(THANK YOU, Geno the Giant!!!) 

OK, I’ve been a bit busy and not keeping up with getting more of these RFotW posts up as I’d like when I’d like to, but here’s a case where having a huge backlog of future posts might be a good thing. I looked at my long (and growing) list of films and instead of randomly selecting one, picked the first one on that list and thankfully, didn’t need to go far to track it down. I wanted a trailer, but the first thing I found was the full movie, always a good thing when it’s legal.

On the other hand… this particular post is about the horrifically terrible and stupid Korean King Kong pastiche that is A*P*E, so you may not agree at all. Then again, it’s hard to hate a film so bad it starts off unintentionally hilarious, gets a tiny bit “serious” turns into a parody of the film and genres it’s trying too hard to copy then goes back to (sort of) being serious at its finale. Yeah, A*P*E swings both ways and then some. Yes, that’s the full film above – pull up a chair or couch and make sure you’re sitting close to the floor, as you may fall off whatever you’re sitting on a few times…

I’m almost tempted to NOT review this at all and let you guys and dolls just gape at A*P*E and its many inadequacies as you come up with words of your own to describe what you’re seeing. However, that would be too lazy on my part, so while you’re whipping up that popcorn, I’ll type – come back when you’re done with the microwave or whatever, OK?  Let’s see now… the opening is priceless beyond words with the titular gigantic simian waking up from being gassed and making his escape from the tanker before fighting a giant shark. While that SOUNDS exciting, between the “acting” by the two soon to be blown up shipmates, the man in the crappy gorilla costume and the very OBVIOUSLY dead, VERY toothless REAL shark he’s wrestling with, the first five and a half minutes of this stinker are pure comedy gold…

Why is that giant gorilla in that tanker? You ask (as if you think you missed about thirty minutes or so of exposition because the producers couldn’t afford to film it and/or wanted to get this out as quickly as possible)?. Well, he’s been captured and gassed because of his huge size and is on the way on an around the world tour to places like Disneyland (to which one seaman says “You gotta be bullshittin’ me…”). The battle against common sense and logic is only beginning brothers and sisters. As the not so great ape then walks to and wrecks a nearby town (wait, how far “at sea” was that toy boat he was on and how the hell can a 36-foot tall gorilla move as if its feet are touching the bottom of the ocean floor?) and the scene switches to a Korean airport a few hours later where we meet two of the American actors hired to give this gem shaped turd some international flavor.

That would be Rod Arrants and Joanna Verona, aka Joanna Kerns of Growing Pains fame (!) collecting paychecks to liven up an otherwise awful film. Well, they don’t quite earn their keep, although Varona’s Marylin Baker (a ha, ha) character gets to run around in a thin red silk robe and long brown leather boots for a chunk of the film. Anyway, things venture into actual intentional comedy with the big gorilla playing with a piloted hang glider in one scene and kind of swaying to the soundtrack as if he’s drunk a few too many barrels of cheap wine then later, kidnapping Marylin from a movie set

It’s pretty much a downhill slide from there (well, even more of one) as she gets away from the ape but is caught again later while doing a puppet show (with of the ugliest marionettes you’ll ever see), the military is called back in and the chase is on. There’s a big city set that’s destroyed (it looks like it’s made of painted balsa wood, foam core, plastic and cardboard), the ape gets shot full of holes, spits up a few hundred gallons of blood, dances and doesn’t even get a proper fall to the ground death scene because it’s taking too damn long to die standing up. Seriously – the thing is flailing away like mad as if it’s on a dance floor and the camera cuts away to assorted reaction shots, a dumb line is delivered and the camera cuts back to nothing on screen but the mountain or whatever was behind that gorilla, roll credits. Bleh.

Still, for all it’s wretched non-excess, in my twisted mind A*P*E is at least more “entertaining” than that other giant gorilla flick with the much bigger budget I forget the name of that was also released in 1976.  Let’s see now, this “review” took longer to write than to watch the film because I stopped writing to read and reply to a few emails and poke around for a better film on my long list that won’t torture you with such great badness. I think I found one, too. But you’ll just have to wait for that, folks. In the meantime, you have about an hour and twenty minutes of A*P*E left, right? Heh… well, I’ll let you get to it  – me, I’m going to go do something more productive with my time…