Friday, October 17, 2008

The Mighty Peking Man

The Mighty Peking Man is a film produced in Hong Kong by Shaw Brothers Studio. This film was created to capitalize on the craze surrounding the of ''King Kong''.

The film was directed by Ho Meng Hua, produced by Runme Shaw, and the special effects were directed by Sadamasa Arikawa, with Koichi Kawakita as assistant FX director. It starred and Evelyn Kraft.

Plot


A gigantic ape-like creature is found in the Himalayan mountains on the India side, along with a former plane crash victim named Samantha. Samantha grew up with Utam with nothing to wear but an animal-skin bikini.

She and Utam are brought to Hong Kong, where Utam goes on display as a circus freak. His discoverer falls in love with his old girlfriend. Samantha, who loved him, saw this and ran off, nearly getting raped. Utam goes berserk and squashes the rapist, then runs off with Samantha to the tallest building he can find, climbs it, and is burned/shot to death and falls off. Samantha was killed in the explosion during the conflict.

Re-release


On April 23, 1999, Quentin Tarantino re-released ''Mighty Peking Man'' in North America through his Rolling Thunder Pictures distribution company with Miramax. Roger Ebert gave the film three stars out of a possible four in the ''Chicago Sun-Times'', and, amusingly, actually upgraded his rating for the thematically similar ''Infra-Man'':"''Mighty Peking Man'' is very funny, although a shade off the high mark of ''Infra-Man'', which was made a year earlier, and is my favorite Hong Kong monster film. Both were produced by the legendary Runme Shaw, who, having tasted greatness, obviously hoped to repeat. I find to my astonishment that I gave ''Infra-Man'' only two and a half stars when I reviewed it. That was 22 years ago, but a fellow will remember a lot of things you wouldn't think he'd remember. I'll bet a month hasn't gone by since that I haven't thought of that film. I am awarding ''Mighty Peking Man'' three stars, for general goofiness and a certain level of insane genius, but I cannot in good conscience rate it higher than ''Infra-Man''. So, in answer to those correspondents who ask if I have ever changed a rating on a movie: Yes, ''Infra-Man'' moves up to three stars.

Audiences were less receptive to the film, however. In its opening weekend, it grossed just $4,873 in 13 theatres , and ended its run with a miserable $17,368.

No comments: