1976. Italian movie producer Dino De Laurentiis delivers a creaky, campy remake of stop motion megawork King Kong and promptly makes an absolute killing at the box office. Over in Hong Kong, Shaw Brothers Studios get an opportunist whiff in their noses; there's money in them rampaging apes! Runme Shaw drafts in Eiji Tsuburaya's apprentice Koichi Kawaita, from Godzilla's home studio Toho, to deliver some state-of-the-art miniature levelling, man-in-suit, ape-pocalypse. God bless their greedy hearts!
Available with a creaky dub track on Region 1 DVD through Quentin Tarantino's Rolling Thunder cult flick imprint, 1977's The Mighty Peking Man set my heart racing. Although t'was not the hirsute dress-up that did it! Truth be told the eventual scale stomp falls some way short of typical kaiju fare, with only some The Thing From Another World alike fire-stunts dropping my jaw. Peking Man's motivation is a kicker though - sleazy touch-ups on his human best mate, and what can only be described as optimistic brutality by a jeering Hong Kong crowd. I don't know about you but when I see a giant mass of monster muscle my first reaction is always to throw shit and generally torture the life out of it. Animals never retaliate when cornered! So if suit-man smashing failed to get my blood pumping, what did it? Why it was the mondo jungle violence that precedes it dear reader!
Our hero Danny Lee (The Killer) stars as a playboy explorer, currently bummed out because his lady friend just totally cheated on him with his sleazebag brother. Oily expedition financier Lu Tien steps in to sweep him out of his funk with empty plaudits and a fee that will likely never materialise. Their quarry? The aforementioned big Himalayan mythical ape-man. To find this Mighty Peking Man, Lee must brave big cat wrestling, his financier's dreadful bedside manner, and a blonde orphan in a barely-on Tarzan bikini. Have you got the chops Danny Lee? He must assuredly has. Turns out Danny Lee is completely mental. Does he leave leopard grappling to the stunt men? Does he fuck. He gets stuck in. Lee always gets stuck in. All manner of animals are put to death in a whole reel of gauche techno-louts abroad. This safari gets stomped. Piece de resistance? Process Elephants are triumphantly shot to shit as Lee manfully battles on in pursuit of melancholy trumping cash money.
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