USA, NR, 74 m, 1952
Directed by William Beaudine. Stars Bela Lugosi, Duke Mitchell, Sammy Petrillo, et al.

One of the highpoints of my childhood was to stay up late on Saturday evenings and watch “Creature Feature,” a weekly revival of moldy spook shows put on by my hometown’s NBC affiliate. (Sometimes they rolled a double-bill, but my folks would never tolerate me staying up that late.) Hosted by a chalk-skinned creep in a bloody lab-coat named Dr. Sanguinary, “Creature Feature” introduced budding horror aficionados to all the genre’s classics: The Bride of Frankenstein, Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Wolfman, etc. (It also occasionally served as a showcase for amateur shorts, which were submitted by local viewers and then premiered during the main attraction’s commercial breaks.) But the program’s funding must’ve dried up on account of lackluster ratings because Dr. Sanguinary eventually sealed off his vault of quality cinematic scare-fests and started running Z-grade stinkers on the order of Swamp Woman and The Giant Gila Monster. Of course, by deciding to mine the public domain, the station was spared the expense of having to shell out royalties, but once in a while an almost passable title would slip through: Carnival of Souls or Invisible Woman or Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla. The latter was something of a Poverty Row Martin and Lewis horror spoof, but oddly sans Martin and Lewis. No matter, when I first saw it, the flick’s screwy goings-on made me laugh my sixth-grade butt off. Despite its tone-deaf musical numbers and hokey visual effects, Brooklyn Gorilla proved a grand time for any lad weaned on comic monster mash like Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein and TV’s “Scooby-Doo Mysteries.” So, imagine my delight when I recently came across a newly remastered DVD version at Wal-Mart for only one dollar. That’s right, smart shoppers, one dollar! The makers of Brooklyn Gorilla never got around to filing a copyright, so it’s been available for ages to any distributor crazy enough to add it to their library. The bargain basement label Digiview released the edition I bought, and I must say that it boasts a surprisingly clean, almost shimmering transfer. (Couple that with the disc’s attractive package design and you wonder how these guys manage to make any money.) Mind, there are none of the extras cinephiles have come to demand from the medium (audio commentary courtesy of a B-movie connoisseur like Joe Bob Briggs might’ve been fun), but what the hell do you expect for a lousy buck? (You can always cough up another $20 for Images’s version and treat yourself to a raggedy trailer and a fairly recent interview with star Sammy Petrillo.) Despite my fond memories of Brooklyn Gorilla, I approached a second viewing (trailing the first by almost twenty-five years now) with some trepidation. After all, the movie has invited untold critical paddlings over the years, routinely topping Medvedian lists of Hollywood’s biggest turkeys. And I learned not so long ago (especially after giving Bert I. Gordon’s Earth vs the Spider another looksee) that the movies I enjoyed as a youngster aren’t necessarily going to please my more refined adult palate. This couldn’t be truer of Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla, which is pretty idiotic from start to finish, but certainly not worth the dreadful reputation it has acquired over the years. For all its cheesiness (which, to its credit, the film is very conscious of), Brooklyn Gorilla is required viewing, not just for fans of the great Bela Lugosi, but for any movie buff curious about the only joint screen appearance of those notorious Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis imitators, Duke Mitchell and Sammy Petrillo. 

Working from a script by actor/scribe Tim Ryan (who, under the behest of Realart head Jack Broder, retooled an unproduced piece of fluff entitled “White Woman of the Lost Jungle” to serve as a vehicle for the up-and-coming Mitchell and Petrillo), Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla was filmed in just nine days on a budget of $50,000. The picture doesn’t introduce its titular star for a good half-hour into the proceedings, which means we get to spend more time watching (often in slack-jawed disbelief) Mitchell and Petrillo’s bizarre Martin and Lewis-style shtick. (Jerry Lewis tried to goad the boys into eighty-sixing their act by filing suit, insisting the courts should order all copies of Brooklyn Gorilla destroyed.) The two play USO performers (Duke is the smooth crooner; Sammy, the spastic clown) en route to Guam, but they somehow fall out of their airplane and land on the remote jungle island of Cola Cola. When the natives stumble upon our heroes, they’re lying unconscious in the bushes and sporting long ZZ Top-style beards. (How long were these guys out, for God’s sake?) After Duke and Sammy finally come to, the islanders address them in what has to be one of the worst “ooga booga” dialects I’ve ever heard in a movie. The “additional dialogue” credit given to Edmond Seward and Leo “Ukie” Sherin may suggest that they’re responsible for Cola Cola’s nonsensical tongue, but it sounds like the actors are just making it up as they go along. Only Nona (played by Charlita), the beautiful daughter of Chief Rakos (Al Kikume), can speak English (she was educated in the States), but she’s pretty ignorant to western dress, assuming that the designer’s label inside one of the fellow’s jackets indicates the name of the wearer. (Contemporary moviegoers might be reminded of the Calvin Klein gag in Back to the Future.) When Nona’s not serving as her pappy’s translator, she’s assisting Dr. Zabor (Bela Lugosi), the island’s resident mad scientist and, according to a very white-looking Nona, “the only white man on the island.” Dr. Zabor’s laboratory (located inexplicably inside a gothic manor that hovers above Cola Cola’s grass huts) is brimming with evolutionary experiments aimed at identifying the link between humans and primates. Dr. Zabor longs for Nona, but when he discovers that she and Duke have eyes for one another, he cock-blocks his rival by injecting him with an experimental devolution serum, transforming the debonair lounge lizard into a bulging, graceless gorilla! One of the movie’s biggest laughs follows when Duke, now costumed in a moth-eaten monkey suit, grunts out a song to help identify himself to Sammy after a round of charades proves too demanding for his dull-witted partner. Things get even more, er, hairy when another gorilla creeps into the manor, confusing Sammy as to which one is actually Duke. (The second ape is played by Steve Calvert, who probably lucked into this gig after buying stuntman Ray “Crash” Corrigan’s reserve of gorilla outfits in 1948.) With two over-sized simians running amuck in Zabor’s castle, you’d expect all sorts of hilarity to ensue, but, alas, not much comes it. Instead, the monkey business we’re subjected to consists of Sammy being chased all around the island by Nona’s randy, overweight sister, Salome. (The grossed-out Sammy keeps referring to her as “Salami.” Hah.) 

Directed by B-movie auteur William “One-Shot” Beaudine (he earned his nickname by rarely calling for a second take), Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla moves along at a pleasant clip. (And Charles Van Enger’s cinematography gives it a snazzier look than it deserves.) Beaudine isn’t a square: he jokily exploits the artificiality of the jungle scenery, occasionally splicing in stock footage to hilarious effect. The acting, for the most part, is also solid. Lugosi, despite his advancing years, seems to be having a lot of fun clowning on his status as a horror movie icon. (Duke and Sammy even comment on Dr. Zabor’s striking resemblance to a certain count in one particularly snappy exchange.) He may be slumming here, but Lugosi—the consummate professional—looks as poised as ever. (He’s conspicuously mindful, though, not to expose too much of his blackening choppers when flashing that mischievous grin.) Still, this picture marked the beginning of Lugosi’s downward career spiral, paving the way for future collaborations with the infamous Ed Wood on such stink-bombs as Glen or Glenda? and Plan Nine from Outer Space.  

Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla offers something for everyone: suspense, romance, science-fiction, slapstick and musical numbers. (Whoops! I forgot to mention the curvaceous island babes.) I, for one, could’ve stood another helping of Mitchell’s silky vocal stylings. While he’s no Dino, Mitchell brings a bit of panache to the otherwise colorless ditty “’Deed I Do.” (I’ll never understand, though, why he wears his trousers hiked up to his nipples.) But the real reason to see this oddity is, of course, Sammy Petrillo. His impersonation of Lewis is so spot-on that it borders on the uncanny. Not only does he nail Lewis’s zany mannerisms, he even manages to look like Lewis. But Lewis was never this lovable, which one of Dr. Zabor’s lab rats, a chimp named Ramona (the great Cheetah in an uncredited performance), can certainly attest to. In one of the movie’s more effective gags, Ramona, clearly smitten with the Neanderthal Sammy, drags him into her cage, locks it and throws away the key. 

November 15, 2004

Ó Copyright 2007 by Edward Larsen Terkelsen. All rights reserved.