The Mighty Peking Man (1977) – another Shaw Brothers production
August 18th, 2011 by Mr. C
Director: Ho Meng-Hua
Producer: Shaw Brothers Studio
Actors: Danny Lee,Ku Feng,Evelyne Kraft,Hsiao Yao
Genre: fantasy,monster
Yes, yes, y’all, The Mighty Peking Man in the flesh! We know it’s a campy, plenty cheesy, but a real doozy of a midnight-channel 5 WNEW drive in type of movie offering lots of terrible special effects to boot to go along with the bad acting which is precisely why we gravitate towards it! Our main man, Danny Lee (Super Inframan,The Killer,Oily Maniac,Killers on Wheels) is back at it again, this time to try and tame the beast of a chinese king kong on the throne of demolishing Hong Kong with a vengeance!
Lets rewind the story a bit without divulging the spoilers. Our supersized gorilla (ah wang) lives in the Himalya Mountains with a Bo Derek-esque lady that we will call Tarzan girl played by Evelyn Craft! Only this beauty can tame this beast so to speak. Sounds like a familiar story, doesn’t it? The gorilla defends himself from the village people attacking ah wang out of fear and the unknown. Meanwhile, in the money making city of Hong Kong, Johnny Feng (Danny Lee) a research-expedition specialist, is enraged by finding his lady friend romping in the sack with his brother. With that in mind, a sleaze bucket show promoter played by the one and only Ku Feng, hears of this 50 foot beast living in the himalayas so dollar signs immediately explode in his mind! Lu Tiem (Ku Feng) anxiously hires Johnny to capture the big gorilla and ship it back to Hong Kong so he can display it as a paid sideshow (ka-ching) in HK stadium! Johnny plays ‘dapper don’ with Tarzan chick so he’s definitely in ‘like flynn’ with the gargantuan big foot! This helps with transporting the big fella via a ship to the shores of HK in a somewhat peaceful state of mind! You can imagine the rest of the story once this beast steps into HK because what chains can really hold this gorilla down? His only weakness is the sight of Tarzan Girl. That, coupled with people messing with his woman can only incite rage!
Some of my favorite scenes from the movie include Danny Lee sexing up Tarzan lady in the cave while the big gorilla peeks in on with interest and slight jealousy which was hilarious! Also, I swear the left nipple of Tarzan chick kept one eye opened for us throughout the screening?! The scenes when elephant, tigers, and cobras attack also peeked my ‘what the bleep’ scale, too! The sequence when The Mighty Peking Man scales the famous highrise and tallest building in HK, the Jardine House was also pretty entertaining as well. I guess the Jardine House was the tallest structure in HK at the time!
Whatever the case, The Mighty Peking Man aka Goliathon aka Xing Xing Wang aka Le Colosse de Hong Kong is a b-movie goers wet dream and cream of the crop of everything bad! Maybe the marketing folks should of labeled this movie a comedy as well?! I still find this chauncy entertaining and it really looked like a whole new movie to me when viewing the IVL/Celestial import remastered version of it! Go and get this joint! Monster film fans, assemble!
Tags: danny lee, ku feng, mighty peking man, monsters, shaw brothers
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