choppers then swoop in, machine guns a-blazing,
and the monkey screams as the rounds slam
into him. When a few of these shots hit
Samantha, too, he tries to shield her as
best he can. Meanwhile, Johnny takes cover
by ducking back inside and spies some men
planting explosive charges around the huge
storage tanks. He tries to stop them, but
is quickly overwhelmed and knocked out. But
while swinging at the choppers, Peking
Man inadvertently punches a hole in the
roof and spots them -- but not before they
get the timers set. The man-ape
manages to grab a couple of these soldiers
before they can get clear and chucks them
over the side of the building to their
deaths. And after making sure Samantha's
safely out of range, Peking Man turns his
attention back to the choppers and manages
to take one of them out. (Unfortunately,
it doesn’t land on General Cranky.)
Amid
the rubble below, Johnny awakens to an
ominous ticking in a room filled with
explosives. With
little time left before the roof blows off,
he calls for Samantha to escape with him.
But in the film's one original twist, the
girl pushes him back through the roof
hatch and locks it shut, and then runs
toward the Peking Man. Unable to reach
her, Johnny takes cover before the tanks
blow. The resulting explosion doesn't collapse
the roof, but it is soon engulfed in
flames. The detonation also knocked
Samantha out cold, and even though he’s
now on fire, the ape scoops her up and
deposits her through the hole he punched
in the roof to safety. Now
totally engulfed in flames, the Peking Man
tumbles off the building and lands on
another, destroying it. (And
I thought for sure that he’d land on
General Cranky.) When
Johnny finds Samantha, frankly typing, I’m not
sure if she’s still alive. We
then cut to the demolished building, and
to me, it looks like the Peking Man is
still kicking. Above, Johnny cradles the
dead/dying girl in his arms and walks to
the edge of the roof and looks at the
carnage below as the music swells to...
...Waitasecond!
That monkey is still moving! Now get up
and go squish General Cranky! C'mon!
No!
Wait!
The
End
Dammit.
If
it wasn't obvious enough, you'd be right
in believing that The
Mighty Peking Man was an obvious
attempt by the Shaw brothers to cash in on
the global King Kong craze,
generated by big Dino D’s less than
stellar remake. These brothers are
probably most famous Stateside for The
Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires
and Infra-Man;
the former being a collaboration
with Hammer Studios, where the world of
gothic vampires met Southeast Asian chop-socky,
and the latter being only one of the
greatest films ever made! The
first time I saw Legend
of the Seven Golden Vampires,
I saw it under the video title of The
Seven Brothers meet Dracula.
When I found The
Mighty Peking Man
a while back at the video store, it looked
familiar. And when I flipped it over and
read the back I realized it was Goliathon,
an alternate title it was re-released under.
The film is currently in release through
Quentin Tarantino’s Rolling Thunder
label. And though I’ve never been the
biggest fan of the big Q's films, I really
do appreciate some of the cult flicks that
he’s gotten released.
As
for The Mighty Peking Man itself, well, it's kind of in a gray area
for me. There’s something about it that
I don’t quite like, and frankly, I
can’t seem to put my finger on exactly
why. The film is not lacking in the
mindless mayhem and destruction; the
problem is there's no real reason to care
about the mayhem and destruction because
most of the characters aren't worth a
damn, making it very hard to care about
the final outcome. Yeah, the human
characters are completely forgettable.
With all his emotional hang-ups, Johnny
Fang is pretty much worthless as the hero,
and the only thing I remember about
Samantha is, well, her gravity defying
tank top. I was happy to see Lu Tiem get
squished, but was more than a little
disappointed that General Cranky survived.
Now,
I know what you’re thinking: I’ve just
described the plot of every Toho Kaiju-eiga
movie ever made, but that’s not true.
Far from it! Toho manages to inject heart
into their monsters. You root for Godzilla
and Anguirus, and boo Ghidrah and Gigan. (The
same can be said of Daiei’s Gamera
films.) But I just didn’t
feel anything for the old Peking Man. Any
sympathy you might have had for the big
critter is lost during the climax when he
is obliterated (--
and I mean OBLITERATED! --) off the
top of that building. A scene that’s
supposed to generate the "Aw, poor
monkey" response from the
audience is completely lost in his bloody
demise that is so over the top that it
becomes absurd and comical. Okay,
okay, so we don’t watch these films for
the plot or characterization, right?
Right. We watch them for monster rampages,
and here, The Mighty Peking Man
excels.
There’s
nothing wrong with the ape suit once you
get past his shag-carpet origins. In fact,
I don’t think that, technically, he is a
monkey at all but the alleged missing
link. (Which
opens up a whole other can of plot worms.)
The giant hand and foot props have
no glaring mishaps, and the
film does a decent job of matching action.
When the monster throws something, they
cut to a live shot where someone is
crushed by what he threw. (A
trick they use again, and again, and
again…) But
it's when the monster is destroying the
miniatures that film works the best.
These scaled props and buildings ranks
about a seven out of ten on the Tsuburaya
Scale, which shouldn't be all that
surprising since Toho
alum Teisho Arikawa, a veteran of several
Godzilla
movies and War
of the Gargantuas,
was in charge of the rubber-induced mayhem.
It does stumble a little when they try to
matte shots of the monster and the fleeing
humans together. Here, it ranks about a
five out of ten on the Bert I. Gordon
Scale. (But
old Bert I. himself never scored better
than a three.)
In
the end, I don’t necessarily dislike The
Mighty Peking Man.
It’s got plenty of camp value, an
absurdist's dream of a plot, and decent
enough F/X to probably keep you happy.
During the mayhem I’d warm up to it, but
the film spends way too much time idling
along with its unlikable characters that
kept it from truly winning me over as a
fan. Just
because a film has a giant monster in it
does not always make it great in my
estimation. And it’s bloody conclusion,
while hilarious, and intentional or not,
just didn’t work for me.
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