A Study in SimianScope

About 10 years ago, I went to a local Blockbuster to rent the film King Kung Fu. Cinemassacre, a popular YouTube channel that reviews retro movies and video games in a humorous manner, recommends you check out the movie. It is a very goofy G-rated parody that fits into the “so bad it’s good” category. But just as importantly, the movie is a snapshot of what Wichita looked like in the 70’s.

King Kung Fu is a 1976 comedy that tells the story of a gorilla trained in the martial arts that gets loose in Wichita, falling into in series of mishaps while beating people up using its Kung Fu skills. The filmwas shot in Wichita from 1974 to 1976. It features scenes at some of the most iconic attractions at the time, including the Sedgwick County Zoo, the Old Cowtown Museum, Joyland, Lawrence-Dumont Stadium, Century II, and the downtown Holiday Inn plaza.

I am a student in the Digital Arts program at Wichita State University and one of my classes was an internship that required 90 hours of work. I thought it would be cool to make a documentary that gives a tour of the most popular Wichita attractions seen in the movie and then compare what they look like today. So, I shot B-roll footage at the main outdoor places from the movie. Many locations, like the Sedgwick County Zoo, had changed drastically since the movie was shot there, making the shots difficult to find. But at other places like the downtown Holiday Inn Plaza, now called the 250 Douglas Place, the shots were easy to locate and look quite similar.

Later, I decided to get a hold of the main cast and crew to discuss their experience making the film. I interviewed director Lance Hayes, producer Bob Walterscheid, Tim McGill, who played “Herman” in the movie, and Wichita legend Jim Erickson (Ol’ Flick), who played “Al-Funku.” My documentary short is called SimianScope: The Making of King Kung Fu. The title combines simian (an ape) and the common film format, cinemascope. One of the first jokes in the film is a title card that says “A SimianScope Motion Picture.” It’s also the most important joke in the film because legend has it that if you laugh at THAT joke then you will laugh throughout the whole movie, and if you don’t laugh at that joke, then, well, you probably won’t do much laughing!

The end credits sequence of my doc features transitions of what some of the shooting locations for the film look like today. A few of them are shot-for-shot parallels. I decided to exclude Joyland and Lawrence-Dumont stadium from the end credits sequence because I wanted to show locations that people could visit without breaking the law. Joyland is long gone. And there is a new baseball stadium being built right where Lawrence-Dumont Stadium was located.

Will SimianScope: The Making of King Kung Fu become a propaganda piece to help maintain and restore these attractions that help define Wichita? Only time will tell. What can’t be denied is that King Kung Fu is a nostalgic piece of Wichita’s culture. This documentary intends to help preserve that legacy.

SimianScope: The Making of King King Fu is set to premiere at the 2019 Tallgrass Film Festival in the STATE OF KANSAS: PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE block Sunday, October 20th, at 12:15 pm at the Wilke Family Center. Tickets can be purchased here.