Mighty Peking Man

The combination of back projection, bad matte work, miniatures, and a man in a monster suit in this 1977 Hong Kong cult film (now being re-released by Quentin Tarantino) about a giant humanoid ape who lives in the Himalayan jungle recalls Japan's monster epics. But Mighty Peking Man has qualities that put it way to the left of even the most insane Japanese films. Above all, it has Samantha (Evelyne Kraft), a blonde jungle goddess who never wears more than a pasted-on animal-skin bikini and whom Peking Man has mentored since her childhood (when the hero asks about her parents, she shows him a wrecked plane in which two rotting corpses are still seated).

Samantha tames not only Peking Man but all wild creatures; at one point, director Ho Meng-Hwa conveys the idea that an elephant and a leopard are sad she's going away. During the action scenes, frenzied cutting induces that higher state of panic and vertigo that eludes more respectable fantasy films. The last third of the film is an all-out assault on modernity. No more cogent image of the idiocy of mass entertainment has been put on film than the scene in which a huge crowd gathers in a stadium to pelt Peking Man with candy and watch his tug of war with toy trucks. Midnights at the Coolidge Corner.

-- Chris Fujiwara