The White Gorilla (1945)

I hadn't read anything about The White Gorilla before I started watching it so it took me a while to realize most of it was an old silent film.Ah but what a silent film it was, ginormous flocks, nay herds of male lions tearing up the landscape and chimps and orangutans and tigers all mixed and stirred to give you a world view of raw nature of the 1920s. I thought the narration was pleasant although I did notice the one point where he just stopped speaking for no reason at all.Was it a bad movie? Maybe but it made me smile and kept me wanting to know what would happen next. And I found the sight of those droves of terrifically excited male lions trying to eat everybody in sight considerably more chilling than similar scenes in many "better" films.Finally I LOVED the fact that due to the impossibility of actually merging the two films at the end the fate of the silent film cast was left up in the air as 'missing but there were a lot of bones laying around where they were last seen' -- outstanding!Yep I'll watch this one again.

This film begins in a very weird jungle. It is probably the loudest one in the history of film, as many, many different animals constantly scream in the background--sounding like a group of people are running around the zoo throwing rocks at the animals simultaneously!! You also may notice that the animals you see in stock footage are from the US, Africa AND Asia. Additionally, most of the clips are clearly from a silent movie series (PERILS OF THE JUNGLE) as these segments run way too fast (silent films run at 16-22 frames per second and sound at 24--so silent films always look a bit too fast when played on modern projectors). What a totally bizarre jungle and it's amazing that the film makers took so little care in these scenes.As for our "hero", Ray Corrigan, he narrates most of the film in a very flat tone. Additionally, when he recounts to his friends his exploits, he mostly just stands around as all the others in his party are killed or abducted. Some hero! Overall, there really isn't a film--just lots of old clips, a little irrelevant new material and some guy running about in a white gorilla suit! Frankly, it's boring and pointless--and not even entertaining--even for bad film buffs. A total bomb from start to finish.

Harry L. Fraser, the writer and one of the producers of this movie, was also the writer of Perils of the Jungle, the 1927 serial from which he took the archive footage. The serial did have good animal scenes, so it's hard to fault Fraser for finding a way to recycle what would otherwise be badly outdated and unusable silent footage. The problem, as every other commentator has noted, is the impossibility of integrating the two films smoothly, and the terrible plot -- if there is a plot -- of the new footage.Frank Merrill, the hero of the 1927 serial, did play Tarzan in two later movies, Tarzan the Mighty and Tarzan the Tiger, but he was playing a different and unrelated character in Perils of the Jungle.Crash Corrigan, the hero of the new wrap-around movie, made a specialty of playing gorillas, and he often played other roles in the movies in which he donned the gorilla suit, but I believe this may be the only movie in which his human character directly confronts his animal character.

The White Gorilla is a jungle movie shot in 1945 but it looks like it was made in the early thirties and often reminded me of the much older silent pictures. The reason for this is that this movie used stock footage that was available from films going back to the silent picture days. The main problem with this is that it just doesn't fit it well. Some of the old footage is put in at the wrong times. There are many times that the speed isn't even right. When watching this movie, it is very obvious that something is amiss here. This stock footage that was used just plain looks too old and out of place. It is a great detraction from what little plot there is to the movie. The stock footage that was used makes this look almost like a comedy. There just isn't too much going for this film. Being a low budget film is one thing but there just wasn't enough effort made in making this movie.