The White Gorilla

This film is similar to Al Adamson's Horror of the Blood Monsters or the film They Saved Hitler's Brain in that it uses existing stock footage (presumably found very cheaply but shot years earlier)and then stuck together with new footage shot years later with a completely different cast. Somehow the people in the new film are to interact with the people in the old film. When done seriously (as in these three films) this sort of cheap paste up hatchet job hodge podge mess of a concept can produce amazingly bad results.

Even though the new footage is from the mid 1940's, its obvious the old footage is from a silent movie from the 1920's and does not match. The old footage also seems to have been transferred at the wrong speed in places. The White Gorilla Black Gorilla fight scenes (from the 1945 footage) are hilarious. That is if you do not think too deeply and see this as a visionary prediction of future race riots in the 1960's.

The production values of the old footage (said to be from a Tarzan serial) are really pretty good. However, the 1945 footage is worthy of Ed Wood Jr. and some ideas in these sequences with the Gorillas (and the pretty woman) seem to turn up 13 years later in Ed Wood's The Bride and The Beast. Adrian Weiss was the Producer of both, so there is a connection. And its safe to say fans of Ed Wood films, and serious students of bad films, would want to see movie.

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did have good animal scenes, so it's hard to fault Fraser for finding a way to recycle what would otherwise be badly outdated and unusable silent footage.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.

They must have had some leftover film and an old silent movie. Some Saturday afternoon, everyone got together and put together the bulk of this. Then a couple monkey suits left over from an old Lugosi film, a little narration, a scene in a trading post set, and voilà, you have a dumb movie. It apparently takes place in Africa but there are animals from all over the world. The elephants are mostly Indian elephants and there are tigers and lions. The story is about as lame as you can get in that there is no closure anywhere. Issues are never tied up. The narrator, Crash Corrigan, spends almost the whole movie thrashing around in the weeds, spying on people. He doesn't do anything to help. There is also a silly looking little boy who has dominion over animals and black natives. It goes around and around and never gets anywhere. This is a real bomb.

Fascinatingly awful, this composite of Ray Corrigan (as the gorilla) waylaying Ray Corrigan (as the hero), interspersed with an extraordinary amount of cheesily acted old serial footage, has to be seen to be believed. Sad to say, the hero of the serial is Frank Merrill, a champion gymnast who was still a household name when I was growing up. Mind you, the chubby little jungle boy, riding on the trunk of a real elephant, does a creditable turn, but the rest of the serial players, especially including hero Merrill, heroine Gilbert and heavy Belmour (or Belmore) are strictly from hunger, enacting in a weirdly exaggerated style that went out of fashion around 1910. On the other hand, the animal footage of snapping lions would be still tolerably exciting, but it's ruined by poor presentation at the wrong speed.

As for the talkative framing story of the white gorilla, it will enthrall only Mr Corrigan's keenest fans. Production values can only be described as Poverty Row minus. It's sad to see Francis Ford, Lorraine Miller and an unflatteringly photographed Charles King mixed up, however briefly, in this charade.

"A rare white gorilla is shunned by the rest of the gorillas due to its unique nature and is forced to live a life of solitude. The time alone makes the gorilla hate all other primates and turns it into a murderous monster. A final confrontation between the white gorilla and his former tribe's leader will decide the fate of all of Africa," according to the DVD sleeve's synopsis.

Ray "Crash" Corrigan (as Steve Collins) extensively recalls seeing the 1927 serial "Perils of the Jungle", which had noting to do with "The White Gorilla" in his present form (as Ray Corrigan). To wit, Mr. Corrigan witnesses his "friend" Frank Merrill (as Ed Bradford) in the old silent serial. Mr. Merrill, who also played "Tarzan", must have got a kick out of seeing himself co-starring in a new movie, after almost 20 years of retirement from film. The opening credits promise an "All-Star Cast", but neither Bing Crosby nor Greer Garson appear in this movie. The 1927 footage is better than the newer parts.

* The White Gorilla (1945) Harry L. Fraser ~ Ray Corrigan, Lorraine Miller, Frank Merrill