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Twelve-year-old Timmy Blair (Justin Berfield, Reese from Malcom in the Middle) is having a rough year. His mother has passed away, and his father has remarried Eva. Timmy thinks of Eva as a "wicked old stepmother," although the only time she really gets upset with Timmy is when she sends him to the store with $5 to get some milk and he comes home with a puppy instead.
Across town, Jungle Ed (Terry Funk) and his carnival has rolled into town. His star attraction is Zamora the Almost-Human Gorilla, which he humiliates and beats in front of his audience. Two members of the audience feel sorry for the gorilla and go to a law firm to see what can be done. When the lawyer tells them it'll take 24 hours to file the paperwork, they decide that's too long. That night they go back and free Zamora, who quickly conks them on the head and escapes.
Zamora finds her way to Timmy's garage, where Timmy quickly discovers her. Timmy is neither afraid of the wild gorilla, nor is he impressed in the slightest that the gorilla appears to understand English. In perhaps the only bit of logic in the film, Timmy decides not to tell Eva about the gorilla because if she wouldn't let him keep a dog, there's a good chance she won't let him keep a wild gorilla.
Zamora is hungry though, and sneaks into the house and eats an entire batch of cookies Eva has cooked. Eva blames Timmy for eating the cookies, which he lies and says he did for some reason. Moments later Eva discovers a wild gorilla in her laundry room, at which point she screams and leaves to go see her shrink, leaving Timmy alone in the living room with what she thinks is a wild gorilla in her home.
Jungle Ed is grieving over the loss of Zamora when he is approached by a man named Reinhart (Gil "Buck Rogers" Gerard). Reinhart is a big game hunter who has hunted every kind of animal except a wild gorilla. Reinhart discovers that the gorilla is heavily ensured, and Jungle Ed will receive more in insurance money than he was making in ticket sales, so they agree that Reinhart should shoot the gorilla and Jungle Ed will get the money.
Reinhart tracks Zamora to Timmy's house after finding a single banana peel in the middle of the street. Timmy denies any knowledge of Zamora, and whisks her away by disguising her in a hat, sunglasses, and dress, and taking her in a taxi ("you should have seen her before the face lift!") to his friend Mr. Willard's junkyard. Yes, twelve-year-old Timmy's only friend in the movie is a sixty-year-old war veteran who owns a junkyard.
Timmy drops the gorilla off and goes back home. Reinhart tracks the gorilla to the junkyard and tries to shoot her, but she escapes. Zamora runs through the streets and sidewalks of Los Angeles and no one notices. She winds up at the Mandarin Cafe. In the fakest scene of the movie, the chef is in the back of the restaurant individually cooking Chinese Fortune Cookies. When the chef sees Zamora he chases her with an obviously rubber meat cleaver into the dining area where she proceeds to wreck havoc.
Animal control shows up to the restaurant. In my favorite scene, the two officers enter a restaurant where the only things inside are overturned tables and a giant gorilla eating fortune cookies. After ten seconds one of them yells to the other, "there she is!"
Timmy and Mr. Willard are driving around LA in his modified RV VW Wagon when Timmy puts two and two together and realizes it was Zamora who ate the cookies four hours earlier. The only three people in his home at the time were him, his mother, and a starving gorilla. Timmy's not the brains of this film. Nobody is, really. The two of them (along with Reinhart, separately) all arrive to see animal control whisking a tranquilized Zamora away.
The officers return Zamora to Jungle Ed, who is wearing an open vest with no shirt and blue jeans with red leather chaps over them. Mr. Willard (now dressed as a World War I veteran) and Timmy head down to the carnival. So do Timmy's parents. So does Reinhart. Jungle Ed beats Zamora for not getting shot and ruining his plan. Jungle Ed explains his evil insurance plan to Zamora, which Mr. Willard and Timmy overhear from outside the tent. Eventually Timmy and Mr. Willard rush in and they, with Zamora's help, fight and defeat Jungle Ed and his two sidekicks.
Outside the tent the three of them are about to make their getaway when Reinhart arrives and shoots Zamora. The gorilla does a dramatic "I've been shot!" gesture and goes down. Mr. Willard tells Reinhart that he knows about his insurance scheme and so he runs away.
The paramedics show up and load Zamora onto a gurney. Timmy begs the paramedics to let him ride along in the ambulance but they say no. Then Timmy's parents show up and his dad is a doctor, so the ambulance drivers (who just told Timmy to go away) allow Timmy and his dad to ride in the ambulance alone with Zamora the gorilla. Timmy's dad attempts to put a human-sized oxygen face mask over the gorilla's mouth, which is pretty entertaining.
As the ambulance pulls away, Mr. Willard tells the cops "there's a guy in that tent you should arrest" and so they do without any proof or even being told that he has committed a crime.
In the back of the ambulance, Timmy's dad holds the oxygen on Zamora's mouth, and Timmy gives Zamora the locket from around his neck that contains a picture of his dead mother. Timmy asks his dad if Zamora will be okay. His dad avoids the question and yells at the ambulance driver to take them to the county zoo, where they have an "animal ER facility."
Cut to a shot of Timmy's parents. They are in love and kiss each other. Upstairs in his bedroom we discover they have bought Timmy a puppy.
Did Zamora survive? Who knows?
THE END!
