The Mighty Peking Man - 1977

In 1976 King Kong was released in the US, starring Jeff Bridges, and it was a success.  It didn't get the awesomest reviews, but it was popular enough to spawn this Chinese rip off which was produced by the Shaw Brothers.  They had recently gained a lot of success in their release of Infra Man, which you may remember did not do a ton for me as a movie.  Anyhow, the Shaw brothers rushed out a fairly awful Kong ripoff, and here we go.  This will join Konga and Queen Kong in my King Kong ripoffs alumni.

I did not plan this out, either.  It's not like I said to myself, you know it's been a while since I saw a King Kong ripoff.  Actually, I was going to begin this blog talking about how, even if you're a really big fan of kaiju films like I am, there are always the ones out there that have escaped you and you haven't seen.  I use the term kaiju loosely here to describe basically any giant monster film, not just those made in Japan.

I discovered this on my endless hunt for giant monster films that are unknown of and not filmed in the US.  This is a relatively short list, honestly.  There's a few random ass films that are newer, and a tiny bit more that are older like this one.  There is a list I should make, random ass giant monster films that are non-Japanese and non-US.  However, there are also the lesser known Japanese giant monster films which are passed over as well.  One of these days.  Yep, one of them that's not today.

Mighty Peking Man is only slightly modified from King Kong.  In it, a Chinese group comes to an island, where Peking Man lives with his regular sized white girl Samantha.  She got to the island via a crashed airplane and thus grew up there, she doesn't speak English at first, but still falls in love with Chinese expedition man Johnnie.  Ah Pi is the name of the monster in this, and soon enough Johnnie wants to take Ah Pi back to society where he can be exploited for mooooonay.  Samantha just wants to be with Johnnie so she lets this happen, in the mean time the guys Johnnie sells Ah Pi to take advantage of the both of them, and soon enough Ah Pi sees Samantha in trouble and goes on his rampage.

Ah Pi looks pretty shitty, let's get that out of the way.  Much worse than Konga, more like Queen Kong really.  It's a pretty bad costume, especially the face.

"I like jello."

There is a tiny bit of nudity from Samantha once, but generally this plays out as an almost PG movie.  Which, coincidentally, did not do much for me in my extremely tired, slightly irritated mood.  I really feel in the mood right now for something that's bloody, intense, filled with lots of full frontal nudity, and the word "cunt" should be used at least 30 times.  I need something extreme!!!  But that's just how I am right now.  As a cheapy sci fi, this gets a whatever rating of 2.5 stars.