El gorila ataca

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.

This movie is so terrible, yet so funny. There are so many flaws with this movie. Many parts of the movie have nothing to do with the plot. The ape one time wears shoes, flicks the camera(and its no accident, he holds it for 4 seconds), and seems to be different sized throughout the movie. You cannot make a worse movie. Period. This movie must be seen, it is too funny to explain.

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

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.

Watch in horror as the A*P*E Mercilessly attacks the same building in 5 different shots, and then sometimes the same shot repeated later in the film. Marvel at the special effects as foam pieces fly off the "rocks" that fall toward the same three men also repeated about five times. Become engrossed in the finely developed characters, and their emotional dialogue like "Just too big for a small world like ours," or "Lets see him dance for his organ grinder now!"

If the makers of this film were serious, I'll be a monkey's uncle, haha. But seriously, you'll have an ape of a time(I don't even think people say that one). I'm not monkeying around; you'll go bananas!

Important note: you can see the head part of the ape costume moving seperately from the rest of the costume and you don't even have to be looking.

Here's what I really think: It's bad, oh boy is it ever, especially the repeated stock footage and footage from other movies, and the 3 minutes, LITERALLY 3 MINUTES, of time wasted by showing children playing with a puppet. There is a shot of firemen rushing through the supposedly panic-stricken city but look closely(or not so closely you can still see it); In the background you can see people shopping. Let's not forget the ending (don't worry, you won't care if I tell you how it ends) which is 15 minutes of tanks shooting, soldiers running up to the camera looking into it, and then shooting 3 or 4 rounds out of a rifle I'm certain only holds one round(I don't know anything about guns, but it had the handle dealy on the side that you cock to load and unload). All this while the ape disco dances which I suppose is him being shot and reacting, but I would think that all that firepower and he would probably run away. Then the ape dies. You can tell it's going to happen too, because after what seems like hours of being shot in the head and chest, the A*P*E vomits blood. These things are the reason to watch the movie. I'm not exaggerating when I say A*P*E is one of the funniest films of all time.