Bride of the Gorilla (1951) Review

CLAYTON'S CREEPY CINEMA! 

WEEK 1: FREAKS AND FIENDS

Bride of the Gorilla (1951)

Bride of the Gorilla is labelled as a B-movie, but that’s incorrect. It’s closer to a Z-movie. Even armed with the knowledge that this movie is going to be mediocre, nothing can prepare you for how bad it truly is. This is seriously one of the worst excuses for a horror movie I have ever seen.

The film opens with a very poorly lit shot of the jungle. Get used to seeing lots of shadowy jungle scenery, because there isn’t a single shot of a tree or a jungle animal that’s well lit throughout the whole thing, and there are many. A voice over begins with: “This is jungle.” What jungle? Just “Jungle”? Not the Congo Jungle or even the African Jungle? Right from the opening line, this movie sucks. We’re introduced to a plantation owner named Barney, played by Raymond Burr. He wants the wife of one of his employees, but the worker stands between their budding romance. Barney allows the worker to be killed by a snake, thinking it’s the perfect crime, but an old witch sees this, so curses him to become a gorilla at night. It skips ahead in time, and Barney is now married to the widow. The witch sneaks a magic herb into his drink for some reason, and he begins changing into a gorilla. Barney is found lying in the jungle the next day, and the locals suspect a forest demon is on the loose, so they set up a trap to catch and kill it. Barney gets caught in a bear trap—apparently he’s invincible to it though because it doesn’t break or even sprain his ankle—and slowly his wife discovers Barney’s dark secret.

This movie is complete garbage in every aspect. Even though the cast is talented, the material is so poor not even they can spice it up. Burr overacts, and the rest of the acting is just as shoddy. The old witch is creepy, but all the other characters are dull or annoying. The forbidden romance between the two leads is cheesy as hell—the whole film is more like a romance piece than a horror flick, but a really bad one. The whole concept is nearly identical to The Wolf Man, which came out a decade earlier and is ten thousand times better. Nothing about this is scary. The gorilla suit is perhaps the worst I have ever seen in a film, and the filmmakers knew it was bad, because they do everything they can to not show it. Barney’s first transformation isn’t shown, and the gorilla appears for only a few seconds in the first half of the film. In total, the gorilla is on screen for maybe two minutes. The ending is abrupt, predictable, and just as terrible as the beginning and middle.

 

Bride of the Gorilla is an incredibly dull film for its entire short run time. It feels like a poor man’s version of The Wolf Man, and it’s not even worth a laugh or two. Use those precious sixty five minutes of your life to watch something—anything—else, and just take my word on this one.