The Mighty Peking Man (1977)

• Year: 1977
• Released: 01 Mar 1980
• Country: Hong Kong
• IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076164/
• Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_mighty_peking_man
• Available in: 720p, 1080p,
• Language: Mandarin
• MPA Rating: PG-13
• Genre: Action, Adventure, Horror
• Runtime: 90 min
• Writer: Kuang Ni
• Director: Meng-Hua Ho
• Cast: Evelyne Kraft, Danny Lee, Feng Ku
• Keywords: exploitation, hong kong, tokusatsu, gorilla, prehistoric adventure,

5.3/10

The Mighty Peking Man Storyline

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. He finds the monster and discovers it’s been raising a scantily-clad woman, Samantha, since she survived a plane crash years before that killed her parents. In the idyllic jungle, Johnny and Samantha fall in love. Then Johnny asks her to convince “Utam” to go to Hong Kong. Lu Tien, an unscrupulous promoter, takes over: Utam is in chains for freak show exhibitions. When Lu Tien assaults Samantha, Utam’s protective instincts take over: havoc in Hong Kong.

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The Mighty Peking Man Movie Reviews

King Hong

This ripoff of “King Kong” has got to be one of the funniest movies that I’ve ever seen, just because of how it never takes itself seriously. When a Hong Kong magnate sets out on an expedition to find a prehistoric ape in India, he and the others find not only the ape but also a scantily clad woman (Evelyne Kraft) who’s known the big guy ever since her plane crashed in the jungle many years earlier. This of course means that “Xing xing wang” – called “The Mighty Peking Man” in English – is really an excuse to show off the woman’s body. And what a body! I bet that many a teenage boy went to see this movie just to ogle the hot babe and get as horny as possible.

Anyway, this is a total exploitation flick, so it makes sense that Quentin Tarantino brought it to DVD. Any image that you have of corny ’70s cinema can be found here. A real treat in every way. You’re sure to like it. Especially the blonde gal in the skimpy bikini, natch.

The purest example of “so bad, it’s good” entertainment

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.

starsI CAME HOME EARLY

The Peking Man lives in India and is an ape, not a man. Johnnie Fang (Danny Lee) is sent after the creature and he encounters the proverbial jungle woman (Evelyn Craft) whose parents were killed in a plane crash. (Plane and skeletons are nearby.) She was raised by Peking Man and has become the “Ellie Mae” of the jungle.

I loved the contrast of the stage set with the background scenery. Clearly this was done as a tribute to those old Tarzan films were they would weave stock footage into the film. There is also an Ed Wood influence.

Evelyn Craft runs around as if she is on frame or move from popping out of her top.

Very high camp value. Great with the funny stuff.

There is one quick nude scene, however in this version the extended nudity has been cut out. Nudity in trailers.