BRIDE OF THE GORILLA (1951)
Tagline: A Blonde Beauty and a Savage Beast... alone in the Jungle!
(Horror, Suspense, Freaking Out) [PG]
Note: This movie was never given an MPAA rating, but I feel it would have been a PG.
Good afternoon, Mrs. Van Gelder. It's been an unpleasant day. Your husband pays me to run his plantation, not to be killed by the heat.
In this one, we are taken to the South American jungle where a plantation manager named Barney Chavez kills his wealthy elderly employer to run off with his wife. However, Barney starts having nightly terrors of becoming a deadly gorilla after being cursed by a native witch who saw the murder. Will Barney break the curse, or has he doomed the object of his affection to be…THE BRIDE OF THE GORILLA?
If there is one thing I have learned about movies in the 40s and ’50s is that there was a definite surplus of movies that somehow involved gorillas. Having said that, the gorilla in this movie only appears very briefly and definitely isn’t the focus of the film. The central theme is more just trying to focus on not trying to take anyone else’s wife and definitely don’t murder anyone. Seems like pretty basic stuff, but our main character played by Raymond Burr (famous for GODZILLA: KING OF THE MONSTERS) is doing both those things and even more stupid stuff in the same film.
Probably the biggest draw for many at the time was Barbara Peyton who plays Dina Van Gelder. Sadly, her life ended at the age of 39 due to over drinking which caused her liver to fail. I won’t go into the rest of her personal backstory, but it’s one of the more tragic ones of the era. In this role, she is just okay, but it might be her most well-known. We also get Lon Chaney Jr. (best known for THE WOLFMAN) who was thought to be on the downside of his career when this came out, but he stayed in Hollywood for another 20 years. Chaney’s performance was good but far from his best. I did think Raymond Burr did well as Barney Chavez, but the character is my least favorite of all the roles of his that I am aware of. Tom Conway is actually pretty solid as Dr. Viet but has some pretty bad lines. Conway is also known for 1956’s THE SHE-CREATURE.
I guess this movie was shot in 7 days and it shows production and editing-wise, but the story is pretty interesting. It almost plays out like an episode of THE TWILIGHT ZONE rather than a movie. There were also a lot of on-set issues and the movie itself has a terrible reputation (even the score is pretty bad). Having said all that, it’s very watchable and as a bit of a departure from the more sci-fi-related films I loved from the 50s, this one is oddly enjoyable if only for the reason that it keeps you intrigued to the final scene. Somewhere in this odd story, we get a sense of moral justice delivered in an atmospheric package wrapped in a memorable cautionary tale.
This movie is a 4 out of 7, with the idea, that it’s probably worth at least a few watches.
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