Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla

Okay, once you get past the fact that Mitchell and Petrillo are Dean and Jerry knockoffs, you could do worse than this film. Charlita as Princess Nona is great eye candy, Lugosi does his best with the material he's given, and the production values, music especially (except for the vocals) are better than you'd think for the $50k cost of production. The final glimpses of the characters are a hoot. Written by Tim Ryan, a minor actor in late Charlie Chan films, and husband of Grannie on the Beverly Hillbillies. All in all, WAY better than many late Lugosi cheapies.

If you have ever seen early M&L films like My Friend Irma, You can see that Sammy Pettrillo did a great impression of Jerry Lewis. In the early films Lewis was annoying with his high squeaky voice etc. This was captured perfectly by Sammy. OK so the production value was not great, but the movie was made on a shoe string budget in 9 days. The film is silly but enjoyable and if you watch it for what it is----silly 1950s entertainment you will have fun watching. The movie reminds me of the Abbott and Costello haunted house movies. I think that for a B movie it's silly enough to be funny.

Bela Lugosi puts in a fine performance. Duke Mitchell sings a few songs. The rest is just escapist entertainment.

... and director William Beaudine. Nightclub performers Duke Mitchell (Duke Mitchell) and Sammy Petrillo (Sammy Petrillo) fall out of an airplane and land on a remote tropical island. The natives nurse them back to health, and Duke falls for the chief's daughter Nona (Charlita). Nona, who was educated in the US, introduces Duke and Sammy to the island's resident mad scientist, Dr. Zabor (Bela Lugosi), who is experimenting with transforming apes into monkeys, monkeys into apes, and humans into both.

This one certainly lives down to its reputation. Mitchell and Petrillo, for those who don't know, were an awful nightclub act that was a direct rip-off of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. Petrillo, who looks a lot like the young Lewis and had a gift for vocal mimicry, makes Jerry's comic antics look nuanced and reserved, while Mitchell, a cheeseball crooner, wasn't fit to polish Martin's shoes. Combine their "talents" with a sub-moronic script, no-budget production values, and the directorial flourish of "One Shot" Beaudine, and you have a bad-movie "classic". Seeing the elderly, emaciated Lugosi trying his best in this garbage was both inspiring (he gave it his all even in this trash) and depressing (what's he doing in this trash?). Bela followed this up with his Ed Wood-directed appearances. I can't really say that I would rank this with the more entertaining of the worst movies ever made. I've sat through more excruciating experiences, but this one provided nothing warranting a second viewing. It gets two stars just for Bela being such a trooper.

A B-Movie that has a semi all-star cast. The main characters are played by Duke Mitchell and Sammy Petrillo who bear striking resemblence to Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. But act very idiotic, that they make the real M&L look original! In this so-funny-it's-stupid type of B-Movie they play these entertainers who came across a tropical island called, get this, "Cola-Cola". It's residents are natives who do nothing but say, "mucky-mucky" or something very similar in their so-called 'native language". And Bela Lugosi playing his seemingly best B-Movie role, a mad scientist.

The funniest part was when Bela injects Duke with a serum that turns people into gorillas. It's so cheap-looking that you could tell it was a man in a gorilla costume! I cracked up at how ridiculous that looked. As having lived in Brooklyn for most of my life before moving to Atlanta, and I would like to say that I've heard way better Brooklyn accents than Duke Mitchell's in this movie! You might agree if you've watched this increasingly lame excuse for a comedy!

If you watch this movie, you might wonder what the directors and producers were smoking when they thought up of this stupid excuse for a comedy movie. I'll admit it's fun to watch for B-Movie fans like me. If you want to watch a comedy that involves mad scientists and gorillas, then watch The Three Stooges or Abbott and Costello which ever serves your interest.

Yes, Duke Mitchell and Sammy Petrillo were attempting to ripoff Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. Lewis had to take Petrillo to court to make him stop the impersonation (Interesting to note, Lewis was copying black vaudevillian Jimmy Cross' act himself and becoming famous for it, while Cross' race would hold him back). Mitchell is no Martin, but if I had to choose listening to either one, I would choose Mitchell over Martin's crooning. I thought Mitchell had much more life in his singing.

Other than that, had I been Jerry Lewis and I had seen a guy who looked this much like me, I would have signed him up immediately. Petrillo is so strong at resembling Lewis, they could have been boggling portraying twin brothers in a movie, but as the egotistical rift tore between Martin and Lewis, you could just imagine how Petrillo would have gone at it with Lewis. In some scenes, you can see Petrillo is masking animosity as comedy. From beginning to end the only thing that held my attention was 'That's not Jerry Lewis from the telethons.' If Mitchell had bore a resemblance to Martin, the illusion may have been even more convincing. Muriel Landers was a welcome, a rotund woman who is flirtatious and pursuing while not being threatening, something virtually unseen even today in film and television. Not a film to see for entertainment, but to just study and contemplate what is and isn't popular. Lewis was famous, Petrillo wasn't. See if you can tell the difference.