Hong Kong Movies

Mighty Peking Man

He's a ten-story-tall prehistoric primate -- and he needs love! This Shaw Brothers production is one of the better giant-monkey movies made since Kong first went ape over Fay Wray. It has the classic man-woman-ape love triangle, it has an intrepid explorer, it has a beautiful girl, and it has a tragic ending as a result of the explorer's heedless meddling. As Steve Ryfle put it, "Mighty Peking Man is a throwback to those good old days when technical virtuosity wasn't the only thing that mattered, and low budget didn't necessarily mean low-octane."

Review: Stomp Tokyo.

Thunder of Gigantic Serpent

A “lost” giant monster movie, Thunder of Gigantic Serpent has never been released in either its native Hong Kong or the U.S. (its intended market), though it did get spotty video distribution in Europe as Terror Serpent. The movie was made by Joseph Lai, a producer infamous for his cut-n-paste movies created out of one or more existing movies, though most of Thunder of Gigantic Serpent appears to be an original production.

Most of the movie has to do with a little girl named Ting Ting and her intelligent pet snake Mozler. She finds a box that contains “the formula,” a process that can make animals grow in size. The box was lost during some gangsters’ attempt to steal it from the scientists who created it. Ting Ting keeps Mozler in the box, and soon he’s 20 feet long. Ting Ting’s giant snake (paging Dr. Freud!) doesn’t go unnoticed by the gangsters, so they kidnap her to find the formula. Mozler grows to Godzilla-size and destroys a bridge, attacks a city, and wraps itself around a building before the military kills it.

Being a Joseph Lai film, there is an added subplot featuring Caucasian actors that tries to frame the action by explaining that a terrorist mastermind is ultimately behind the theft of “the formula.” The monster action is all amusingly inept.