Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla (1952)

OK gang. Let's make a musical where we call in the great Bela Lugosi. Have him play a slightly cracked mad scientist (he must have cried himself to sleep at night). And bring in a couple guys doing the Martin and Lewis act. Actually, the Lewis look alike is quite good at what he does. This is an excuse for him to pretend to be Jerry Lewis and to dance around and cavort. The Dean guy is worthless. Lugosi does some good mugging and projects that great accent. I wonder if there was a point where he would have like to to have toned it down, but Dracula was stuck in the minds of every producer. If you don't take this too seriously, there are some decent bits.

Not copyright by Jack Broder Productions, Inc. U.S. release through Realart Pictures: 8 October 1952. New York opening: 4 September 1952. Never theatrically released in Australia. 74 minutes. SYNOPSIS: A good-natured spoof of jungle pictures and horror movies, starring Bela Lugosi as a mad scientist turning men into monkeys on a remote Pacific Island.NOTES: Negative cost: $50,000. Movie debut of Sammy Petrillo. His partner, Duke Mitchell had a small part in the Martin and Lewis movie, Sailor Beware (1952).COMMENT: Here's a movie, scripted and played with all tongues firmly in their cheeks by a cast headed by Bela Lugosi, the lovely Charlita (love her sarongs!) and a couple of not-so-talented Martin and Lewis imitators. Despite the short shooting schedule (two weeks) and the minimal negative cost ($50,000, the movie's production values actually look quite lush, thanks to William Beaudine's surprisingly skillful direction and Charles Van Enger's attractive and really stand-out cinematography. AVAILABLE on DVD through Alpha. Quality rating: Ten out of ten.

Unfortunately, it's not a campy movie, instead it's plain bad. And here I thought nothing could get stupider than Jerry Lewis; that is, until I got a load of Petrillo. Good thing the wife moved throwable things away from my chair. That way, my TV survived his whiny idiocy. Between him and the equally skinny Duke Mitchell, I kept hoping somebody would feed them. Actually, for a cheap-jack production, it's pretty well mounted. Looks like every potted palm in Hollywood was used for the jungle scenes. Even better, none fell over. And get a load of half-clad Charlita who almost makes the mess worth it. (I think I'm on my way to the South Seas.) Then too, the acting's not that bad, despite the central idiot. Note too that Lugosi has little more to do than stand around with an occasional line. An easy payday for an old trouper. Of course, the real star is Ramona, who's a lot more entertaining than the rest. I hope they paid her double in bananas or whatever. Anyway, I'm flummoxed by the ending, especially by what happens to Petrillo. It comes out of the blue and is totally out of sync with the movie's remainder, dream or no. But what the heck. Too bad the producers didn't scrap the 10-cent Martin and Lewis. Then the movie would have been just bad, instead of annoyingly bad.

The logo at the beginning of 1952's "Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla" reveals that this is a "Realart Picture," and while I would certainly hesitate to call this film an instance of "real art," I can now attest that it IS real fun. In it, the poor man's Martin & Lewis, Duke Mitchell and Sammy Petrillo, playing themselves, accidentally fall out of an airplane and land on the Pacific island of Cola-Cola, where they are rescued by friendly natives. The chief's daughter, Nona (played by a pretty actress called only Charlita), falls for the charms of good-looking crooner Duke, while her 200-lb. sister, Saloma (amusingly portrayed by Muriel Landers), takes a hot-blooded fancy for Sammy. Dr. Zabor, the only other "white man" on the island, and played by you know who, soon decides that Duke is the perfect test subject for his recent devolution experiments.... Anyway, I must admit how easily this silly confection went down with me. The goofball humor is so very stoopid that it strangely becomes quite funny, and it really is remarkable how much Petrillo looks and sounds like the 1950s' Jerry Lewis. (No wonder Jerry felt compelled to slap a cease-and-desist order on him!) Bela, a graduate of the Budapest Academy of Theatrical Arts, plays his role absolutely straight here and maintains his dignity; he may have been addicted to painkillers at the time, but this particular film is surprisingly painless! A twist ending at the tail end of the picture does much to mitigate some of the silliness and illogic that had come before, and even becomes very P.C. in its treatment of the overweight Saloma. Throw in a couple of nice songs, some cute antics from Ramona the Chimp (aka Cheetah), and a cool man-into-ape transformation and you've got yourself a perfectly acceptable entertainment, finely presented on this crisp-looking Image DVD. To my delighted surprise, I DO recommend this zany picture to both young and old.