Bride of the Gorilla (1951) Reviews

• Simian Soap Opera

  BaronBl00d2004-11-20

  Beautiful Barbara Payton is married to a much older man who has little time for her. What is a blonde, buxom girl to do? Well, no secret here that she has an affair with the foreman of her husband's plantation, Raymond Burr, who gives a performance worthwhile yet plays a guy with which you will have virtually no sympathy. Things get nasty in the jungle: Barb's husband is killed and Ray marries her. Yet, a native old woman seeks revenge on Burr by poisoning him so that he will turn into some jungle demon...a big gorilla. On his track is none other than Commissioner Tarro - Lon Chaney Jr. playing a native-turned-educated policeman from the jungle land. Chaney isn't really bad, just unbelievable in his role. Curt Siodmak directed this film and wrote the script. Siodmak was the writer of Universal's classic The Wolfman. In both pictures we have an average man turn into a beast at night. In both pictures we have transformation scenes - grand ones in The Wolfman and pitifully cheap ones in this production. Chaney also is in both films. Siodmak really does a less-than-average job behind the camera. My guess is budgetary constraints really held his hand in check. This is a very cheaply made film. The jungle house looks fine, but jungle scenes look less than real. Siodmak does have a few nicely shot scenes, particularly as the lens becomes a character walking into the jungle. What about the gorilla? No Jack Pierce here. In fact the gorilla maybe makes three appearances and none of them very substantial. The film has a lot of talking, Raymond Burr brooding a lot, and Chaney lecturing us on the "laws of the jungle." Payton does a decent job, but let's face it. She is there for one reason only. And Evelyn Ankers she is not! Character actor Tom Conway rounds out the leads, giving another one of his wooden but amiable performances.

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• Odd, almost surreal, jungle madness

  cinema_universe2001-07-20

  O.K., so this is not a critical classic. In fact, it's oddball, low-budget nonsense. But you have to admit, it's great fun to watch. It's so strange that it forces you to watch it to the very end, just so you can be sure you are not making an error about the preposterous plot you're seeing. It's campy madness and I'de recommend it to anyone interested in the obscure. You will find yourself wondering: How did they ever get Raymond Burr to take such a role?

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• "The jungle's my house, it belongs to me."

  classicsoncall2006-03-18

  I can't bring myself to call this a bad film. Going by the title of course, I was expecting a huge helping of cheese to go with the story, but there was something intriguing to this tale of black magic and mystical animals. You'll have to get past the casting of Raymond Burr as a Spanish plantation worker, but that's really no worse than Warner Oland or Boris Karloff playing Chinese detectives. Lon Chaney, who's had his share of physical transformations is on hand as Police Commissioner Taro, investigating the death of the plantation owner, Klaas Van Gelder (Paul Cavanagh). Brought down by the timely coincidence of Barney Chavez' infatuation with Dina Van Gelder (Barbara Payton) and the appearance of a poisonous snake, Taro believes there's more here than meets the eye. The Van Gelder's servant Al-long (Gisela Werbisek) doesn't go for Barney's indiscretions, and puts her mystical talents to work casting a spell on him. Now here's what makes the film interesting for me. Instead of turning Barney into an ape, her voodoo curse makes him think he's turning into one. That psychological angle is played out throughout the film. As Barney begins to find himself at home in the jungle, his perceptions become ever sharper as he finds other jungle inhabitants afraid of him. The other workers on the Van Gelder plantation fear a "succarat", a legendary demon at work. The one time the film breaks continuity comes near the end when Barney is shown picking up the body of the fainted Dina. It's done in full ape guise, whereas most other scenes referencing his gorilla delusion show him seeing himself as an ape or turning into one. Interestingly, no other person ever saw Barney as a monkey man. Barney manages to leave two damsels in distress by the end of the story. Right up until he marries Dina, he's been having a fling with Mrs. Van Gelder's personal servant Larina (Carol Varga); this guy gets around. I was waiting for Larina to follow up her little temper tantrum when Dina was getting ready to leave the plantation, but nothing ever came of that. For her part, Barbara Payton's talents were accentuated with very close fitting blouses and numerous shots in profile. If you take a minute to watch the opening scene again after viewing the movie, you'll wonder why it was handled that way. With the voice over narration of Lon Chaney, the screen scans the remains of the Van Gelder home in utter destruction, as if it was hit by a bomb. There's really no reason why the demise of Chavez would have resulted in that chaos, especially since the Van Gelder home had a willing buyer when the newlyweds first decided to head to Paris. Perhaps it was the jungle's way of bringing Barney Chavez to justice.

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• Far more "Bride" than "Gorilla"

  JohnHowardReid2006-10-19

  Don't be deceived by the prominent billing of Lon Chaney Jr or the advertising that stresses all the horror in this little yarn. In point of fact, Mr Chaney is confined to a rather small role. He's neither our heroine's husband nor lover. He's not even the gorilla! Mr Chaney stays firmly on the right side of the law for once, while Raymond Burr in his usual confidently cool, surly, self-assured manner enacts the title role opposite the legendary Barbara Payton (here looking extremely attractive, thanks to flattering photography and most seductive—if rather inappropriate by jungle standards—costumes. She speaks her lines with more than adequate conviction too). Tom Conway walks through his part with his usual, blandly smooth impeccability, whilst Carol Varga's eye-catching native girl gives Barbara a fair run in the beauty stakes. Woody Strode is also on hand as a policeman who has a key scene with a black-robed, rather sinister servant-lady. As a director, Mr Siodmak takes great care that every word of the marking-time hokey dialogue he has contrived for his script, be clearly and distinctly heard. His actors are coached to speak carefully and to enunciate with great deliberation so that not one time- consuming cliché be lost. In other respects too, Siodmak's handling has not a great deal to recommend it. Even at 65 minutes, the pacing appears remarkably slow, even tired, listless, dull. Except for a few shots of the camera tracking subjectively through the undergrowth and the jaws of the gorilla flashing momentarily right in front of the lens, Siodmak does little to capture audience interest in his tale. He focuses more of his attention on the bride than the gorilla—which is fine for us Barbara Payton fans, but may leave horror and fantasy devotees feeling rather short-changed. All told, from a horror perspective Bride of the Gorilla turns out as a tame and tedious affair that signally fails to deliver the frights and the terror promised by its script and its advertising. We see only a few flashes of the gorilla (an obvious impersonation by a stuntman in the same well-used monkey suit the costume company has been renting out for twenty years) and there's no impressive special effects work either. Most of the movie perambulates around three or four sets and was obviously lensed on an extremely tight budget. (In fact, it was reportedly shot in ten days). Bride does have one other important factor (aside from Miss Payton), in its favor, however. It was superbly photographed by Charles Van Enger. If you love glossy photography, Bride of the Gorilla is your meat.

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• Not good but not as bad as its reputation suggests.

  jemkat2008-06-21

  In my movie reference books this movie is variously described as a "bomb" or recommended as a suitable choice for inclusion in the 100 worst movies of all time. Nevertheless, I have no qualms in saying that it is not that bad, and was quite happy to sit for 65 minutes (the short running time probably helps) and see it through until the end. To begin with Curt Siodmak's story is interesting enough (as are many of his screen writing efforts), and has more than a touch of complex moral ambiguity. His direction here however has very little flair and tends to be on the perfunctory side. The low budget is a major constraint, and for the most part the film tends to be on the flat side visually, with unimpressive jungle scenes and minimal interior set pieces of the kind typical for a low budget production. The cast (described in one reference book as 4 non-actors) are actually all competent, and Raymond Burr, in fact, is quite good in the part, managing to impart a human dimension to what could have been merely an unsympathetic villain. In fact it is interesting to actually analyse how much of the films dramatic load actually rests on his shoulders.

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