Bride of the Gorilla

Release: 1951
Director: Curt Siodmak
Production Company: Jack Broder Productions Inc.

 Notable Cast:

 Lon Chaney Jr. as Police Commissioner Taro
Raymond Burr as Barney Chavez
Tom Conway as Dr. Viet
Paul Cavanagh as Klaas Van Gelder

 Plot: Barney Chavez murders his boss to take his wife. The crime is witnessed by a local witch who then curses him. At night suddenly Barney starts becoming a gorilla.

 The Monster: So read below because the answer here is man. MAN!!!! How's that for a Twilight Zone kind of swerve for this one. There is a guy in a gorilla guy a couple of times but as we find out, there never was any gorilla. It was man all along...

 Thoughts: This is only the 10th movie I have reviewed for this blog so I don't have any sort of formalized process for how I approach a review yet. To this point I have tried to go for a mix of movies I have seen and movies I am less familiar with. I have been trying really hard to just not go down a list of my favorite movies or favorite MST3K episodes. I went into this movie completely blind. I saw the cover art on Amazon and read the description and that Raymond Burr and Lon Caney Jr. were in it. I thought good or bad, it was worth a try for the blog.

This movie was a real pleasant surprise. As I said, I read the description and kind of had a visualization of how I thought the movie would play out over the next hour of my life. I thought for sure I was in for a guy in a gorilla suit causing some mayhem and some good acting from Chaney and Burr.

And it was all true! Just not how I imagined. Where this movie sets itself apart in concept and execution is Raymond Burr's character doesn't get cursed, he gets drugged by a plant and is hallucinating his transformations into the ape. You only ever see the ape through the eyes of Barney and there are some cool first person scenes that come from that.

With that said, there aren't great special effects The gorilla suit is obviously a gorilla suit. Some of the jungle scenes are a little hard to see. But these are fairly small complaints and even things like the gorilla suit rarely appear.

I usually do a notable cast for these movies. I usually list people that will come up in other films of this area. I mention this because I left Barbara Payton off of the list for this film. She had a fairly brief acting career but it very notable for her personal life and struggles. I have linked to her Wikipedia page if you are curious about her.

 Verdict: I had no expectations of this film and really had a good time with it. ***1/2 as this is a must watch movie from the era.

Where to Watch:

Amazon Prime Streaming


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