The Mighty Peking Man

The Mighty Peking Man (Xing Xing Wang) (1976)

Runtime: 83 minutes

Directed by: Ho Meng-Hua

Starring: Danny Lee, Evelyne Kraft, Hsiao Yao, Ku Feng, Lin Wei-Tu

From: Shaw Brothers

Yesterday, I saw a cheesy movie. Read all about this mess below: 

It was about time I saw another Shaw Brothers movie, and why not watch something that's become a cult classic? Plus, it's free on Amazon Prime. Although, it is the common English dubbed version; I understand that is shorter than the original Cantonese version. It definitely explains why the motion picture is disjointed as hell, especially in the first act. S*** happens with no setup and it's jarring being thrown into the story where big moments suddenly happen and it throws you for a loop.

What a start for the movie... where the first thing we see is some random people talking in Hong Kong, a flashback to Not King Kong wrecking a village (along with an earthquake) then we immediately are in India. I suppose I shouldn't expect too much logic from a Hong Kong King Kong ripoff where there is a hot blonde white woman in the jungle because her parents crashed and died in the jungle when she was a little girl... it's just amazingly disordered. At least I know it was not filmed that way... but the way the dubbed version was cut, it was more like a butchering than a cut.

Anyhow, there's an expectation to India to look for the titular Peking Man (who is actually a Kong-sized gorilla), and a member of the party-Johnny-gets separated. He meets Female Tarzan and they fall in love. She is best buds with Not Kong. Things happen, and the rest of the movie is the basic Kong story. Thankfully, when Not Kong is loose in Hong Kong, plenty of miniatures are stomped on or otherwise knocked over... and sometimes there are even explosions and s*** lit on fire. Heck, Not Kong even saves someone from a sexual assault, which is nice of him...

If you've seen many of the Kong films, you might as well watch one of the clones that came from Kong '76, which wasn't exactly great either. At least this hokum has moments of sheer lunacy and total WTF segments.