It
is hard to believe Dino De Laurentiis’s 1976 King Kong remake was such a huge hit in its day, but apparently it
was. Identifying an opportunity, the legendary Runme Shaw rushed a Mandarin
language “riff” into production, sacrificing time-consuming luxuries such as
logic and good sense. The result is a ludicrously politically incorrect
throwback to Toho’s mid-1960s kaiju-style King Kong movies, but with a Mandarin
speaking blonde jungle pin-up queen thrown in for good measure. With the
passage of time, it sure looks like the Shaw Brothers Studio got more right in
Ho Meng-hua’s The Might Peking Man (a.k.a. Goliathon, a.k.a. etc., etc.), which
screens during Anthology Film Archive’s recently launched Simian Vérité film series (trailer here).
Carl
Denham would be disgusted by a scumbag promoter like Lu Tien. He hires
heartbroken adventurer Chen Zhengfeng to lead his Himalayan expedition in
search of a fabled giant simian, but then leaves him stranded, presumably to
die, when they clash over Lu Tien’s management techniques. However, Chen is
rescued by Ah Wei, an animal-skin-bikini-donning orphan, who is the apple of Ah
Wang’s gargantuan gorilla eye.
After
a year developing a romantic relationship with Ah Wei, Chen convinces her to
come back to civilization with him, with Ah Wang in tow. Of course, as soon as
Lu Tien gets his claws into the Ahs, he returns to his exploitative ways.
Eventually, Ah Wang will feel put out by such shabby treatment—and you know
what that means. Look out Hong Kong.
There
are scenes of Chen and his expedition-mates firing into packs of stampeding
elephants that you just can’t do anymore. Likewise, the way Ah Wei schleps
around compliant leopards suggests the animals must have been drugged into the
Age of Aquarius. Plus, Joyce Carol Oates would surely be outraged at the way
the giant monkey is treated in the third act.
Regardless,
Ho and special effects supervisor Sadamasa Arikawa (a veteran of the Godzilla
franchise) pick-up admirably where Toho left off, leveling some of prime
commercial district real estate. Given the square footage of Hong Kong, Ah Wang’s
rampage is particularly devastating. Fittingly, he makes his last stand on the
former Connaught Centre (now known as Jardine House), whose metal circular grid
pattern provided plenty of accommodating footholds. At the time, it was the
tallest building in Hong Kong, but now it does even crack the top one hundred.
The
acting in Peking Man is what it is,
but Ku Feng certainly came to play as the dastardly Lu Tien. As Chen, Danny Lee
also keeps charging ahead like a trooper. Of course, it is pretty clear in each
of her scenes why Ho and the Shaw Brothers cast Swiss-born Evelyne Kraft as Ah
Wei.