La Fiancée de la jungle

This film starts out wonderfully, with a great, hokey premise; silly dialogue, a cute newlywed couple, and a guy in a gorilla suit. In fact, after the first 15-min or so, "Bride and the Beast" began to approach classic, almost essential, 1950's B-film territory. However, the story takes a sudden and unwelcome turn when a seemingly innocuous subplot, which involves 2 Indian tigers escaping from captivity and entering into a killing spree upon several unseen African villages, balloons out-of-control and cannibalizes the main storyline for a full 30-minutes, wherein we are given seemingly endless stock footage of these tigers, both in the wild and on various studio "jungle" sets. (Admitingly, a lot of this stock footage is excellent, but it was way overdone). It isn't until the final 10-minutes that the story returns to the original plot line, which involves the newlywed couple coming-to-grips with the wife's past life a powerful gorilla queen, de facto overlord of the jungle and her subconscious desire to return to the wild, as well as her instinctual attraction to her husband's pet gorilla. The overall story is sort of a childish metaphor about the animalistic nature of man. In the end, we're basically presented with a question: "who is the real beast, man or nature?" Pretty decent stuff, really, considering the pedigree. In fact, this is probably Ed Wood's third best screenplay, IMO, with the top spots reserved for the delicious and untouchable "Orgy of the Dead," and the slightly lesser, but still wholly classic "Bride of the Monster." I like "Bride and the Beast," but its ultimately too average to recommend to anyone but Wood's completists. Man, this could have been a real classic, though. Oh well...moving on. ---|--- Reviews by Flak Magnet

"The Bride and the Beast" (1958 - 73 minutes), photographed originally in black & white, is a supernatural drama of terror and scientific fiction produced and directed by Adrian Weiss. The script is of the fantastic Edward D. Wood Jr, the known Ed Wood, director, writer, producer and actor, also called "the worst movie maker of all time" for carrying through cheap films of dubious quality and with amateur actors. The incredible thing is that, after his death, all his work had become "cult", turning him into one of the most acclaimed accomplishing of the sort. The film tells the history of Dan Fuller, a young and famous hunter and his pretty bride, Laura, that is strangely seduced by a gorilla. Dan keeps in captivity, in the basement of his house, an enormous gorilla that he brought from Africa. In the night of his honeymoon, the dangerous beast becomes very aggressive, escapes from its cage and goes up to the room to meet the young woman. Something very strange happens between the beauty and the beast and Dan has to kill the gorilla. From there, Laura starts to have terrible nightmares, making her husband calls a psychiatrist. When the doctor hypnotize Laura, he discovers that she was a gorilla in one of hers last life's. Dan has set appointments to a new safari in Africa and takes his wife with him. Nearest the wild animals, the couple will live moments of great tension when Laura is kidnapped by one gorilla. A classic trash movie.

OK, don't laugh...I recommend this film to future actresses, directors and just plain viewers that want a good (unusual) time.

Bottom line, the movie is a stinker, like so many things Ed Wood was connected with in his life. The whole middle of the film uses terrible stock footage that has little to do with the rest of the film. Fully 30-45 minutes of the middle of the film could have been left out.

So, let's discuss the first 15-20 minutes and the last 10 minutes of the film--without giving away too much.

First of all, one thing different about this film from most Ed Wood films is that the two leads are real actors. Lance Fuller had done many movies with big names and Charlotte Austin had small roles in films such as "How to Marry a Millionaire" where she rubbed shoulders with the likes of Monroe, Bacall and Grable. And--looks-wise--Austin held her own. She was a very sophisticated and attractive looking girl.

But what makes this whole film work--for 25 minutes or so--is the fact that Austin plays the part straight. You really believe this beautiful, elegant model has a thing for gorillas.

The part that every budding actress or director should really see, though, is Austin's close-up, facials as she looks with growing lust at 'the beast.'

I'm a film buff myself, but I have NEVER seen any actress be able to convey so much with a few close ups as this woman did in the short sequence of her first gaze on the ape.

I know, I know...it sounds crazy, but you have to view it. Nothing in erotic films--for all the modern explicitness--touches what this film actress does with a few close ups.

It's a shame Miss Austin left movies shortly thereafter...she certainly had the looks and ability to have gone places in movies.

Check it out and see if you agree!

"The Bride and the Beast" starts off well with lots of potential that this could be a pretty good movie. The plot revolves around a man, his newlywed wife, and her strange connection with gorillas. Then the couple goes to Africa and the movie unravels. Forget all about the first part of the movie. Put it on the shelf for a while because you won't need to remember it again until you get to the end. You next get lots of terrible stock footage of African animals and the plot takes a side road as the husband hunts down two tigers. It's almost as though it turned into a Safari movie and a boring one at that. As you watch the different animals, the background scenery changes dramatically from shot to shot. The scenes, especially of the animals are shot in all different kinds of terrain. Very poorly done. At this point there is barely a string connecting the beginning of the movie to the middle. This goes on for quite a while. Nearing the end of the movie, they drop the safari and hunting and go back to the man, woman, gorilla plot to end the movie. It's too bad because this one had a chance if they just stuck with the original plot throughout the film. The Bride and the Beast" is disjointed and boring, not recommended.

Just married, big game hunter Dan Fuller (Lance Fuller) and his drop-dead-gorgeous bride Laura (Charlotte Austin) drive to Dan's home to do what newlyweds do, but only after they've said hello to Dan's gorilla Spanky (Ray Corrigan), who is kept in the basement. Having taken a fancy to Laura (he's not the only one), Spanky busts out of his cage and creeps upstairs to take a closer look, whipping off the woman's night-dress, leaving Dan no choice but to go for his gun.

Shaken by the experience, Laura suffers from nightmares about the jungle, so Dan calls in his doctor friend, who uses hypnotism to try and get to the root of the problem. Regressing Laura, they learn that she was a gorilla in a past life, which doesn't bode well for her honeymoon... in deepest, darkest Africa: gorilla country! Against the doctor's advice, the Fullers continue with their planned excursion, happily hunting and trapping wild animals, but the fun stops when they are faced with two escaped man-eating tigers, and Mrs. Fuller is carried off into the jungle by a gorilla, who wants her to be his queen!

Anyone who knows a thing or two about Edward D. Wood Jr. (co-writer of The Bride and the Beast ) surely can't help but be amused by Laura's fondness for angora sweaters. But that's not the only funny thing about this movie... I mean, there's a gorilla called Spanky that's clearly a man in a fancy dress costume, the whole notion of being the reincarnation of a gorilla is quite preposterous, and it's patently clear that lions weren't available to the film-makers, so they had to try and work a couple of tigers into the plot instead. And that ending!

That said, the film isn't as inept as one of Wood's directorial efforts, Adrian Weiss being a competent enough director to make his movie appear relatively professional, despite the daft plot; it's no work of art, but he knows how to compose a scene and keep the pace lively, even with an overreliance on stock footage at times. It doesn't hurt either that Austin is such a babe: she's a delight whenever she is on screen (even when Laura is encouraging her heroic husband to slaughter another magnificent wild animal) and it's a shame that she didn't go on to bigger and better things.

I had fun, hence my probably overgenerous rating of 5.5/10, rounded up to 6 for Austin.