Women in skins (6/16/99)
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Mighty Peking Man. [Ho Meng Hwa, 1977. Produced by the Shaw Brothers.]
Hong Kong does King Kong: a Chinese adventurer leads an expedition into the nearest convenient jungle [I think this was supposed to be in India, or Nepal, or somewhere like that] in search of a giant ape, and, after various exploits that serve to illustrate his derring-do and separate him from his colleagues and attendants, finds the Big Guy hanging out in the deep woods with Evelyne Kraft, a blonds bombshell jungle girl who swings through the trees, speaks to the animals, and keeps falling out of her cavegirl outfit. After she gets bitten by a snake and he sucks the poison out of her thigh romance blossoms, but before the ape can figure out what the two of them are doing in the upper berth our hero sells the babe on the idea of a return to civilization. This proves to be a Bad Idea. Evil exploitative Hong Kong hucksters [like, well, the Shaw Brothers themselves] cage the noble savage, embroil the hero in an inappropriate romance, and threaten Sheena with poor performance reports if she fails to satisfy their base bestial cravings. Enraged by a chance glimpse of the inner workings of the Oval Office, Bigfoot busts out, climbs the nearest tower, and battles the colonial air force to a standstill before [a nice touch] falling to his death in flames; the cavegirl, alas, expires nobly after stepping into the line of fire trying to protect her pet primate from the final onslaught. Our hero is left gnashing his teeth: what a moron.
Slipping into the midnight show with other matters on my mind, I failed to notice the drawing for the door prizes and missed my chance to collect a poster of the spectacular Ms. Kraft in costume. But now that I’ve seen this flick I won’t rest until I find another.
____________The phantom of the space opera (6/3/99)
