Yet another film about a giant gorilla terrorizing a city. And another one capitalizing off the De Laurentiis King Kong of ‘76. This one was produced by the Shaw Brothers, a Hong Kong Studio famous for making the greatest Kung Fu movies of all time! This is one of the more entertaining knock offs that happened in the late 70s. Roger Ebert even gave it 3 out of 4 stars in his review for the Chicago Sun-Times! Pretty good for a cheap monkey movie.
I got the opportunity to watch this at Portland’s Hollywood Theatre some years ago and really enjoyed it, though there were some really ridiculous things going on. The special effects were pretty doggone bad, a lot of matte masking to show the size of the “giant” ape in relation to humans. Still this was pretty entertaining, and fun to watch.
One of the big differences to the other ape movies is that the girl was friends with the ape instead of being terrorized by him. Samantha, an orphaned girl who has grown to a woman of the jungle is friends with all the animals. She plays with all the beasts of the jungle while dressing in a very sheik jungle outfit (which she wears throughout the entire flick).
Dancing with this leopard without him mauling you? This leopard deserves an Oscar for his performance!
Sooner or later the ape ends up in Hong Kong and all hell breaks loose. The ape climbs the tallest building he can find dies in the end. Original ending, huh?
you talking to me?