Kung Fu Arts (1980)

Sadly the picture is cropped and this masterpiece of Chinese cinema loses a lot of its impact. Curse you $20 50 Martial Arts Movies DVD set!!!

King Chi, loyal General of the Emperor of China, seemingly attempts to assassinate the Emperor, but in the confusion ends up throwing a poison dart at the Princess, who he was in love with! She only has three days to live and none of the imperial doctors have a cure, so the call goes out: anyone who can cure the Princess can have her hand in marriage!

And then this chimpanzee shows up and everyone is chasing him, and the chimp is holding some medicine and it dawns on me: the chimp is gonna save the princess and marry her! The monkey does indeed cure her, so she has to marry him and she makes a big scene, but the Emperor is a man of his word and soon they are making preparations for the ceremony. Of course, the Emperor is grief-striken and cannot bear the the thought of his daughter being married to a monkey so he does the only thing he can. He decides to put her and the monkey adrift in a boat, where they will surely be eaten to death by sharks.

Commander Pai is made successor to the throne, Commander-in-Chief of all China, and then what a coincidence, the Emperor is killed. Pai blames King Chi, and if King Chi were not already in big trouble for the whole Princess thing, he surely would be now! Some time later, we find that the Princess and her monkey made it safely to an island, where they are living a happily married life together, and Princess is even pregnant!

So the movie could go pretty much anywhere from here. King Chi is still alive, but on the lam. Emperor Pai is really suspicious. Princess is surely about to give birth to a half-human, half-monkey monstrosity. And there is gonna be Kung Fu in this movie, trust me! It just takes a while to get to it.

This is one entertaining Kung Fu movie. You can take nearly any movie, add a chimpanzee to it, and it will end up hilarious. But the combination of poor dubbing, Kung Fu, and a chimpanzee is probably as good as it gets when it comes to simian cinema. If that's not a recommendation I don't know what is.