APE is a 1976 monster movie. The American/South Korean co-production was produced by Kukje Movies, the Lee Ming Film Co. (South Korea) and Worldwide Entertainment (USA) with 3-D effects.
Directed by Paul Leder and featuring special effects by Park Kwang Nam, the movie stars Rod Arrants, Joanna Kerns and Alex Nicol. It was released to cash in on Dino De Laurentiis’ 1976 remake of King Kong and mockingly includes a character named “Dino”. The film was also released as Attack of the Giant Horny Gorilla and Hideous Mutant.
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A 36-foot gorilla escapes from an oil tanker off the coast of Korea. After battling with a giant great white shark (because Jaws was such a box office bonanza the previous year), the ape reaches land and destroys several buildings before finding and kidnapping an American actress named Marilyn (Joanna Kerns).
The military eventually corners and kills the ape, prompting one observer to comment, “He was just too big for a small world like ours!”
Reviews:
“Amazingly the guys behind this hysterically bad movie even had the gumption to go for 3D, which only adds to its mystique. The writers of APE were either satirical geniuses who loaded the film with postmodern humour or completely incompetent.., It’s genuinely quite difficult to work out which.” Deadly Movies
“The acting is uniformly awful; from the blank expressions of the American extras, the thickly Korean-accented Nak-hun Lee as a military Captain, Alex Nicol as a perpetually angry American Army colonel, Rod Arrants as a smug guy who acts smugly and wanders around whenever the script calls for him to…” Mecha-Blog-Zilla
“The moronic plotting, the nonexistent production values and the barely even trying direction all add up to something special, to me at least. Sure I’m laughing at the movie and not with it. I’m sure that the people who made this movie were laughing at it too.” Musings of a Cinematic Obsessive
“First of all, the landscapes across which this ’36 foot tall monster’ stomps are so obviously miniatures that a five-year-old could spot them as phony. Secondly, the fur part of the suit looks more like your grandmother’s lamb’s wool coat collar than an actual simian. Thirdly, the seam at the neckline keeps threatening to literally come apart during the action. And lastly, the guy inside the monkey suit has a belly and tush that looks amazingly like Homer Simpson in the episode where he dreamed he was Kong.” John Wilson, The Official Razzie Movie Guide
“The second worst looking ape costume in movie history, behind The Mighty Gorga, and the guy inside has no idea how an ape behaves. Effects are not just cheap, but also poorly planned and executed.” Videohound’s Complete Guide to Cult Flicks and Trash Pics
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