According to producer Robert Walterscheid, King Kung Fu lost all but 20% of its roughly $200,000 investment. For regional indies, them’s the breaks; in this case, it is also totally deserved. Good job, American moviegoing public!
However, I discovered one good reason to see the massive turd that is King Kung Fu: You live or have lived in Wichita, the Kansas city in which this miserable monstrosity was made, and are curious about recognizing the local landmarks. Everyone else should be spared the agony by avoiding the film as they have avoided, well, Wichita.
As if the title failed to tell all, this movie thinks itself a spoof of King Kong by way of TV’s Kung Fu,* insomuch that a gorilla has been trained in the martial arts. Just as Kong was trotted out from Skull Island to big, bad New York City, Jungle Jumper (John Ballee, who should be thankful the gorilla costume hides his face) is shipped from the Orient, and set to make a promotional stop in Wichita. There, wannabe TV reporter Bo (Billy Schwartz) and camera operator Herman (the Michael Jeter-ish Tim McGill, Three for the Road) live in an attic and plot to leverage the ape’s appearance to jump-start their nonexistent careers, starting with renaming him King Kung Fu, which they have no legal right to do.
Bo and Herman’s scheme strikes the viewer as illogical for several reasons, not the least of which is it appears Walterscheid and writer/director Lance D. Hayes struggled to wrangle more than maybe two dozen people to show up at the Sedgwick County Zoo for KKF’s big unveiling scene. Said plans require the assistance of a shapely Pizza Hut employee (Maxine Gray) named Rae Fey.*
Other than Rae nicely filling out a bikini, things do not go according to plan. Herman loses his britches due to spilt banana oil on them. KKF escapes and the authorities follow. The police captain (Stephen S. Sisley), who acts like John Wayne, is named Officer Pilgrim.* KKF uses his karate on flag-helmeted cops while he wears an old lady’s fruit hat. KKF dons cowboy hat and neckerchief during a gunfight show. KKF disrupts a baseball game and frightens grocery store patrons. KKF kidnaps Rae and scales the downtown Holiday Inn, giving Bo a chance to play hero with a helicopter — and Hayes to play with dolls for “special” effects.
Every scene of King Kung Fu is a joke, yet not a single line coaxes a laugh. I suppose a preschooler might find fleeting delight in its feeble attempts at slapstick, but why purposely expose a child to pain? Hayes and his cast of nonprofessional, never-before/never-since actors try so hard … just at the wrong thing. Rather than aim for witty or funny, they want to be wacky and zany. In doing so, King Kung Fu stands (albeit in a hovering squat) as the screen’s equivalent of a clown in oversized red shoes, dancing a jig as it honks a handheld horn.
John Landis (speaking of helicopters*) already had unleashed the similarly themed, yet legitimately creative and amusing gorilla-amok comedy Schlock on a mere $60,000 in 1973. While both movies are equally inoffensive, King Kung Fu is infinitely more inept. —Rod Lott
*GET IT?