The honeymoon’s over: A critical review of “The Bride and the Beast” (1958)

Perhaps we spoke too soon when we said gorilla thrillers were getting more mature, more artistically interesting and psychologically complex, in the 1950s. Leave it to none other than Edward D. Wood Jr. to prove us wrong. “The Bride and the Beast” is effectively Wood’s entry into the subgenre, and it’s every bit what you might imagine, right down to the angora sweater.

Comely Laura has just married Dan (who can find his house because he lives on a street with his own name), but before they can get their honeymoon started (in separate beds, of course) Dan’s pet ape – named, I kid you not, Spanky – ravishes Laura. She doesn’t seem to mind. In fact, she kind of likes it. Some Hollywood hypnotism later, and Laura remembers a past life where she was the queen of the gorillas. Things are finally starting to make sense. This does not seem like a massive red flag to Dan about his evolving relationship, so he suggests the couple instead honeymoon in Africa, where they can look for clues to Laura’s possible simian identity…

The blessing and the curse of “Bride” is that it feels like four relatively distinct plots crammed into one: a woman marries a man who keeps a gorilla in his basement; a woman was a gorilla in a past life; a Great White Hunter stereotype takes his wife on a honeymoon safari where they run over animals with their car; escaped tigers in Africa, for whatever reason, attack people who don’t look like Africans. We’ve seen variations on some of those before, for better or worse, but others are so batshit insane they feel like they could have only emerged from the mind of Wood.

“Bride” was not actually directed by Wood; rather, we can thank Adrian Weiss for that. It’s kind of fascinating because, without Wood pointing the camera, there’s a level of relative professionalism and intentionality behind the images – but the images are still Wood’s. So a woman is going to marry a man who casually has trap doors in his living room, employs a shirtless manservant and keeps an ape named Spanky in his basement, which is built out of old castle stones, is lit with dripping wall torches and there’s also an ice chest in the corner. Dan is like the world’s weirdest and most pathetic James Bond villain. That’s Wood, pure and simple; but there’s no cardboard tombstones to fall over, and someone on the other side understands the concept of “editing” (the editing was in part by Samuel Weiss). It’s shot like a serious horror film, but it still has Wood’s singular vision and fan fiction level of screenwriting prowess. It’s a mesmerizing jumble.

Adrian Weiss (not Samuel the editor. Or Louis Weiss, who produced – and has a “White Gorilla” connection. It’s also not Adoph, who handled wardrobe. The film bleeds Weisses) appears to have been a real human and not an alias for Wood, but he also seems to have specialized in movies that were built out of other movies, like “Custer’s Last Stand” – a serial edited into a feature – and “Devil Monster” – a silent reedited into a talkie. This might explain why, after that bizarre intro “plot,” there is a massive dump of stock footage in the middle of the film for the next “plot” or so.

The footage comes courtesy of a couple of films, including “Bride of the Gorilla,” which is a much better movie, and something called “Man-Eater of Kumaon.” Both of those films took place on other continents – South America and Asia respectively – so naturally they’re scrambled into this mess as soon as Dan and Laura head to Africa. That’s also when the film becomes an outdoor version of the “clueless people wander around the haunted house” movie, which is understandably the weakest part of the film. Also, the thing about Laura being a reincarnated gorilla goddess is kind forgotten so we can watch Dan wrestle tigers. It is disappointing for this blog, who really wanted to see the weird dungeon gorilla move keep unfolding.

Charlotte Austin as Laura (yet another doomed woman with that name in a thriller) and Lance Fuller as Dan somehow manage to deliver lines like “Do you think Spanky’s afraid of the storm?” with straight faces. Austin seems smoother than Fuller, but still. If that’s not professionalism, I don’t know what is.

Also, that’s Crash Corrigan in the ape costume, apparently for the last time. He’d be in one more movie as an alien, and that was that. He handles the death of Spanky with as much grace and nobility as one could expect a man in a gorilla suit to do in an Ed Wood film, which means he paws a sweater and collapses down a flight of rickety stairs. It’s still a highlight. It’s probably fitting that the last old school gorilla thriller would feature him, and equally fitting that this bizarre subgenre would go out on such a wild note. After all, once you’ve done Wood, what else can you do?

Larger than life: A critical review of “Gorilla at Large” (1954)

The further into gorilla thrillers one gets, the more intriguing the products become. It’s as if the subgenre had to shed its haunted house origins and jungle byways to create something more interesting and experimental. Or maybe it’s just that, as cinema evolved, gorilla thriller could be married to more mature genres like film noir and psychological horror.

Alternatively, maybe it’s just Raymond Burr.

Here, Burr plays Cyrus Miller, the manager of the Garden of Eden, a traveling carnival that sports a glamorous trapeze artist (Anne Bancroft) and a monstrous gorilla (George Barrows this time) as its main attraction. But when one of the carnies turns up dead by the gorilla’s cage, some of the shadier business practices start to come to light. An unflappable detective (Lee J. Cobb) starts to investigate, trying to determine if the killer was gorilla or all-too human.

“Gorilla at Large” finally capitalizes on the circus theme that has been lurking around gorilla thrillers since 1940, giving us something that blends well with the noir aesthetic. It might be because the human grotesques of film noir find a sympathetic echo in the grotesques of the circus and carnival. The addition of noir tropes is a good mix, resulting in more than simply a gorilla run amok story.

It helps that the production itself is pretty adequate for the genre. The plot is fine, pretty boilerplate down to the final twist, but it’s the presentation that makes things interesting. The direction and cinematography are acceptable, and the film is well performed. There is a novelty to seeing Perry Mason and Mrs. Robinson run a circus with a killer gorilla – who himself was Ro-Man from “Robot Monster” – but it extends beyond that. Everyone in the cast is professional, with a surprising number of people who’d end up being Oscar winners scattered around (Bancroft apparently wrote the film off in later years, but hubby Mel Brooks allegedly said it was one of his faves).

Burr had plenty of pulp thriller experience by 1954, so he handles himself well, all solid and menacing. On the other hand, if one is feeling sensitive, there’s Lee Marvin as a Blarney cop stereotype. Us Irish-Americans gotta stick together, but the tropes are more disappointing because they add unnecessary screwball levity to an otherwise adult film. It’s an unfortunate holdover from earlier gorilla thrillers, and probably from the general “horror movies aren’t serious” attitude that still plagues us. Alas.

The characters interact with the world properly, both the circus sets and the costumes, which are plot points. It all seems natural to them, and accordingly, it all seems natural to us as audience. It’s very mid-century, if that matters to you. There are a lot of tikis scattered around. There are a responsible number of fire extinguishers around too, which should please OSHA.

“Gorilla at Large” is the kind of film that wants to eat its cake and have it too, and it kind of gets away with it. On the one hand, it wants to be a gritty police drama, and for the first half or so it is. It’s a fairly grownup film noir, appropriately unglamorous, with flawed central characters and pulpy cops who act like jerks. Like all classic noir, it’s fairly moralistic, and everyone pretty much gets what they deserve (there are some Biblical references scattered around, for those who like a little flavoring).

Then there’s the second-ish half of the film, when it becomes a weird circus movie. The climax is pretty goofy, which is fine on its own but feels a little disappointing after the relatively serious detective drama. At least the comedy cops fit more appropriately there, but again, all that ape swinging into the camera feels like a letdown since the film used its gimmicks pretty thoughtfully up until then.

That swinging is because the film was shot in 3D, which shows in the number of things that come directly at the camera: the ape; the teacup rides; Lee Marvin’s crotch. It’s a bit of a mess, and like most cinematic explorations in the third dimension, is probably not worth thinking about too much if you just want to enjoy the film.

Don’t be too put off. There’s still plenty to appreciate about this, one of the last genuine gorilla thrillers. It’s a classic tale of man vs. beast, dressed up in a pulpy new suit, with the film pretty clear about who’s worse. In the end, the only ape that could outsmart Shaughnessy was ourselves.

Honeymoon suite: A critical review of “Bride of the Gorilla” (1951)

We’ve been keeping a secret from you, tonstant weader. Curt Siodmak, a frequently named name in the history of gorilla thriller, has a notable horror cinematic pedigree. He wrote the screenplay for Universal’s “Wolf Man,” which still stands as one of the most thoughtful lycanthropy films ever made. “Bride of the Gorilla,” produced a decade later, was Siodmak’s directorial debut, and it cribs a lot from the lupine film (Siodmak is both director and writer here). That means it feels less like a jungle movie or a haunted house thriller, and more like a supernaturally charged psychological drama. Despite its own pedigree, “Bride” has enough of an identity to make it worthwhile for anyone interested in quasi-lycanthrope cinema, assuming they can get through the first few minutes.

“Bride” begins, like all good media, with a body, specifically the body of a Latin American plantation owner, murdered by his hired man Chavez (Raymond Burr). Chavez promptly marries the newly made widow (Barbara Payton) and takes over the estate. However, either by a native curse or through his own sense of guilt, Chavez apparently transforms into an ape each night and stalks the jungle. As animal mutilations go on the rise, a methodical police chief (Lon Chaney Jr.) and a skeptical country doctor (Tom Conway) begin to investigate, each with their own beliefs and motivations.

From a modern perspective, the sheer high concept of “Bride of the Gorilla,” namely that we can watch Perry Mason turn into an ape and stomp around the jungle, is probably enough to snag some viewers. However, Burr, while not without his own pulp credentials, is supported by a fantastic cast of thriller familiars. Chaney needs no introduction, Conway was a regular of Val Lewton’s RKO horror flicks and Payton had plenty of film noir experience (Siodmak also wrote the screenplay for Lewton’s “I Walked With a Zombie,” so we got that connection too). It’s interesting partly because Chaney and Conway both had lycanthropy experience – Conway is basically playing Dr. Judd from “Cat People” here, and Chaney is not basically playing sad luck Larry Talbot, but there are Internet rumors that he and Burr almost switched parts, so we could have had that film.

“Bride” ain’t quite as classy as “Cat People,” and it begins like a worse film that it evolves to be. There is a large exposition dump – a lot of “this is who I am, and this is who you are” dialogue – and the actors are accordingly stiffer at the start. That said, there are already hints at the more artful film to come. The notion of a Bible thumping plantation owner (briefly played by Paul Cavanagh) deep in the jungle is kind of interesting, and it’s almost a pity the film kills him off. There’s also Gisela Werbisek as a medicine woman looks like the Crypt Keeper, so that’s fun.

Perhaps the movie ultimately seems good because the first moments set the bar kind of low. It still isn’t a perfect film. A lot of the later action boils down to: “Payton sits at home and broods; Burr swings in with his shirt torn and talks about how he’s a gorilla now and loves the jungle and they’re pretty serious; Burr leaves and Payton returns to brooding.” Meanwhile, some inquests happen.

That doesn’t stop the film from sporting some atmospheric sets and impressive costumes considering the budget. There is a sense of decay and desperate striving about everything, which feels appropriate given the overarching themes of old money, old power, guilt and uncomfortable transitions. There are a couple of underlit moments, but it’s mostly well blocked and photographed (the cinematography was by Charles Van Enger, who had been working since the 1920s).

The script also improves, with the dialogue becoming less expository and more abstract. Burr is always intense, or maybe it’s just his eyebrows, but Payton mellows out acts more natural. Conway and Chaney are as fun to watch as ever. There’s also a kind of love triangle, or even a love rhombus, that unfolds: Burr and Payton, natch, with Conway emerging as a suitor, but there’s also the dead man and Burr’s side gal (a fiesty Carol Varga). The jungle itself becomes a kind of paramour, vying for Burr’s affection and possibly winning. It’s all surprisingly mature for a B movie.

By the time it’s over, “Bride of the Gorilla” proves itself to be a minor gem in the midst of the gorilla thriller subgenre, even if it doesn’t technically have a gorilla in it. That’s right folks, the titular ape is mislabeled. It’s not a gorilla, but rather a kind of Central American Sasquatch. In fact, IMDb.com informs us that this might be the first bigfoot movie, which is an entirely different subgenre than gorilla thriller. This blog doesn’t want to weigh in on that just yet; isn’t life complicated enough as it is?

Behold, a pale ape: Critical reviews of “The White Gorilla” and “White Pongo” (1945)

Not only did 1945 mark the end of World War II, but there were not one but two jungle thrillers starring Ray “Crash” Corrigan as as a white-furred gorilla. If that’s not the pinnacle of human achievement, then this blog don’t know what is.

Don’t laugh. It was an achievement, although what was being achieved is still debatable to this day, or it would be if anyone was bothering to debate about these films. There’s probably a reason for that, but we’ll get there.

“The White Gorilla” came out in summer of 1945, so it’s technically the older film. It’s also a much older film because it utilizes a lot of footage from the silent adventure film “Perils of the Jungle.” The wraparound is that Crash Corrigan is Steve, a jungle explorer…guy, who explains to the staff of a forest outpost how he spied on a safari – conveniently staying out of all their footage – while they traveled deeper and deeper into the heart of Africa. At the same time, an albino gorilla (also Crash Corrigan) has been spotted around the outpost, and it’s both upset with the regular black gorillas in the area and very intrigued with the one Caucasian woman in the camp. Because of course it is.

“The White Gorilla” is among the strangest films we’ve ever seen, and we’ve seen some pretty strange ones. There are so many parts to it that are bizarrely inept, one would be hard-pressed to find them anywhere else. For example, it’s the only movie we can think of where the main character is also the narrator and the gorilla he’s fighting. Is this some kind of grand metaphysical statement about how we are both the publicists and villains of our own lives? I mean, it’s not, I know it’s not, but what other explanation do we have?

Then there’s scenes from “Perils of the Jungle” that are awkwardly spliced into this movie. “Perils” is not actually a movie but a silent serial, which originally totaled more than three hours. That no doubt explains why, when it gets crammed into a movie that runs a mere 62 two minutes, it feels like one of the most mindbogglingly plot-driven things ever to involve monkeys. Accordingly, it also feels like one of the most conveniently plotted movies ever, with every shred of action happening just a few feet in front of Corrigan – more specifically, a few feet in front of whatever tree he happens to be hiding behind. And remember, he’s recounting all this to a different cast in another location (“White Gorilla” feels more narrated than most documentaries).

There are also some unusual plot points that emerge from gluing the films together, like how no one thinks it really, really weird that there’s a literal cyclops temple at the heart of the jungle. Or that it is full of tigers. In Africa. Those killer felines are integral to the fate of the cast in the silent film though, so, pay attention to that hilarious thrown away line of dialogue.

There’s some interesting semantics that evolve from trying to figure out who is responsible for this. The story of “The White Gorilla” is credited to Monro Talbot, who IMDb.com informs us is Harry Fraser. Fraser also wrote the script for “Perils of the Jungle” back in 1927, so one might get suspicious when the credits also tell us he directed “White Gorilla” (or rather that “H. L. Fraser directed; no word on why all the name changes). Still, Fraser appears to be working at this time on fairly disposable pictures, so that sounds right; Fraser also worked in silents, and nerds should take note, as he seemingly wrote for both Batman and Captain America when they were problematic serials. The producers are George Merrick (uncredited, but the production company is Fraser and Merrick Pictures, another bit of name juggling) and Louis Weiss (produced the original film but has a seven-year gap between this and his previous works, so is he the in-name-only credit held over from the previous film?).

Eventually – and it feels like forever, because despite its breakneck pace, the film drags – the titular ape dukes it out with a regular black gorilla, and it is one of the goofiest monkey fights we’ve seen so far. This is probably what the film should have been the whole time, but we’ll take what we can get.

“White Pongo” came out a few months later, and it is a better and worse film than “White Gorilla.” It’s because it’s actually a movie, and not some kind of third grade media project gone wrong (for the most part; we’ll get there), and it’s worse because it’s far, far less interesting, arguably as a result of that normalcy.

“White Pongo” concerns a group of science-hunter-explorer types who are doing a river cruise in Africa to find the missing link, which they think will be a mythological white gorilla, as indicated by the posthumous diary of a previous explorer. Once they land at an appropriately abandoned camp to seek their prize, human relationships splinter, and unbeknownst to them the white ape is indeed out there. There’s also a subplot involving a Rhodesian secret agent, but no one cares about that until its convenient to do so.

And therein lies the problem of “White Pongo” The film has a great setup, but the script doesn’t seem to know if the film should be a horror thriller, an adventure thriller or a spy thriller. The actors are uniformly stiff, which doesn’t help push the narrative into any particular direction. That said, one can’t say the same about the look of the film, given there’s some photography that actually resembles a horror film, with clever use of shadows, and shots of the ape sneaking up on people or peering behind trees. It’s a pity that’s not more of the film, taking advantage of the almost Lovecraftian premise and ramping up the tension along the way to turn it into a right proper chiller, especially since the various plots just kind of stop. That includes the ending. Like, one would think the hunt for the missing link between humanity and our prehistoric past would be more profound, but it just kind of…is. We’ll assume the espionage subplot was a product of World War II, and hope that, had the “Pongo” been produced a couple years before or after, maybe it would have been tighter in its scope.

Other than that, there’s not much to discuss. There are no surprises or standouts in the film’s cast or crew, who had varying degrees of thriller experience (although the female lead is Maris Wrixon, who we’ve seen in “The Ape”). My notes tell me there was an obligatory fight between the white gorilla and a black one, but it wasn’t good or goofy enough to leave an impression. There is a native porter named Mumbo Jumbo (Joel Fluellen, who deserves a mention for putting up with the part), which we’ll hope was a placeholder in the script no one remembered to fill, but that’s about as infamous as it gets.

Neither film is much more than an hour, but which should you watch if you only had time for one 1945’s finest white gorilla thrillers? If you’ve been sticking with this blog through this entire outing, you probably have a guess. We find it hard to recommend “White Pongo” because it’s fairly forgettable, but it’s harmless enough as far as creaky old jungle films go. We also find it hard to recommend “The White Gorilla” because it’s a plodding and terrible movie, but we also find it hard to not recommend because, good lord, what else is like that? We’re probably overselling it, but “White Gorilla” is kind of mesmerizing in its droning incompetence. If nothing else, watching it should be a rite of passage of connoisseurs of a certain type of tasteless cinema.

Swinging through the 40s: Critical reviews of “The Strange Case of Doctor Rx” (1942), “Nabonga” (1944) and “Who Killed Doc Robbin” (1948)

Gorilla thrillers are widely accepted by critics as a canary in the cultural coal mine. If you want to see what the hopes and fears of a nation are, if you want to see her progress writ large, look no further than her monkey movies. This explains why the global culture has been artistically, technologically and spiritually dead inside since 1958.

All right, that’s a controversial theory at best, but this blog think it deserves exploration. Or at least it makes an easy excuse for why we’re reviewing three films in a single post. The simple answer is that none of them was either substantive enough for a solo review, but all together they do paint a kind of picture of the uncomfortable transition, if not slow death, of the gorilla thriller through World War II. There just comes a point where a guy in a monkey suit just isn’t scary any more, either through exposure to real gorillas or improved costuming elsewhere.

The earliest, 1942’s “The Strange Case of Doctor Rx,” is probably the best of the bunch (production actually started before the war, which feels notable). It’s an interesting enough setup: A series of career criminals, as soon as they’re acquitted in court, die under mysterious circumstances. A private detective (Patric Knowles) is hired by the man who served as each victim’s lawyer to figure out what’s going on. He starts his investigation, quietly pursued by a mysterious doctor (Lionel Atwill).

There will be a gorilla at some point, we promise.

“Doctor Rx” is a tidy film, up until it’s not. It’s tidy in that it follows a lot of the rules of the somewhat-horror-crime genre without much in the way of innovation, playing it safe and getting what it does as a result. The cast is satisfactory. Most of the leads had some experience with the genre (Knowles was shooting both this and “The Wolf Man” over the course of October 1941 – how’s that for a Halloween?), and Anne Gwynne in particular is pretty fun to watch as a mystery writer foil to Knowles’s detective. The film has them awkwardly marry off screen to make their lover hijinks more palatable, and one wonders what a pre-Code film would have done with the couple.

On the other hand, Mantan Moreland is given a pretty thankless role as the goofy sidekick. He wasn’t exactly the star of the Charlie Chan films, but he got better than this. Nevertheless, the best parts of the film probably emerge when he’s comically paired with fourth Stooge Shemp Howard, who plays a goofy sidekick to the police detective, that detective being a foil to the main detective, and it’s sidekicks and foils all the way down.

Things get understandably less tidy as the film progresses, and the climax is a lot. Things go off the deep end when the gorilla enters, given how it’s paired with brain surgery and weird hoods, for 17 seconds of glory (it’s “Crash” Corigan again, by the way). Then there’s a very aggressive course correct that involves breaking some of Knox’s rules of detective fiction. It’s pretty baffling, and it’s so hand wavy it ensures I will never speak ill of the epilogue to “Psycho” again

Outside of the dodgy script, there’s some solid B movie direction from William Nigh (we know him) and some solid B movie photography from Elwood “Woody” Bredell. It’s probably about as good a send-off to the haunted house gorilla thriller as one could get at the time, even if one didn’t know it.

Two years later, “Nabonga” tried to mix things up by taking the crimey-monkey movie back to the jungle, a space where the gorilla thriller would continue to lurk for another 10-ish years. “Nabonga” is not the only jungle picture that kind of crosses over into gorilla thriller, but it is one of the more boring ones. It starts with a plane crash that strands both a treasure of stolen goods and the daughter of the thief in a patch of African jungle that looks suspiciously like a sound stage. Years later, the daughter has grown into the White Witch (Julie London), a near-mythological figure that haunts the forest with a (seemingly ageless) gorilla that acts like her personal bodyguard (it’s “Crash” Corrigan again, by the way). She’s sought by a treasure hunter (Buster Crabbe) who has a connection to the stolen goods; and he’s covertly followed by some, uh, French Canadian bartenders?

That is a much twistier plot description than “Nabonga” probably deserves. A good rule of thumb with gorilla thrillers is the more stock footage it uses, the less thrilling it will be, and “Nabonga” uses its fair share of stock footage. The film is mostly available to those who want to watch poorly lit night scenes and Crabbe swimming excessively (we know he was in the Olympics, settle down). On the other hand, there are a lot of monkeys in it too.

The direction is unimaginative, and the sound is poor. Cast-wise, Prince Modupe fairs pretty well as the African sidekick to Crabbe’s mighty Great White Hunter, so that leaves those looking for an offensive stereotype to fret about Fifi D’Orsay as the whiny, one-note French femme fatale. You should know where my sympathies lie. The gorilla absorbs a safari’s worth of bullets and still manages to kill a couple of people. By the way, he’s named Samson, not Nabonga, so that doesn’t explain the film’s title. On some posters the word “gorilla” appears afterward in parentheses, like translation note, but the closest this blog could find was the Zulu word “ngiyabonga,” meaning “thank you.” We prefer the Urban Dictionary’s offering.

Another mystery is where the White Witch, despite being isolated in the forest, gets fitted leopard skin suits and so much product for her hair. Crabbe also uses the word “kibitzer,” so if you ever wanted to hear him speak Yiddish, this is your chance. The final line of the film, “I’m sure you’ll be happy,” is spoken over the corpse of a gorilla. It’s not as interesting as it sounds.

Another film that’s probably more interesting in discussion than viewing is 1948’s “Who Killed Doc Robbin,” an altogether minor comedy-horror film that is notable for precisely two reasons: It is the final effort by legendary Little Rascals producer Hal Roach to revive his kids comedies, and it is arguably the final effort at an old dark house gorilla thriller.

Also arguably, the genre had aged enough that someone like Roach could pop in and try to use its tropes to fashion a kids comedy, which is not a sign of cinematic health. The film concerns the apparent murder of Doc Hugo Robbin (George Zucco, who’s here to provide a name), a cantankerous medical doctor who’d been arguing with so many people that there are no shortage of suspects, from his secretary (Virginia Grey) to local inventor Fix-It Dan (Whitford Kane). With the courts confused – no doubt by the impacted judicial system – it’s up to a group of kooky kids (my apologies to posterity, but I won’t be listing them all here) to check out Robbin’s spooky mansion and get to the bottom of his disappearance.

Did I mention that Doc Robbin was apparently murdered in an explosion, and that Fix-It Dan keeps an atomic bomb in his workroom? But don’t worry, he tells the neighborhood kids that they should only go in there when he’s at home. That’s the level of bonkers on display in the script (by a trio of names whose credentials stretch back to silents), which is a pity. The humor is fairly juvenile – a running gag is that the young witnesses say something they realize they shouldn’t have in court, and they slam their hands on their mouths – but part of the charm of Roach’s Little Rascals was how children dealt with adult issues from a child’s perspective. That is not present here.

The humor for this blog started to improve when the kids entered the haunted mansion, and the film became more of a horror-comedy in earnest. It’s also a nice touch that the gorilla (it’s not “Crash” Corrigan this time, tonstant weader, but rather Charles Gemora…again) seems to live in a series of channels underneath the house, like it’s always been there are the building was constructed around it. That’s an idea that could be milked in a few different ways in a few different horror films.

We could spend our time mocking the film on some other notes – what kind of accent does Fix-It Dan actually have? How many haunted houses are there in Culver City? – but it doesn’t matter now. The damage is done. There would never be another somewhat serious Old Dark House gorilla thriller again; “Doc Robbin” is not the reason, but it is the proof.

Simple solutions: Critical reviews of “The Ape” (1940) and “The Ape Man” (1943)

How can you tell that gorilla thrillers were serious business – or at least a viable subgenre of horror? How about that both Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff got caged into doing them, in this case within years of each other? Unfortunately, those years happened to be in the midst of World War II, when horror in general was slouching toward an identity crisis. Still, when two titans of horror cinema beat their chests, one has to listen, even if the titles of their respective offerings are as generic as physically possible.

Technically Lugosi beat Karloff to the genre by at least a year (I’m not counting a couple of jungle films Karloff made in the 1920s, since they don’t seem to be in the adventure genre – also, I haven’t seen them), but the argument could be made that film was a horror-comedy, meaning that the first pure gorilla thriller was Karloff’s 1940 entry “The Ape.” In it, Karloff plays Dr. Adrian, a scientist who isn’t quite mad, just incensed that he can’t cure a young woman of her polio (Maris Wrixon) with his unorthodox theories. Those theories did get him kicked out of the academy, or whatever, so perhaps we shouldn’t be too surprised when, after an escaped gorilla (Ray “Crash” Corrigan) busts into his lab, the good doctor decides to skin the ape, wear its fur and murder people for their spinal fluid.

And that, tonstant weader, is a premise that the film somehow never capitalizes on. As a whole, the film is oddly normal, despite its outrageously illogical plot. If it weren’t for the gorilla skin, you’d be forgiven for thinking the thing was a relatively straightforward medical melodrama. There is a very small town sheriff trying to solve the spinal fluid murder thing, but it’s not even clear whether Karloff-as-ape is supposed to be a reveal. This is the first time this blog has seen a gorilla thriller that used the circus as a location, but that’s the most special thing the script does. It was written by familiar name Curt Siodmak, who unbelievably had the nerve to claim this film was adapted from his previous work on “The House of Mystery.” At the same time, Siodmak is quoted as saying he never read source material when he adapted anything, so he probably couldn’t be bothered to review his own film.

Of course, “House of Mystery” and “The Ape” share a director in William Nigh, who had also previously directed Karloff in a handful of Mr. Wong detective flicks, so maybe any association with the earlier film was an effort to create a familiar stew to lure in mystery/horror viewers. As previously stated, the direction is unremarkable, as is the acting, but the editing stands out as uncomfortable, with a pacing that feels purposefully speedy. You can blame Russell Schoengarth (who also worked on the Wong series, as well as “Werewolf of London”) for that, or else you can blame production company Monogram Pictures for trying to save film stock.

If you want something positive to focus on, there are two names. One is, unsurprisingly, Karloff, who has the most complex part (a relative statement) and performs it with the most sensitivity. Sure, he’s murdering people in an ape suit, but he’s just trying to help. One would need a Karloff to pull that off, and he pulls the best he can. The other name is Corrigan as Nabu the ape, who earns his nickname by crashing into the doctor’s basement laboratory. It might not be OSHA compliant, but it is quite an entrance. Throughout the film, Corrigan moves with an ape’s awkward gait, injecting something purposefully uncomfortable into the film (this won’t be the last time we see Corrigan in an ape suit).

Switching names now, Bela Lugosi doesn’t fare too much better with “The Ape Man,” where he plays a much madder scientist whose rogue experiments have caused him to start devolving into a gorilla. Naturally he needs – you guessed it – spinal fluid to revolve back into Bela Lugosi, so he starts murdering people to get that, much to the interest of some investigative journalist types (Louise Currie and Wallace Ford).

This is another Monogram Picture, and it feels somehow more compact than “The Ape.” I do like how Lugosi is introduced inside a cage with some straw on the ground, like that’s where he sleeps now that he’s a monkey-man, and this is who he is, dad, it’s not a phase. All he’s missing is a bowl with his name on it, and it’d be perfect.

Lugosi is – you also guessed it – the best thing about the film, since he tries to change voice and his movement as he gets deeper into and out of his ape-ness. His emotions also swing all over the place, from blind rage to profound unhappiness to scheming, as one imagines they would if one was turning into an ape. What makes less sense is his hair though, since Lugosi sports the most aggressive bowl cut in cinema. Is he devolving into an ape man or Moe Howard?

The worst thing that happens to Lugosi is he spends a lot of the film doing nothing but moping…and then he leaps into murderous action, like he heard me complaining about it. He racks up a quick body count by stalking foggy streets with a gorilla on a leash, all in the name of spinal fluid. That’s taking advantage of a premise. Too bad it happens so late in the plot.

Other than that, the film is painfully workmanlike, and worse, its workmanlike with a set of wise cracking reporter and creepy spiritualism tropes that would have been a few years out of date at the time (it was directed by William Beaudine – remember that name in conjunction with Lugosi, but we think you’re starting to see how incestuous the gorilla thriller genre is). It’s mostly inoffensive, although it meanders at points. The most blaring flaw is that the copies this blog was able to view all had horrible sound, and given Monogram’s reputation as a no-budget studio, it’s hard to say how much of that can be blamed on lack of care over the years.

In some online spaces, the film is also called “Lock Your Doors” or “They Creep By Night,” both more creative titles. “Lock” appears like it might actually have been the British title at some point, but “Creep” is likely a mistake, since the script is apparently based on a short story with that title (I was not able to track it down). Another mystery is the identity of the actor playing the author, a minor character who is introduced in the first scene exclusively to set up a punchline in the last. Is it actually Barney Sarecky, the film’s writer? If so, he didn’t know how to end it either.

This blog is not sure which of these films is goofier, but it would make for an interesting double feature to figure it out. Both films are in public domain, and neither one is much more than an hour. While there are better ways to spend your time, there are worse ways as well. At the very least, maybe someone can explain what all that spinal fluid’s about.

A stand up ape: A critical review of “The Gorilla” (1939)

One seldom knows what to expect from older titles, specifically the kind that aren’t still talked about in the various circles of media criticism. Some end up being hidden gems while others are notable for all the wrong reasons. This blog is happy to report that 1939’s “The Gorilla” was pleasantly in between and definitely leaning more toward the gem side. It’s another “The Cat and the Canary”/”Old Dark House” knockoff, my favorite genre, this time with tongue firmly in cheek. I wouldn’t put it in my top five horror-comedies or anything, but I had a lot of fun with it, certainly more than I was expecting. It helps that, while the film is obviously a comedy first, it never neglects its horror atmosphere.

“The Gorilla” opens with a barrage of spinning newspapers, the vintage means of getting info across in a hurry. It seems there’s a killer on the loose, the so-called Gorilla, who murders so brutally that authorities aren’t sure if he’s man or ape.

Is that a clip from “King Kong” in the opening montage? Moving on.

The Gorilla announces that his latest victim will be Walter Stevens (Lionel Atwill), a rich old dude who has seen fit to live in a spooky old mansion. Knowing he only has 24 hours to live before his demise, Stevens employs three bumbling detectives (the Ritz Brothers) to safeguard his life and root out the killer. As the mansion fills with unexpected guests – human and not so human – the investigation grows increasingly and comically complex.

I must confess, I don’t know much about the Ritz Brothers. They seem to fit in comfortably with the other comedic brother groups of the era, although less witty and surreal than the brothers Marx, and less chaotic and violent than Howard, Fine and Howard. They’re somewhere in a safer middle, sporting accessible wordplay and mild slapstick. Their interplay here is professional, although their mugging gets to be a bit much sometimes. Still, the film is less than 70 minutes long, so I imagine you’ll be able to put up with it.

It’s worth noting that the Ritz Brothers find an effective foil in Patsy Kelly, who plays a nervous and loud-mouthed maid (Kelly and the Ritz Brothers appeared previously in “Sing, Baby, Sing,” a vehicle for none of them; Wikipedia would have us believe “The Gorilla” was one of her favorite roles, but I’ve not been able to corroborate that). Kelly solos the first scene for a reason, and she delivers some of the film’s best lines. “I bet when they get drunk, snakes see him,” she says of one Ritz brother. Elsewhere, someone tells her a particular ape hates women; “So did Kipling,” she replies. Fun stuff.

There’s also a straight couple (Anita Louise and Edward Norris) at the center of the plot that you can safely ignore. She’s a MacGuffin and he’s a plank of wood. Nothing to see there.

It’s decent enough comedy, not cutting edge even then, but it holds up OK. What really surprises is how effective the film’s thriller dressings are. There’s some thoughtful photography here, some moody lighting there. In one scene, a shadow on a wall cryptically resembles like a wolf head, and it stays cryptic. No one explains it. No one even draws attention to it. It just sinks into the background and adds to the atmosphere. Other films, ones that are more blatantly trying, could learn something from that simple – and audience trusting – move.

There’s no one notable in the crew, just a ton of guys who had been around since silents (no doubt that’s how the film is able to tread water as both comedy and visual atmosphere). However, the film has more thriller cred in its cast than one might think. Most obviously there’s Bela Lugosi as the butler, a role Hollywood kept tossing his way at the time. He’s fine, of course, but the script treats him like little more than a name and a face. You might also recognize Atwill from every other thriller shot between 1933 and 1945. Then there’s veteran villain character actor Joseph Calleia, who looks like he was born to play traitors and achieved late-career notoriety for such a turn in Orson Welles’s “Touch of Evil.” Most surprising is Kelly, who wound up playing Laura-Louise in “Rosemary’s Baby.” It’s a small town.

Outside of the cast, the haunted house set does everything it needs to, from hidden passages to chunky staircases. More importantly, there’s enough stuff going on within the house that the film beats the curse of scripts that degrade to “people wander around the spooky mansion for a while.” It’s usually something comedic, but the skits rarely outstay their welcome.

Even the ending is so twisty and ridiculous that it comes across as a spoof of locked room mysteries. Was that intentional? I’m beginning to think it was. In fact, the film handles its atmosphere so well, I start to wonder things I wouldn’t bother in a less attentive production. Like, there’s an ape named Poe (an expressive Art Miles in a costume and handled by a game Wally Vernon). Is that a “Murders in the Rue Morgue” reference? It’s possible. The film was based on a play, which was a parody of haunted house tropes, so that gives it a kind of literary standard. It had been filmed a couple times before (those two lost gorilla thrillers) perhaps sporting a different twist ending, one that was wisely dropped here.

I don’t know if it’s a spoiler, but the movie answers its own question about whether the Gorilla is a human murderer or an actual gorilla pretty rapidly. The killer leaves a cut-out ransom note in the first five minutes. Gorillas can’t write letters. The film itself eventually points this out. That’s called payoff, kids.

The beast creaks: A critical review of “The Monster Walks” (1932) and “The House of Mystery” (1934)

When watching examples from the same narrow genre back to back to back, one does start to notice, uh, patterns, to put it nicely. Case in point: When this blog watched two pre-Code gorilla thrillers in a row, we saw basically the same spooky mansions, the same hidden passages, the same disparate relatives called together to hear suspicious lawyers recite mysterious wills, the same patriarchal suspect in the same wheelchair, the same hairy hands emerging from the same places hands were not meant to be…

That’s not to say the results are identical. Far from it, when everything feels so similar, perhaps that’s when one can truly test quality. As for whether “The Monsters Walks” or “The House of Mystery” is the better film, that depends in part on what you’re looking for – as well as what your definition of quality happens to be.

“The Monster Walks,” the older of the pair, concerns a family that comes together for that time honored tradition of reading a late mad scientist’s will while his lab ape Yogi (it’s implied to be a gorilla, but it’s really a chimpanzee) screeches in the basement. Yogi might be upset because he wasn’t included in the well. Ah will. You know where this is going. The potential inheritors – including the scientist’s estranged daughter; her doctor fiance; the late man’s crippled brother; and his longsuffering housekeeper – start to turn up dead, strangled by ape-like hands. Is the murderer one of their own?

Of course, it is, because “Monster” suffers from a very low budget, and part of that translates to a limited cast. There are only so many suspects, without a single red herring to up the suspense. There are also only so many locations, with everything confined to a few floors of the same haunted house.

On that front, the film does relatively well. At the beginning, there are frequent cutaways to the ape leaping in the basement, and it’s oddly mesmerizing since he’s typically the most energetic thing on screen. It also establishes the inhuman threat lurking literally beneath the main action. Later in the film, rather than cutaways, it’s the chimp’s screams that bubble up from the basement to remind us he’s never far away. The rest of the set is “tract haunted house, design number six,” but it’s dark and stylish (this was still close to the silent era, after all) and it’s a nice touch that everyone is dressed in floor-length black except the doctor fiance, which isolates him as a non-family member.

The actors are pretty stiff and not very notable, with a couple of mild exceptions. Martha Mattox as the creepy housekeeper definitely has a face, as Norma Desmond might say, and provides a link to “The Cat and the Canary”; Mischa Auer as her son looks suitably haunted (it’s telling that his name often appears on posters despite his being a small role); Willie Best, credited as Sleep n’ Eat, doesn’t get a lot to do as the stereotypical Black chauffeur, but the film doesn’t treat him quite as bad as some reviewers would have you believe.

There isn’t much to say about the crew either. Everything’s fairly workmanlike, although director Frank Strayer and cinematographer Jules Cronjager – as well as actress Vera Reynold, the lead here – would work on the insipid and ape-less “Gorilla Ship” a few months later. More interesting might be the writer, Robert Ellis, because he’s also listed as having adapted the work, although what it’s adapted from is not stated (given its adherence to genre tropes, it might as well have been “Cat and the Canary”; more research required). He’d go on to work on eight Charlie Chan movies, so someone noticed. How intentional was the Freudian discomfort in one of the murders and a late stage paternity reveal (which is also as close as the film gets to exploiting its pre-Code status)? Like the ape in the basement and the costume choice, we’ll never know, but we’ll take what we get.

Ultimately, “The Monsters Walks” sticks close to genre expectations, and its quality depends in part on your expectation of how those expectations are fulfilled. This blog likes that the thunder and lightning effects are about as organically timed as 1932 would allow, but that might not do it for some viewers. We think it’s at least atmospheric background imagery; no matter what you think, at least it’s short.

“The House of Mystery” is also short (both films are about an hour), but by comparison, it’s almost forward-facing in its embrace of the exotic. It opens in “Asia,” which really narrows it down. It looks like it’s supposed to be India, specifically a bar reserved for men with pith helmets, where reprobate archaeologist John Prendergast (Clay Clement, who I guess is the best actor in the film, since he has to play the same character across decades) vows to steal a priceless jewel from the nearby Temple of Kali. At least, that’s what he ends up doing, with the help of a native priestess. Naturally that invokes a curse, one where he’ll be plagued by the screams of invisible monkeys for years to come.

Years (and presumably many monkey screams) later, Prendergast has changed his name to “Pren” to escape the curse, but of course that didn’t work. So he’s decided to give his money to the expedition’s original investors, assuming they are willing to spend a week in his spooky mansion. He wants them to understand the full weight of Kali’s curse, which is now apparently a deadly curse. Do the deaths have anything to do with the stuffed gorillas in Prendergast’s study?

In some ways, “House” is even more of a greatest hits of haunted house tropes, since it also sports bumbling policemen and a séance. However, it does try to mix things up by injecting more locations and more humor into the mix. While this makes “House” the arguably more ambitious picture, those ambitions were the wrong places for expansion in this blog’s opinion. They do little augment the atmosphere of the haunted house format, and the haunted house is all about its atmosphere.

One of those places is the India angle, and it is pretty laughably uninformed. There are, for example, sacred gorillas in the temple of Kali. I ain’t exactly a primatologist, but I don’t think that’s their natural habitat. Also, everyone pronounces it “KAY-law.” And of course the Indian priestess was played by Joyzelle Joyner, a dancer from Alabama. She’s the subject of odd cutaway shots whenever someone else is talking.

Those laughs are unintentional. The intentional ones are supposed to come from a squad of goofy cops who show up mid-flick to try and solve the mystery. They are head-scratchingly dumb, which is the point, except they appear partway through what had been a relatively straight and brooding thriller. It’s uneven to say the least. There’s not even much of a mystery for them to solve. People are dying, for sure, but the solution is somewhere between obvious and improbable. It doesn’t help that it gets explained by a man from Scotland Yard – who does not even attempt an accent – in the last 40 seconds of the film, speaking with mind-numbing authority about events happening somewhere far, far off screen. Scooby-Doo would blush (the script was by Curt Siodmak; remember that name).

Visually, the camera is occasionally unafraid to move, which is a nice change from the stiff cinematography of other cinema at the time, but it’s not frequent enough to make the movie. This is not a pretty film, nor is it as classic and atmospheric in appearance as “Monster.”

In the long run, neither “The Monster Walks” nor “The House of Mystery” are quite bad enough to be good, but “House” is probably closer to that measure. If you want something for the background, which at least looks all right even if it hasn’t aged well, this blog recommends “Monster”; if you want to pay attention, “House” might do it for screwy haunted house completionists. Otherwise, there are better films on the horizon.

Gorilla with the pearl earring: News September 2023

You know what’s been missing from horror films lately? Gorillas.

We’re not talking about the recent spate of King Kong clones or whatever, but real gorillas… and by real, we mean guys in monkey costumes. Maybe some stock footage here and there.. There was a time when the critters were exotic and weird enough–lumbering from the guts of some undeveloped jungle, loping somewhere between humanity and bestiality–to constitute their own subgenre of thriller: the killer gorilla flick.

But then Jane Goodall or the World Wildlife Fund or whatever had to spoil it all by humanizing the durn critters. Not to mention Koko, the sign language ape. It ate that kitten–did you know that?

All right, that last part might be inaccurate, but the gorilla thriller part is not. And to prove it, this blog will spend the next several weeks reviewing some of the most gorilla movies we could find, which is still probably just the tip of the ape-berg. After all, our research uncovered two presumed lost gorilla films–both “Old Dark House” knockoffs called “The Gorilla,” one from 1927 and a remake in 1930–and at least one–the 1932 nautical drama “Gorilla Ship”–that, despite the title, had no gorillas in it. Disappointing.

We’ll start with a pre-Code film or two, and end with our Halloween special review, which we’re already putting together. I have to admit, I was sometimes surprised by the direction things took. I was expecting mostly old dark house flicks, maybe a jungle movie or two, but it gets… it gets strange, tonstant weader. It gets kinda strange. You’ll have to stick around to find out how.

We found something on ice: A critical review of “Deadly Descent: The Abominable Snowman” (2014)

This may surprise you, tonstant weader, but a Syfy Channel flick about ex-army snowboarders trying to find CGI Bigfoot – which was shot in Bulgaria in two weeks and sports TV’s Highlander as its most notable feature – is not that good. “Deadly Descent: The Abominable Snowman” is, nevertheless, an interesting film in its effort to capture a market that would find all of those elements interesting. It’s about as close to a film adaptation of a Mountain Dew commercial as we’re going to get, and for that, this blog salutes it.

Brian Tanner (Chuck Campbell) has gone missing in the Rockies. His sister, Nina Tanner (Lauren O’Neil) wants to find him, so she grabs a bunch of generic soldier guys she knows – some of whom look like they’re still in high school – because having combat experience means you’re qualified for a mountain rescue mission in wintertime I guess? Whatever. They grab their skis and snowboards and head out, goading an alcoholic helicopter pilot (Adrian Paul) to give them a lift. After they start the search, they come to realize that the absent Brian might have been dealing with something more abominable than bad weather.

For the most part, “Deadly Descent” is just kind of average bad rather than a perfect storm of terrible. There are a couple of oddities that might make it notable for someone with a taste for terrible cinema, but even those might feel underwhelming. For example, the whole reason Brian is up in the mountains is because he thinks some yetis killed his dad in the first scene because they come out of their yeti holes and kill every 25 years or something. That’s interesting. But the film doesn’t make anything of it. It doesn’t play it up other than a footnote. And Brian himself is not brooding in an arty way, which might elevate the film. He’s not whiny in an entertaining way, which might make it campy fun. He’s just a guy with a handgun and a set of skis and very poor judgement.

The rest of the script is riddled with cliches. Everyone is a loose-cannon something or other: a loose-cannon helicopter pilot who doesn’t play by the rules, a loose-cannon ex-soldier who hasn’t been the same since he deployed, a loose-cannon snowboarder who doesn’t play by the rules either, but do snowboarders ever? They’re all also the only ones who can pull off whatever the thing that needs to be pulled off is: the only one who can fly that canyon, the only one who can conduct that search, the only one who can stomach that pretentious microbrewery beer. The tension never lets up to a comical degree.

The posturing never lets up either, resulting in some odd moments where characters will bounce between stoic resignation and scream-match agitation, which is about as close to “The Thing”-esque paranoia as we can come. It’s like one of the requirements for living in the mountain village is a casual case of bipolar disorder.

The action certainly lets up though, given that it never really starts. The strategy our heroes employ to fight off the snowmen is as follows: Run into a room. Shut the door. Shout for a while. Fire some bullets into a wall. Run into a new room. Repeat. I swear, there is a sequence in a maybe hunting lodge (complete with fire axe; was that at attempt at aping “The Shining”?) where they are bullied out of a hall into a kitchen, then into a pantry, then into a crawl space, and each time they reassure themselves everything’s going according to plan, except for when it’s not.

It is a little funny, I suppose, that everyone who volunteers for the trip dies, like the film is some kind of broken replica of “The Seventh Seal.”

Outside of that there is photography that passes for quality vacation footage, sets that usually look sort of like what they’re supposed to (except for a mountain gorge that is painfully a sound stage), a passable score that would have sounded better with an orchestra instead of a synthesizer, and gore effects that make it look like everyone is banging up their teeth all the time. I guess that’s what happens when people snowboard too much.

I suppose if I had to mention something positive, Adrian Paul has aged well. He’s a handsome guy, and he plays his part with an appropriate amount of B-movie gravity. Everyone else seems a little less in on the joke except maybe Nicolas Boulton as the rippingly named Rick McCabe, the team’s defacto leader. He’s more frequently a voice actor than movie actor, although he does call a deadly snowfall an “ava-launch,” as if it’s shooting into space.

The film’s titular snowmen are never animated all that well, and their shaggy, shambling movements always seem to be hovering above, rather than interacting with, meatspace. The creature design is at least kind of novel, a sort of cross between a drunk gorilla, an overweight bear and some kind of buck-toothed reptile. I also saw it compared to a hamster, but I never had one as a pet, so I wouldn’t know.

“Deadly Descent: The Abominable Snowman” was originally just called “Deadly Descent.” There’s no word on why the title was tweaked. This blog suspects someone thought it was too generic, so someone thought they should add a generic monster name onto the end in an effort at genero-cancellation. Or else they were afraid no one else would figure out what the creature was either. It was a well placed fear.