King Kong revient

You know, you just can't beat a movie like "A*P*E" for a good time. And By good time, I mean this movie "s*u*c*k*s." Well, no. It isn't bad as in "never see this movie" bad, it's bad as in "good for a laugh and nothing more" bad. The best part has to be when A*P*E flips off the camera. Wow! I never knew apes really did that! I'm sorry if this doesn't help you as a reader and potential viewer, but I just had to vent a little. Have a nice day, otherwise.

This is a great bad movie and many of the scenes are hilarious. If you'd enjoy watching a 60-sec slow-motion scene where a guy in a gorilla costume wrestles an obviously dead shark, thrashing it around and pretending to be in the throes of death, look no further. This whole movie is full of great scenes like that, and if it weren't for an overly drawn out love story subplot, "A.P.E." would be a 5-star unintentional comedy. You get a little bit of everything in this South Korean flick: "Godzilla"-style miniature sets, toy model animals and people, remote control helicopters, firework explosions, and of course, a guy in a gorilla suit. The plot is not important, really, and the film gets right down to brass tacks after about 2-min of backstory. Just know that there is a 35-ft tall ape, and he is going to rampage Korea. Throw in an American actress (Joanna Kerns, of "Growing Pains" fame), her reporter boyfriend, and a pair of Army officers bent on killing the beast, and you have "A.P.E." The direction and editing are sometimes stunningly inept, resulting in several great "WTF moments," including my favorite when a character is hanging off the outside door of a moving jeep, for seemingly no reason. Anyhow, I could go on forever with this one. As far as bad movies go, "A.P.E." is a definite keeper. You are going to get laughs out of this one.

Nowhere near as good as "Mighty Peking Man" as far as King Kong rip-offs, "Ape" is good to look at just to see the fair miniatures and little else. The best "bad" hilarious movies are those that never intended to be that; in "Ape", the Ape gets mad gives the finger in one scene, obviously in a deliberate attempt for laughs, which in turn, makes it pretty unfunny.

The sound effects are BAD, there's a decent 'bad' fight with a giant shark which couldn't look much more fake if they tried, plus the Ape trashes a few buildings. If you are a giant monster film fan, this probably won't get more than a few viewings in your entire lifetime but it's good to watch and take off your list of films to see, plus to examine how badly this one was made. All in all, some fun, but pretty bad.

Original ads warned, "Not the be confused with KING KONG." Not a problem there, pals! This not only makes one yearn to see the original 1933 KONG again, but it makes the Dino De Laurentiis remake look like a revisionist masterpiece. The FX work (originally shown in 3-D) is even cheesier than the old Toho GODZILLA movies as "ten tons" of simian fury (AKA - guy in monkey suit) crushes a model city, sinks a toy ship and wrestles around with "giant" rubber snake and shark creatures. It's all for the love of an actress, played by Joanna De Varona who is actually Joanna Kerns, the mother from the Growing Pains TV series!

APE sure is funny and worth watching, but going by the general rules of movie scoring, it's a...

Score: 1 out of 10

APE is a truly strange hybrid: my best guess is that it was an Korean Monster Film that got bought by an American Filming Crew who spent a weekend getting background shots and shot all the giant ape footage in their backyard.

From the first great line in the film in which a mildly depressed actor utters the most deadpan expression of shock to stock footage of a cow that becomes an obviously fake battery-operated toy in faraway shots this film is a laugh riot. The cherry on top of this cake is that 'Joanna Von Savant' of the title is really Joanna Kerns from TV's Growing Pains. Apparently the 1980s weren't a good time for her, between being fondled by a fake ape in a ripoff of a Dino Laurentis film or a TV mom to a bunch of stupid kids that go to a school that calls their sports team "Hooters."

In short, don't watch APE. Experience it and hope to God someone's future film career depended on this.