It’s not easy to recommend a movie like King Kung Fu to anyone unless you think they are the kind of film fan who can appreciate the dumb fun of a no-budget comedy about a talking gorilla/martial arts monster running amuck in Wichita, Kansas.In fact, the only people who will continue to read beyond an opening line like that are probably big fans of the film already. Either that or they’re from Wichita and were ‘lucky’ enough to get roped into being an extra in one of the crowd scenes (since no one actually responsible for making the movie would want to see it again).
The film is a take-off on the martial arts movie that flooded American cinemas during the 70s, with a nod given to the popular David Carradine series Kung Fu. A Chinese gorilla (OK, a guy in a really cheap looking gorilla suit) who has mastered the martial arts is sent on a goodwill mission to America. He makes a stop in Wichita “so the red necks can gawk at him,” where a pair of wannabe Walter Cronkites start staging fake news events in the hopes of causing an ape rampage and making a name for themselves by scooping the national news.
Writer/director/star Lance Hayes (who, according to imdb.com never made another movie) uses every low budget trick in the book to squeeze a few laughs out of this ridiculous scenario and, to his credit, he actually gets a few. Sure, a lot of the time you will be laughing at the movie instead of with it, but that’s what makes King Kung Fu worth checking out.
IMDB Site.
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