A*P*E

A*P*E (1976)

Ape

Not to be confused with King Kong

A newly discovered 36-foot gorilla escapes from a freighter off the coast of Korea. At the same time an American actress is filming a movie in the country. Chaos ensues as the ape kidnaps her and rampages through Seoul.

Date of release
1976-07-23
TMDB
3.8 / 10 (43)
Runtime
1h 27m
Genres
Adventure, Horror, Science Fiction
Director
Paul Leder

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Filmed in: South Korea

A*P*E, released in South Korea as King Kong's Great Counterattack, is a 1976 monster film. An international co-production between South Korea and the United States, the film was produced by Kukje Movies and the Lee Ming Film Co. and Worldwide Entertainment (U.S.), and was shot in 3-D using the Space-Vision process. Directed by Paul Leder and featuring special effects by Park Kwang Nam, the film stars Joanna Kerns, Rod Arrants and Alex Nicol. It marked an early film appearance by Kerns, later known for her work in television.

Production

A*P*E was an expedited production meant to capitalize on the upcoming release of Dino DeLaurentis' King Kong (1976). The entire budget for A*P*E was $23,000 and the special effects budget for the miniature buildings was only $1,200. The film was shot in just 14 days. Several plot elements, such as a giant gorilla's relationship with an American actress, are essentially lifted from the King Kong story.

When the film was going into production in February 1976, it was announced as The New King Kong and was advertised as such via a teaser poster in Boxoffice magazine. When RKO Pictures discovered this, they filed a $1.5 million lawsuit against A*P*E's production company.

The film's title A*P*E is jokingly explained as an abbreviation of "Attacking Primate monstEr", with the deliberate intention to spoof the acronym title of M*A*S*H, a popular 1970 film and subsequent 1972–1983 television series that was set in Korea, where A*P*E was produced.

In one scene, the movie pitted the titular giant ape against a huge great white shark, meant as a spoof on Jaws, a movie about a giant shark made a year earlier. In August 1978, the cover of Famous Monsters magazine referenced the scene.

A*P*E was released theatrically in North America in October 1976, merely two months before the release of King Kong.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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