Product Description

Sure to drive you wild, here's one of the funniest, most hysterically campy movies ever made: MIGHTY PEKING MAN! A powerful earthquake awakens a giant, apelike creature who descends from the mountains into the treacherous jungles of India. Later, an expedition of greedy showmen capture the fearsome beast, bringing him ... and the scantily clad blonde bombshell he protects ... back to civilization! But payback comes when the Mighty Peking Man breaks loose and begins to run amok in the heart of the city! An outrageous adventure that never takes itself too seriously -- treat yourself to a guilty pleasure that has entertained critics and late-night movie audiences everywhere!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #38743 in DVD
• Released on: 2000-05-23
• Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, Letterboxed, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 90 minutes

Amazon.com
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 Fetzer

Customer Reviews

So atrocious its an instant classic
Mighty Peking Man is literally a Hong Kong rip off of Dino DeLaurentis' own 76' remake of King Kong, making it a rip off of a rip off! It actually steals entire scenes from the movie! But who cares! The Sheena-like jungle girl is Playboy material HOT! And she is in danger the entire movie of losing her skimpy top! The Peking Man costume is bad, but certainly no worse than the multimillion dollar 40 foot tall Kong used in the 76' remake for all of 4 seconds, and the Peking man costume was made at a fraction of the cost. The fake helicopters and tanks, buildings, ect are no worse than anything in a Toho Godzilla flick. And the movie has a cheesy/sleazy 70's groove to it if you can dig, man. Worth the price of the DVD is the scene where "Sheena" and Johnny are falling in love in slow motion to a horrible "Mellow Gold" love song. If you though "Plan 9 from Outer Space" was the worst film ever, or the best of the "So bad they're great" watch the Peking Man with a bunch of intoxicated friends, and you will not be disappointed!

A CAMP-TRASH CLASSIC!
As a fan of schlocky, "so bad they're good" films, I have seen quite a few that simply amaze with their ineptness, from classics such as "Plan 9" and "Robot Monster" to more recent howlers such as "Lake Placid". However, nothing - and I mean nothing - could have prepared me fully for the experience of finally seeing "Mighty Peking Man". This film is an absolute camp-trash GOLDMINE; a cinematic abomination so astonishingly bad that it defies rational explanation. It literally must be seen to be believed! This is not a criticism, however; but rather an endorsement: "Mighty Peking Man" is punishingly hilarious; an unintentional laugh-riot of lame acting, atrocious dubbing, and inarguably the worst - the WORST - optical effects I have ever witnessed in a professional (and that's stretching the word to its outer limits) motion picture. The movie goes so far over the top that it borders on the psychedelic; indeed, copious amounts of mind-altering substances are probably required to get the full "Peking Man" experience. The film's grade-Z pleasures are too numerous to list, but would certainly start with Peking Man himself: a moth-eaten, googly-eyed, rubber-mouthed gorilla suit, from all appearances rented from a local costume shop and about as convincing. Then there's Evelyne Kraft, the "heroine", who, despite living in the wild jungle for 20 years, sports a perfect 1970's-era Farrah Fawcett layered hairdo, mascara, and a seemingly endless supply of lip gloss. Throw in a romance between Kraft and "Johnny", the hero (complete with a wretchedly awful - and brutally funny - slow motion "running through the fields" sequence as they "fall in love", while all the while the out-of-tune orchestra warbles on) and the oblogitory final battle between Peking Man and woefully obvious model helicopters (the strings supporting them fully visible) and you have the stuff of which cult midnight-movie dreams are made. Kudos to Quentin Tarantino for resurrecting this trashy gem, in widescreen no less! For those of you out there who relish so-unbelievably-bad-they're-cool films, put "Showgirls" on hold and give this one a go; you won't regret it. Now, Quentin, how about a reissue of "KISS meets the Phantom of the Park"?

a Hong Kong-style Kaiju movie
When I bought this movie, I was surprised to see that this was actually a Shaw Brothers movie produced by the legendary, Runme Shaw. The Shaw Brothers produced some of the greatest martial art flicks of all time such as "Chinese Super Ninja," "5 Deadly Venoms," "The Crippled Avengers," etc. So I repeat, I was very surprised to see them fund a movie about a giant monster.

To be honest, I'm not quite sure what kind of movie this really is. You could really just say this is a very bad rip-off of "King Kong." And it's a really bizarre movie to say the least. But since it features a giant monster, I'll grade it as a giant monster movie.

As a giant monster flick, I can't give this movie a good grade, because the Monster scenes are very bad compared to a Toho film like "Godzilla." Yes, the monster scenes are hilarious, but if I were to compare the monster scenes to any other monster flick, this would probably be the worst of the lot. I'm going to say this primarily because of the filming techniques - and yes, I'm well-aware that Toho movies aren't exactly perfect examples of movie-making, but they do set the standard of movie-making when it comes to giant monsters.

The biggest problems with the monster scenes is that the camera is constantly cutting back-and-forth at incredible speeds to show a single action. In a "Godzilla" movie, a lot of action is filmed without cutting to a new angle: for example, if Godzilla were to crush a building, the camera would show the Big G swinging into the edifice and crushing it all in a single take. But in "The Mighty Peking Man," the camera would first show the Peking Man's face, then cut to his arms going in the air, then cut to a new angle of the building, then cut back to show Peking Man crashing into the building. All of the cutting seems to be a little disorienting and detracts from the monster scene's impact.

Another problem is that there are many scenes where human characters are looking at Peking Man, but the method used to show the humans and monster together is very bad. It looks like they're screaming at a t.v projection.

FYI - The monster action featured here consists of Monster-Human Bonding, Monster Vs. Military, and of course, Monster Trashing City.

Now for the Human Scenes - there is so much fun stuff happening here! You've got your horrible editing, horrendous voice-actors, over-acting galore, exploitation camera shots of Samantha, and other bizarre situations that totally defy all logic...you just have to see this movie to believe it!

Let me just say that I really like the dubbing - very typical Shaw stuff here. My favourite part of the dubbing is when a character has a lot to say. It seems as if he takes one long breath, then spews out 2-3 lines without pausing between sentences. For example, Johnny is talking to his brother on the phone, and this is what the brother says:

"You sound great right now I'm recording a t.v show listen it'll take another hour why don't you come right now." (notice there are no pauses in there)

Oh, and about that monster...

The title monster (Peking Man) is a giant ape who is infatuated with a bodacious blonde in animal skin, Samantha. It's funny that they call him the "Peking Man" since the real Peking Man (of the REAL world) probably looked more like a human than an ape, and he was probably around 5ft tall. In this movie, the Peking Man is an straight-out ape showing no physical similarities to a modern-day human (except that it stands upright like the 'Homo Erectus' should), and well, it's several stories tall. I'm no anthropologist, but I definitely know that this is no Peking Man! But he's certainly great fun! And as for that costume, it's probably worse than the King Kong suit worn in "King Kong vs. Godzilla" which makes things even more fun whenever the apeman makes an appearance.

In any case, here are some hilarious situations that I remembered from the movie:

SITUATION 1
While the Peking Man is trashing a village, the local militia start pelting the monster with a plethora of rocks. The Peking Man stands there for a minute or so getting hit by rocks, but soon enough, he decides to retaliate by picking up an incredibly huge boulder and flinging it towards the villagers. (yeah, they should've saw that coming)

SITUATION 2
When the expeditionary team is paving its way through the jungle, a bengal tiger bites the leg off of one of the native escorts. As the native is crying in agony, the Chinese man in charge mysteriously shoots the man in the head just before they can administer aid. When Johnny questions him about it, the guy replies that he simply ended the native's suffering. He also mutters something about saving the medicine until they really need it (I suppose death wasn't a real emergency).

SITUATION 3
This isn't really a situation, but a whole series of them. Ok, Samantha is a blonde bombshell, and she looks great! The director obviously exploited this to full-effect throughout the movie. During the movie, you'll see many shots of her rear, a nipple, and even a scene where this dude pours wine down her chest. And throughout the movie, Samantha sports her animal-skin attire which is very flattering for her figure.

Overall, this wasn't a great monster movie due to the weak Monster Scenes. But don't get me wrong, I was totally entertained - just not in a Godzilla-kinda way. And that's why this movie doesn't get topmarks. But do yourself a favor, and watch this movie - you'll have a great time!

MISCELLANEOUS INFO
- Some of the instrumental music they play is recycled from previous Shaw movies (such as "Chinese Super Ninja").