Uh-oh. Flashback...

...We pan over a peaceful mountain village, but the peace is quickly shattered by a freak storm and earthquake. Lightning and thunder roar while the mountain near the village crumbles as the Peking Man unearths himself -- in all his monkey suited glory! He then proceeds to do the mash potato on the village. Most of the villagers flee. A few remain behind and break out their trusty catapult with little effect (the rubber rocks just bounce off the rubber suit), and the rampage continues with plenty of building crushing and native stomping until the flashback abruptly ends

Thus abruptly endeth the flashback...

...Lu Tiem wants to form an expedition to capture the Peking Man and make some money. (See, he’s evil.) One of his Yes Men tells him that Johnny Fang (Danny Lee -- old Infra-Man himself), the greatest hunter of all time, has just been jilted by his girlfriend and really wants to get away. They find Johnny, drunk, in a bar. In his stupor, he happily agrees to lead the expedition into the Indian Jungle. And before you can say Cue up the stock footage and lets us find a giant monkey, Johnny, Lu Tiem and the rest of the expedition is knee deep in stock jungle footage while searching for said giant monkey. They reach a deserted village just in time for an elephant stampede to thunder through. And once again, everyone wearing a Jungle Jim suit is spared a grisly death -- while everyone else bites it under the elephant’s trampling feet. (We also realize that Johnny is the greatest hunter of all time. The man brought down a full size Indian elephant with just a revolver.)

Two other guys lucky enough to be in the Jungle Jim outfits (I don’t recall their names) decide to cheer the morose Johnny up. So what do they do? They drudge up painful memories by asking, "Johnny, what happened with you and that girl?"

Uh-oh, ANOTHER flashback...

...We’re back in Hong Kong with an extended montage of Johnny and his ex, Lin Chang, frolicking around. (Buying snow cones, splashing around in the surf etc.) Their love seems destined to last forever but Lin is an ambitious gal, who wants to be famous, and is willing to sleep her way to the top. When Johnny catches Lin in bed with brother Charlie (Ugh. I hope it’s HIS brother Charlie), he asks for forgiveness; but Johnny ignores him and targets and focuses his hatred toward his now ex-girlfriend instead.

Thus endeth the flashback...

And I find it extremely amusing that every time something bad happens, the members of the expedition react the exact same way: They all throw their hands up in the air and run away, screaming, in every direction. And yes, they do run into each other while trying to get away. Back to the film.

Before Johnny can wrestle it off, the tiger severs the leg of one of the bearers. Lu Tiem fires his pistol in the air frightening the animal off. Johnny goes to get the first aid kit but Lu Tiem just shoots the wounded man. (I told you. He’s evil.) Johnny then punches the sadistic leader in the mouth, saying they could have saved him.

We next reach the extended rock-climbing portion of our program. (Aauugh! Rock-climbing!) As they all take a separate route to reach the top, one string of climbers doesn’t make it, resulting in four dummies plummeting to their deaths. After they reach the top, Lu Tiem starts whining. He didn’t realize it was going to be this hard and wants to quit and go back. Spouting sour grapes, proclaiming the Peking Man doesn’t even exist and is just a legend, but Johnny rallies the troops to continue and they begrudgingly move on.

But wait! What’s that over there swinging in the trees? Could that be a jungle girl? (Oh, lord, not another jungle girl.)

The safari then finds footprints of the giant ape and tracks them until it gets too dark to follow. During the night, while Johnny sleeps, Lu Tiem and all the others abandon him and head back to civilization. So Johnny wakes up alone, and as he wanders around, we pan down to his feet and realize the ground he’s walking on is really hairy. And then the ground comes alive as the Peking Man unearths himself and takes a swipe at him. The great ape snags him but Johnny manages to slip through it's fingers. Trying to get away, Johnny flees into the jungle with the ape right behind him. The ape finally corners him, knocks him unconscious and then closes in for the kill, when suddenly (...dramatic pause…), from out of nowhere, comes a bizarre, reverberating Tarzanesque yodel.

It’s the jungle girl (Evelyne Kraft) we spotted earlier, swinging in on a vine. She’s very agile and very beautiful (and very Caucasian when you consider where we are.) Ordering the big galoot to not squish Johnny (No. Bad monkey.), she then says to gently pick Johnny up (and don’t EAT him!) So he picks him up in one hand and her in the other, and then deposits them in her cave (that resembles Marshall, Will and Holly’s cave from The Land of the Lost. I kept expecting old Grumpy to stick his head in.) When Johnny wakes up, Jungle Girl tries to be hospitable while he makes a pig of himself. Within five minutes, the language barrier is conquered (Jungle Movie Rule #6), and then she takes him to the site of a plane wreck. This is how she came to be in the jungle as we have another, brief, flashback and get to see the plane crash. Dad managed to get young Jungle Girl clear before the plane blew up, then the Peking Man found her, raised her, and the rest is history.

And as a viewer, we’re not really all that concerned with how she got in the jungle, we just want to know how her gravity defying animal skin tank-top refuses to fall off her left breast. (See Illustration to the left. Your other left.)

Johnny finds a journal and discovers her real name is Samantha. Heading back to the cave, they stumble upon the tiger again. But this time it doesn’t attack because it’s Samantha’s friend. (It also appears to have smoked some bananas -- if you know what I mean.) They also find a leopard (who’s been hitting the bananas, too), but the cobra must have kicked the habit and it bites her. While Johnny frantically sucks the venom out of the wound, the leopard disposes of the cobra. (In another disturbing scene of real animal combat in film. I don’t think The Mighty Peking Man got PETA’s stamp of approval.) He moves her back to the cave but she’s delirious from the poison. His attention is drawn outside by a shower of leaves. It’s Peking Man, and Johnny figures it out and grinds the leaves into a pulp, and then applies it to Samantha's wound.

Back in the cave, Samantha is getting better. We then get an extended romantic interlude as the young couple falls in love. (Complete with a disco musical serenade.) It culminates when Peking Man catches them doing the horizontal bop. He pitches a fit but Samantha manages to calm him down. Eventually, Johnny talks her into returning with him to civilization -- with the Peking Man in tow. She agrees, and after a tearful goodbye to all the stoned animals, Peking Man scoops them up and they head off toward the coast. Upon arrival, the Peking Man’s first public appearance causes a panic. But the crowd calms down once they realize that Samantha can control him. Johnny finds Lu Tiem and he makes arrangements to take the monster on to Hong Kong and put him on exhibition.

OOoOOoo…I see this ending in fire.

Chaining the ape to the deck of a freighter for transport, Samantha begs them to take them off but Lu Tiem says they have to stay on or he’ll capsize the ship. Most definitely, the Peking Man is not having a good time. Lu Tiem finds the Captain in a bar (so we'll call him Hazelwood), and they receive word that a typhoon is bearing down on them. Hazelwood wants to alter course to Singapore to ride it out, but Lu Tiem points out that if he doesn’t get them to Hong Kong on time, to a sold out stadium that’s waiting for them, Hazelwood will be financially responsible for all losses. So, storm or no storm, Hong Kong it is.

At sea, Johnny gets Samantha to try on some modern clothes, but she doesn’t like them and chucks them out the porthole. Lu Tiem barges in, while she’s in the buff, and we notice he gives her the old, lecherous stink-eye. He says they’re all going to be rich but Johnny is having second thoughts about exploiting the big guy. But they’ve no time to argue as the typhoon hits with all its fury. On the deck, the Peking Man is now mad and wet. (Man, I’ll bet that stinks. And yes, there are as yet undiscovered tribes in Africa that knew I was going to use that joke.) The storm pushes the boat onto some rocks and it gets hung up. Samantha and Johnny loosen the chains enough to allow the ape to push them free.

Dragging Samantha to the TV station, they meet with Charlie. He has a couple of things to finish up, first, and invites them to watch the musical number he’s filming. (We also notice that no one is giving Samantha’s jungle gear a second glance.) Johnny receives a note from Lin Chang, wanting to meet. He tells Samantha to watch the show and finds Lin in her dressing room, begging for forgiveness. She butters him up with a bunch of rigmarole about how the affair didn’t mean anything, and it was really him that she wanted all the time. (And he starts to fall for it. The sap.) Meanwhile, the session ends and everyone leaves Samantha alone in the dark. And when she goes to find Johnny, guess which room she checks first? Right. And the timing couldn’t have been worse, either, as Lin throws herself on top of Johnny just as she opens the door. Samantha sees this and runs off in a jealous snit. Johnny goes after her but she gives him the slip and heads of into Hong Kong, alone.

Meanwhile, at the sold out stadium, Lu Tiem has a monster-truck rally going by chaining the giant ape to some Tonka trucks in a bizarre tug of war. Peking Man doesn’t seem to want to play so the audience pelts him trash. (Is that really wise?) Samantha sees the televised display in a storefront and asks a nice couple to take her to the stadium. (It’s the films most surreal scene. The couple doesn’t even bat an eyelash and agrees.) She arrives just in time to see some of Lu Tiem’s goons whack the ape’s feet with bamboo chutes in an effort to rile him up. When she tries to stop them, they knock her away, enraging the Peking Man. Samantha manages to calm him back down, but Lu Tiem arrives and consoles her, saying everything will be all right if she just trusts him. Eyes full of tears, Samantha promises Peking Man that they’ll go back to their jungle home.

Lu Tiem takes her to his hotel suite that overlooks the stadium. He tries to give her a drink, but when she refuses, he become belligerent and tries to molest her. (It’s at this point that I mention the suite is right at Peking Man's eye level, and the huge picture window is open, so the monkey can see everything.) The ape goes bonkers, breaks loose and punches his way into the room. Using Samantha as a shield, Lu Tiem tosses her into a car and escapes. In a rage, Peking Man begins to demolish the city looking for them. As he busts his way toward downtown, destroying a bridge that Lu Tiem was trying to cross, the ape spots them as they flee into another building. Once inside, Tiem tries to molest the girl again but Peking Man comes to the rescue. Smashing his way in, he seizes Lu Tiem, throws him to the ground, and then stomps on him.

...Hey. Where’d Johnny go?

This leads to a hilarious bit about finding her through her description that is a priceless piece of B-cinema history. Seriously, I had pop coming out of my nose. Now everything smells like Diet Dew.

The carnage continues as the military tanks and helicopters attack. Wounded, the ape keeps on swinging. Then night falls, rather abruptly, and the wounded Peking Man climbs to the top of a tall building. (My, but this looks familiar.) Samantha, Johnny and General Cranky all converge on the building at the same time, and Cranky comes up with a hair-brained plan to fill the water tanks at the top of the building with gasoline and then blow them up, killing the monkey. (I assume the inspiration for this came from reversing The Towering Inferno.)

Johnny finds Samantha and, together, they find Cranky. They swear they can stop Peking Man without killing him. Cranky promises to hold his fire while they try. Making their way to the roof, Samantha bursts into tears at the sight of the bloodied Peking Man. Taking her in his paw, she again swears they’re headed back to the jungle. She does manage to calm him down but, below, General Cranky (the schmuck) breaks his word and orders his choppers to attack. The choppers swoop in with machine guns blazing and the monkey screams as the rounds slam into him. A few shots hit Samantha, too, so he tries to shield her as best he can. Johnny takes cover by ducking back inside and spies some men planting bombs around the huge storage tanks. He tries to stop them, but is overwhelmed and knocked out. 

While swinging at the choppers, Peking Man inadvertently punches a hole in the roof and spots them. They quickly evacuate but not before they get the explosive timers set. The gorilla manages to grab a couple of soldiers before they can get clear and sends them tumbling over the side of the building to their deaths. After sitting Samantha down, Peking Man turns his attention back to the choppers, and manages to take one of them out. (Unfortunately, it doesn’t land on General Cranky.) Amid the rubble, Johnny awakens to an ominous ticking in a room filled with explosives. He returns to the roof and calls for Samantha to come with him before the roof blows off. Then, in the films one original twist, the girl pushes him back through the roof hatch and locks it shut, and then returns to be with Peking Man. Johnny takes cover and the tanks blow up.

The roof doesn’t collapse but it’s engulfed in flames. The explosion knocked Samantha out, and even though he’s now on fire, the ape scoops her up and deposits her through the hole he punched in the roof to safety. Now totally engulfed in flames, the Peking Man tumbles off the building and lands on another, destroying it. (And I thought for sure that he’d land on General Cranky.)

Johnny finds Samantha, and frankly, I’m not sure if she’s still alive. We cut to the demolished building, and to me, it looks like the Peking Man is still kicking. Johnny cradles the dead/dying girl in his arms and walks to the edge of the roof and looks at the carnage below as the music swells to...

...Waitasecond! That monkey is still moving! Now get up and go squish General Cranky!

I believe The Might Peking Man was an obvious attempt by the Shaw brothers to cash in on the global King Kong craze generated by big Dino D’s less than stellar remake. The brothers are probably most famous stateside for The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires and Infra-Man; the former being a collaboration with Hammer Studios where the world of gothic vampires meets Southeast Asian chop-socky, and the latter being only one of the greatest films ever made!

Now, I know what you’re thinking: I’ve just described the plot of every Toho Kaiju-eiga movie ever made, but that’s not true. Far from it! Toho manages to inject heart into their monsters. You root for Godzilla and Anguirus, and boo Ghidrah and Gigan. (The same can be said of Daiei’s Gamera films.) But I just didn’t feel anything for the old Peking Man. Any sympathy you might have had for the big critter is lost at the end when he is obliterated (and I mean OBLITERATED!) off the top of that building. A scene that’s supposed to generate the "Ah, poor monkey" response from the audience is completely lost in his bloody demise. It is so over the top that it becomes absurd and comical.

There’s nothing wrong with the ape suit once you get past his shag-carpet origins. In fact, I don’t think that, technically, he is a monkey but the alleged missing link. (Which opens up a whole other can of plot worms.) The giant hand and foot props have no glaring mishaps, and the film does a decent job of matching action. When the monster throws something, they cut to a live shot where someone is crushed by what he threw. (A trick they use again, and again, and again…) The miniature work ranks about a seven out of ten on the Tsuburaya Scale. It does stumble a little when they try to matte shots together of the monster and the fleeing humans. Here, it ranks about a five out of ten on the Bert I. Gordon Scale. (Old Bert I., himself, never scored better than a three.)  When the monster in on the set and destroying the miniatures, the film looks great. Toho alum, Teisho Arikawa, a veteran of several Godzilla movies and War of the Gargantuas, was in charge of the monster mayhem effects.

In the end, I don’t necessarily dislike The Mighty Peking Man. It’s got plenty of camp value, an absurdist's dream of a plot, and decent enough F/X to probably keep you happy. During the mayhem I’d warm up to it, but the film spends way too much time idling along with its unlikable characters that kept it from truly winning me over as a fan. Just because a film has a giant monster in it does not always make it great in my b-movie book. And it’s bloody conclusion, while funny, intentional or not, just didn’t work for me.

More Monkey See, Monkey Doo-Doo!

Posted: 04/05/01. Copy and paste at your own legal risk.

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