As we all knew it, the adventures of “untrademarked simian monster” would continue after his debut against “copyright free atomic dinosaur”, after all Ape Vs Monster was one of the few new modern Asylum movies that people gave a shit aknowledging at all, as they basically resorted to rip-off themselves for the most part, but that’s another review, and with Jagged Edge Productions now outilining clearly their shared cinematic universe called Twisted Childhood (planned to end with Poohniverse: Monster Assemble in 2025) after unleashing the first Winnie The Pooh slasher, Winnie The Pooh Blood & Honey… the Asylum spirit lives on stronger and worse than ever.
For todays’ feature though we have to kinda go back to Toho’s handling of the Kong property during the 1960s, as after the first King Kong VS Godzilla there was a follow-up… as in, Toho made another King Kong monster film back in 1967, King Kong Escapes, again a Japanese-American collaboration, but not a sequel to King Kong VS Godzilla (which is even funnier considering that film too ignored everything but the first Godzilla film), that would make some sense.
No, instead it was based more around the animated children TV series The King Kong Show, a collaboration between Toho and Rankin Bass, co-produced by Videocraft International and Toho Animation, and featured – in the japanese kaiju tradition – a mecha antagonist version of the protagonist monster, called Mekani-Kong, created by an evil genius called Dr. Who, not fans of the BBC show, but more of the then common asian evil genius scientist-mastermind, as popularized in Bond films and spy flicks of the era in general, with the obviously attached racism.
What does have to do with the plot of Ape Vs Mecha Ape? Bugger all.
As usual, it would be too risky for them to also rip-off directly the plots….so they do rip them off but shuffle things around, meaning they do the Mechagodzilla thing instead, as they create a mecha version of the monster in order to contain the creature, but the robot ape IA malfunctions so they have to unleash the ape itself to stop the mecha ape.
They also do the “get the simian favourite human here to calm it down” thing, but it’s not really a rip-off of one of Godzilla Vs Kong’s subplot, more of a generic trope of giant ape movies, heck, even the Rampage live action film did that…. actually, the more i think about it, this feels more like that movie with the whole caring of the ape thing (and the fact that contaminated alien gunk is part how the ape grew giant to begin with) than Godzilla Vs Kong, but yeah, you also could still consider the issue as just another monster movie clichè because it undeniably is.
Regardless, once you cut out the “fat” that has to be there because otherwise it would all be actually non-sense, it’s still kinda the bare minimum you could concoct for a monster movie sequel.
But we expected as much, so is it any fun?
The first one was, so it’s kinda confusing that they almost managed to (ironically) miss the mark by actually trying a little bit more in terms of acting and characters, and they still had to put in stuff like the “ruskies”, which yes, were in the first movie, but i almost didn’t remember that because why would i? But yep, they were part of the first movie’s plot, and it checks out with these later days Asylum “sequels” that still do the Cold War shit like it’s still the 90s, i mean, even Megalodon: Rising had them russian spies and submarine hijacking.
If anything it’s one of these that cuts to the chase and gives you the “transmorpher ape” in the first 2 minutes. Why is it there, who’s shooting at it, is it a Beast War rip-off? Questions that might but most likely won’t have get answered, if The Asylum track record is anything to go off.
And most importantly, is there Eric Roberts sitting on his ass in an office room spouting exposition and telling people what they can and can’t do, and not really intervening directly in the plot or any semblance of action?
No, this time’s the “CEO of Army and-or State in office chair” is Tom Arnold (which also slummed into the newest Transmorphers title), alongside some Asylum regulars, but to be fair the movie does eventually get going past the 30 minutes mark, and in the ends turns out fine, for some reason their own “Godzilla VS Kong” mockbuster series is where they decided to put in some extra effort… comparatively to their capabilities, the effects are still as cheap as you’d think and in some cases hilarious, like i don’t think they meant to evoke the funny scene from 1962’s King Kong VS Godzilla where Kong is just a rubber suit being transported via balloons, but the digital ape being lifted via helicopters and looking like he’s a JPEG flapping in the wind… chef’s kiss
And while the cinematography is far from the worse i’ve seen from the company, i’m still surprised they can’t even get prospective right (or consistant) in some shots, like one where the ape looks supergiant compared to the Mecha Ape, while they should be the same size, and no, there’s no explanation of “the alien blood and the rage made it grow further”.
That said, like Ape Vs Monster before , it’s actually alright for an Asylum mockbuster thingie, just tune your expectations accordingly and there’s some “brain off” garbage fun to be had, to be wrangled from its mecha nipples.
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