Bride of the Gorilla (1951)

This is clearly an asinine movie, but I'd concurr with the previous commenters who pointed out that it's not half as bad as it's made out to be.For all its silliness, I found it to be reasonably enjoyable. It's also very short for a movie, so in any event, you won't regret having wasted your time.I watched it for the sake of Payton I have been curious about lately, so in that sense I wasn't disappointed -she looks stunning throughout the movie.

This is a very scary movie. It is scarier then The Shinning and that is not easy to do. This is scarier then A Nightmare on elm street. And that is not easy to do. This is scarier then Friday the 13th V A new beginning and that is not easy to do. This movie has a great story line. It also has great acting. It also has great special effects. 4.4 is underrating it. This is a 9. I do not know why people do like this movie. It is very scary. Scarier then Halloween resurrection could ever be. This is a classic. This is scarier then Thing (1982). And that is not easy to do. See this movie. It is a great movie.

This movie is weird.The whole time you are expecting it to get really good any second, but it never does.It has the look and feel of a good movie but it falls flat.We only see the gorilla as a reflection in the water.Everyone who sees it describes it as a monster that is a mixture of several animals, no one ever even mentions that it's ape-like.Like in many other movies, everyone who lives in the jungle is white,even the local police.That's almost as annoying as pretending it's dark out when it's clearly daylight, which this movie also does.While not actually a good movie, this film has a rare quality for the genre, it's not boring.If you were interested enough to find this review, you won't hate this movie.

Sometimes, when I don't have anything better on hand, I like to put a DVD of a crappy old movie in the player. You know, for kicks. Last night, I was oh-so-honored to watch the 1951 classic Bride of the Gorilla. Not classic enough to be Bride of Frankenstein or Bride of Dracula, and not junky enough to be Bride of the Monster. Oh, and there's no gorilla.The DVD was part of a set, each movie appearing on an episode of Count Gore de Vol's Creature Feature. The good Count introduces the movie, along with some awesomely lowbrow yuks, and then makes a return appearance about halfway through. The jokes are corny, but the delivery is terrific and engaging. Love the Count.Okay. Bride of the Gorilla. It seems plantation worker Barney Chavez (Raymond Burr) has the hots for the wife (Barbara Payton) of the company's owner, Van Gelder (Paul Cavanagh). The two don't see eye to eye, of course, and somehow Chavez gets himself fired. This leads to a confrontation in a moonlit garden right outside the jungle, and Van Gelder is killed. But, unbeknownst to Chavez, the act has been witnessed by a witch/gypsy/stereotypical old lady who knows the dark arts, Al-Long (Gisele Werbisek), who puts a curse on Chavez – that he will see himself as a beast of the jungle and act the part, even though no one else will see any difference.What this means is that Chavez, although married to the luscious Payton, goes running off into the jungle every night, ears tuned to the various animal noises. And that leads to goats being found slaughtered and the locals being panicked. If this sounds a little like The Wolf Man, that's because it's sort of the same thing – except here we don't get to see much of Chavez's transformation at all. In fact, he's a gorilla only in the title. In the movie, he's referred to as a mythical beast that walks on its hind legs. You'll find that it doesn't matter and that you don't care.Lon Chaney Jr., who played The Wolf Man himself a decade earlier, is the (strangely competent) inspector here, and Tom Conway as the kindly local doctor who also has a crush on the new widow. Both, along with Burr and Payton, acquit themselves here. It's not their fault the movie has no production values and almost no script.While looking up this movie on IMDb, I found out a lot about Barbara Payton, whom I'd never heard of before. Payton was quite the bed hopper in her day, but she was apparently more than just some naive farm girl – she had a mean streak, too. At one point she was engaged to Franchot Tone but still proposed to Tom Neal, and that led to a huge brawl between the two actors that landed them both in the hospital. Tone wound up in a coma! She bounced back and forth between Tone and Neal. She had an affair with Bob Hope, of all people, that was broken off only when she demanded more money. She had an affair with Woody Strode during the filming of Bride of the Gorilla, and this affair essentially killed her career, as interracial romance was still quite taboo in the early 1950s. Payton lived a short, unhappy career, dying of organ failure before her 40th birthday. Yeesh.Is Bride of the Gorilla worth your time? Nah, not especially. It's short, though, so not too much time would be wasted. It's still better than Ed Wood's Bride of the Monster, though.