DIRECTOR HO MENG-HUA has seen a lot in his four score years, but nothing quite jolts his memory like the week spent tracking a half-naked blonde through the streets of Hong Kong in 1977.
The woman was German actress Evelyn Kraft and Ho was putting the finishing touches to a remarkable film called The Mighty Peking Man. It was Hong Kong's answer to King Kong - complete with a huge ape, a city under threat, and a woman wearing little more than precisely positioned pelts.
Some of the scenes called for Kraft - playing Ah Wei, an orphan raised in the wilds of India - to run frantically around as her ape friend tore apart the city, on course for his final showdown with man on top of Jardine House. And Hong Kong had never seen anything like it.
'For the first few takes, there was no one around,' says Ho, his eyes dancing at the memory. 'But word spread and people were coming from everywhere to have a look. Filming those scenes should have taken us a day or so, but they ended up taking a week because there were so many people around watching her.'
Ho is sitting in a meeting room at the historic Shaw Brothers House in Clear Water Bay, 25 years after The Mighty Peking Man first hit local cinemas and just days before it is re-released on DVD. The building is now housed by Celestial Pictures, which is bringing to life the entire Shaw Brothers archive, and Ho is back at his old stamping ground to see what they have done with his work.
The Mighty Peking Man might not be the most famous of Ho's 50-odd films for Shaw Brothers - which included a classic quartet based on the novel Journey To The West and Susanna (1967), which picked up the best film award at the 14th Asian Film Festival - but its images are some of Hong Kong cinema's most memorable.
The storyline follows an intrepid bunch of local explorers as they head to India to capture a giant ape (named Ah Wang). Our hero, Johnny Feng (Danny Lee Sau-yin), is separated from the pack, bumps into Ah Wei, falls for her charms, and persuades her to bring Ah Wang back to Hong Kong.
