A*P*E (1976) Review

A*P*E (1976) Review

 

Rip-off films have been a thing for a long time. Lately, what comes to mind is the production company The Asylum, with such non-classics as Transmorphers, Mega Piranha, and King of the Lost World, but one of the most significant rip-off films of the 1970’s was a blatant cash-in on the 1976 remake of King Kong. It’s been known by many titles, including The New King Kong, Super Ape, Hideous Mutant, and my favourite, Attack of the Giant Horny Gorilla, but it’s most well-known as A*P*E, a title that’s both a spoof of the way M*A*S*H is stylized, and an acronym for Attacking Primate MonstEr. With that out of the way, let’s get into this absolute embarrassment of a film. 

A giant ape awakens on an oil tanker, which makes the entire ship explode. I can’t believe I just wrote that, but alas, that’s actually how the movie starts, and the scene that follows? The ape, which is now scaled to be larger than the ship he had just been on, fights a giant shark, which sounds amazing in concept, but the reality of how this battle was achieved is easy to figure out just by looking at it. The ape is a man in an ape costume—perhaps the worst ape costume to ever appear in a theatrically-released film—and the shark is a real shark that is clearly dead. The ape flips the dead shark around a few times and rips its jaws apart like Kong does to the T-rex in the original King Kong, then he wades to the mainland and starts destroying buildings, and that’s the whole rest of the movie.

A*P*E is a feat of low-budget, self-aware moviemaking. This is not trying to be more than it is. The team behind the project knew what they were doing, and while it isn’t really a so-bad-it’s-good movie on the whole, there’s enough in it to make it worth seeing at least once. I don’t have any comments on the human cast, because there are barely any characters to speak of. The ape is really the only character that matters. He does the usual giant monster stuff: fights a couple rivals (the aforementioned shark and a giant python, which Kong also fought in the ’76 remake), destroys some buildings, grabs a damsel in distress, and fights the military. The two things that distinguish A*P*E from other King Kong rip-offs are the dollar store special effects and the outrageous 3-D visual tricks.

The miniatures lack any detail, and when the ape breaks them, they rarely break in a way that’s anywhere close to realistic. Not a single effect is convincing; everything is bad, from the toy tanks the ape breaks to the rocks that fall down the mountain, which have pieces of white Styrofoam flaking off as they roll. As the movie progresses, the miniatures get more elaborate and extensive, and by the end, an entire city block is rendered in miniature, so props to the prop department for stretching the little budget as far as possible. The 3-D effects are numerous and appalling, with so many objects that fly right at the camera I lost count halfway through. The best thing that stretches out toward the audience is when the ape extends his arm and sticks out his middle finger. He literally flips the bird at the viewer, and it’s a legendary moment of cinema that must be seen to be believed.

A*P*E is a dumpster fire of a monster movie, and when I first watched it, I didn’t think it was worth reviewing, but to my surprise, it stuck with me, proving to be more memorable than I would have thought, and there’s just enough ridiculous laugh-out-loud moments to make it worth recommending to anyone who likes these sorts of movies. It gets frustrating in its repetitiveness toward the end, but there is just enough to laugh at from beginning to end.