Movie Maven

The Mighty Peking Man (Xing Xing Wang) (1977)
Starring: Danny Lee, Evelyne Kraft
Written by: Kuang Ni
Directed by: Meng-Hwa Ho

Photo from shaolinchamber.com

I have been overwhelmed cinema-wise lately: Netflix has been bombarding me, as has Blockbuster Online, which I have joined free for one month, and tends to send its movies en masse. Friends have been lending me western, sci fi and drama staples, that I "just have to see" and Deadwood, the best show on television has returned for its final season (a post on that coming as soon as I can get my act together.) Not to mention the blockbuster season is upon us, with all sorts of fun, interesting and stupid things to see in theatres.

Unfortunately, this boon of information has coincided with a writer's block the size of the Berlin Wall. I sit in front of my laptop (or desktop in the case of when I'm at the Real Job) and tap my fingers across the keyboards, hoping against hope that perhaps the clacking sound will jog my sluggish imagination. I don't like using writer's block as an excuse for not doing work, but I don't know what else could be the cause.

But apparently humidity has done the trick. It's a wretched 90-something degrees in Boston right now, with a humidity factor of one hundred million percent. So after a weekend of dirty Boston beaches and laying on my bed in boxers and a tank top trying to move as little as possible, my brain has clicked somewhat back into place, and my fingers are typing merrily away.

While in the heat-induced trance in my un-airconditioned apartment, I needed something that didn't require the workings of too many brain cells. The Roommate and I flipped about the cable until landing on IFC, and the hysterically bad Mighty Peking Man, a frightfully dubbed rip-off of King Kong.

So here's the deal: this giant ape-man, right, he's, like totally freaking out all the villagers around the Himalayas, he's all "Oooohh, I'm Peking Man, I'm so mighty, I'm gonna eat you and stomp on your house!" So all the humans around him are like, well screw this, let's get some bad-ass kids to come show Peking Man what for. So they get this anthropologist named Johnny (Danny Lee) who's all messed up because his girl cheated on him with his brother, and needs to get away. So he agrees to go to the Himalayas and capture Peking Man with a group of trappers. It's all awesome, because they run into some rampaging elephants (which are really just meandering elephants they sped up on the film to look all... rampageous) and climbing the Himalayas is really really hard, and Johnny runs away because he's fragile or something. He gets lost, and they all give him up for dead, when he finds this jungle chick in a skimpy animal hide bra (Evelyne Kraft) who has been there since her parent's plane crashed when she was a little girl. She calls herself Ah Wei, but Johnny keeps calling her Samantha for some reason (probably just the crappy dubbing.) Anywho, Ah Wei/Samantha has a repore with Peking Man, saves Johnny's ass and they fall in wild jungle love. But Johnny, he wants to, like, civilize her and stuff, but she, like, can't be tamed, you know? So Peking Man takes them back to the city, but other people who want to put him on display capture him, and Johnny doesn't care because he's got his hot jungle wench. I stopped paying attention for a while after that, but basically the ape-man is put on display, he sees the evil promoter attempting to rape Ah Wei/Samantha, freaks out and starts trashing the city. He does get up on a tall building and is shot at by planes, but I think he actually dies in a fire. Ah Wei/Samantha almost dies too but Johnny saves her. The End.

It's not so much the derivative aspect of this movie that makes it so lovable- it's the fact that it has absolutely no sense of humor about itself. This was made in a time and place before spoofs and ironic remakes, a time of supreme cinematic innocence. We are not expected to laugh at the immovable, emotionless face of the guy in the ape-man costume, we are supposed to feel heartfelt sympathy. Passionate sadness for the tragic creature. When Peking Man picks up Ah Wei/Samantha (as she strikes one of several provocative poses in the beast's claws. like she's vogueing for Cosmo) we are only supposed to see their primitive friendship and doomed love. It's sweet.

So as summer hits with its derivative films and remakes, its monsters and hot chicks in slut-tastic jungle wear, be sure not to forget the monsters and slutty jungle chicks of summers past. When we lived in a kinder, gentler time of animal-hide underwear and multitudes of fleeing Asian extras. Long live Mighty Peking Man.