USA, NR, 70 m, 1951
Directed by Curt Siodmak. Stars Raymond Burr, Barbara Payton, Lon Chaney, Jr., et al.

Knowing that it needed something akin to the second Death Star’s energy shield to repel all of its detractors’ virulent raspberries, I was reticent about taking on The Bride of the Gorilla. Yes, I’m usually indifferent to what other moviegoers cheer and jeer, but I really didn’t think I could hack another twopenny-halfpenny jungle flick about a curvy blonde who gets nabbed from a team of fortune hunters by a love-struck simian. I’m glad I pushed forward, though, because The Bride doesn’t tell that kind of story. It’s a sleazy mishmash of The Wolf Man and Joseph Conrad’s The Heart of Darkness, and I’m not the least bit ashamed to tell you that it sucked me right in. Never mind its dumb title; The Bride of the Gorilla is a rock-solid B-picture. This doesn’t mean, of course, that I’m calling for it to be reclassified as some sort of movie milestone, but its spirited cast, taut pacing and unexpectedly thought-provoking subtext make it deserving of at least a polite golf clap. All the same, I’m not going to hold my breath; both reviewers and audiences have dumped on The Bride for so long that its reputation is probably beyond repair. Harry and Michael Medved goofed on it pitilessly in their (often riotous) book The Golden Turkey Awards, and web-surfers have since joined the brothers in their mocking by slapping the unfortunate flick with a paltry 3.7 rating on the Internet Movie Database. How can something as baldly ludicrous as The Bride shoot over the heads of so many people? I dunno, but it’s their loss.  

The Bride of the Gorilla somehow escaped from the nightmares of Curt Siodmak, who also penned the 1941 classic The Wolf Man. There are many glaring similarities, but The Bride looks like it was made for one-tenth of its forerunner’s budget. Still, it has a momentum that keeps you a little twitchy, and Siodmak’s dialogue has a kind of screwy lyricism that we get all too rarely from this genre. Though he co-directed the quasi-documentary Menschen am Sonntag (aka People on Sunday) in his native Germany some twenty years earlier, The Bride represents Siodmak’s first time flying solo as a director, and the result is not a half-bad freshman effort. The acting is quite good, too, particularly Raymond Burr, who has the same kind of raw animal magnetism here that Robert Mitchum had in the original Cape Fear. Burr plays Barney Chavez, the foreman of a South American rubber plantation owned by the German industrialist Dr. Klaas Van Gelder (Paul Cavanagh). Barney, a scummy opportunist, sets his sights on the boss’s trophy wife, Dina (Barbara Payton in grand femme fatale mode), whose unhappiness with her hubby’s lack of attention has made her ripe for the plucking. (Her mating call—a teasing mambo—drives the hands crazy.) Barney keeps a native girl, Larina (Carol Varga), on the side, but he coldly blows her off when his flirtatious games with Dina turn more ardent. (That’s too bad because Karina is quite a dish and we long to see more of her exquisite gams.) When Dina’s cuckolded husband finally has it out with Barney over the budding affair, Barney knocks him on his can and then moseys away when a poisonous snake conveniently shows up to finish the job. With Van Gelder now out of the way, Barney plans to marry Nina and seize control of her new inheritance. But a crusty old witch, Al-long (Gisela Werbisek, who’s practically interchangeable with The Wolf Man’s Maria Ouspenskaya), was watching from the bushes when Van Gelder checked out and has been quietly plotting Barney’s comeuppance. At a gathering proceeding Barney and Nina’s nuptials, Al-long steps up a voodoo curse she put on the detestable bridegroom by sneaking the juice from something called “the plant of evil” into his cocktail. Later, as Barney signs off on his marriage license, he notices that his hand is getting kinda hairy, so he flees the room, leaving his guests to scratch their heads. Was the strange metamorphosis just a figment of Barney’s imagination?  

That night, instead of consummating his marriage vows, Barney slips into the jungle to cavort with the critters. As he traipses through the plastic foliage, a tracking shot that assumes Barney’s POV directs us to a pond that reflects the image of actor Steve Calvert in a gorilla suit. The next morning, Barney awakens still in the jungle, but the fact that he’s also still fully clothed suggests that his transformation into a noticeably undressed ape was the stuff of a drug-induced delusion after all. What confuses the matter, though, is that yarns about a mysterious beast that lurks in the rubber trees have been going around the village for years, and they take on a new life after Barney begins his midnight strolls. But the locals’ varying descriptions of the fabled monster to the police commissioner, Taro (Lon Chaney), don’t match up with what we’ve actually seen. Of course, gorillas aren’t indigenous to South America, so perhaps the natives can only make sense out of the sight of one by ascribing it traits that are consistent with their environment. Or maybe they’ve just been running across some of Al-long’s other victims. (God only knows how many chauvinist turds she’s doomed to haunt the jungle in the form of one critter or another.) All this makes me suspect that a more ambitious creature was dreamed up for The Bride, but a lack of funds forced the filmmakers to dust off an old ape outfit and pile on the ambiguities. (One is reminded of Phil Tucker’s financial pickle as he set out to make Robot Monster.) Thankfully, you don’t see much of the titular gorilla—just an odd shot here and there. There is one shot that sticks in the mind: Barney looks into a mirror and then smashes the likeness of the ape that looks back. That moment effectively distills The Bride’s essence, which you probably don’t need me to define.   

Though he suspects Barney’s involvement in Van Gelder’s murder, Taro doesn’t have any hard evidence to nail him, but he’s comforted knowing that the jungle has a habit of doling out its own brand of justice. Taro is split between his formal education in the States and his jungle upbringing, and we’re subjected to some rather tedious scenes where he waxes philosophical to the village doctor (Tom Conway) about the duality of man. Chaney (forever tied to Larry Talbot in The Wolf Man) is probably miscast here, but his presence gives interest to what is otherwise a fairly inconsequential role. He also serves as the film’s narrator, kicking off the action with a real howler: “This is jungle. Lush, green, alive with incredible growth. As young as day, as old as time.” Well, the jungle pictured here doesn’t warrant that kind of poetic wistfulness, but it doesn’t look all that hokey for having been tossed together on a studio’s back lot. Unfortunately, we’re incessantly reminded of its artificiality by the filmmakers’ liberal use of stock footage from what looks like early wildlife documentaries. The inserted trimmings are in largely poor condition, and you can’t always tell where the featured beasties (such as panthers, snakes and gators) are supposed to be in relation to the action. The Bride of the Gorilla undermines our ability to suspend disbelief whenever it cuts to the real world.

May 3, 2005 

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