La Fiancée de la jungle

Well, all I can say is Ed Wood strikes again. Like Orgy of the Dead, this is another movie where he wrote the screenplay. And, as per usual, the results are exceedingly strange. This one is about a woman who falls in love with a gorilla called Spanky because it transpires that she was an ape in a previous life. Well of course, she was. This one sets the scene well initially with some deeply strange early sequences, with our leading lady looking in that dreamy way into her gorilla dreamboat's eyes. But then our heroes relocate to Africa to check out stock footage and oh my goodness, they check out a LOT of stock footage. So much in fact that the film grinds to a halt as we watch giraffes running away from Landrovers and tigers kicking about (oh yeah, there are tigers in this stock footage Africa my friends). Things do perk up by the end though when Spanky the monkey returns and we have more human-ape love action. Its often borderline unwatchable but its also exceptionally wrong-headed , so naturally its one to endure.

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.

i was pleasently surprised at the first half an hour of this film. i was expected the usual hand held cameras, dodgy acting, minimum scene listing etc. i came to the conclusion that this film must have been made later into Ed Woods career until i looked at the box and saw it predates Plan 9. granted the stock safari footage later in the film and the impression we get that Ed Wood forgot his own plot during the indian tiger's sequence, this film i would rate higher than the rest of his other works. underneath all that is bad you can genuinely see that he had a vision.

"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.

Seeing Ed Wood's name as screenwriter, I flapped my arms like a fly drawn to fly-paper. Expecting a whirl through 1950's cheeze land, for which Wood was infamous, I instead got something I wasn't expecting. Not that the flick's either good or cheezy in the conventional senses: it's not. But the 78-minutes does manage to be a little different.

Back in the mid-50's, a Colorado housewife (Bridey Murphy) claimed a regression through hypnosis to a former life as a 19th century Irish girl. It became a hot public story at the time. People liked to imagine, I suspect, what previous lives they too might have had. Anyhow, I expect Murphy's story inspired this episode of movie regression.

Overall, the flick's plot is oddly flatlined by too much African stock footage that pads rather than develops; plus a leading man (Fuller) whose face remains frozen regardless the level of danger. Too bad he couldn't get interested, but then this cheapo was a comedown for his rising career. Then too, the loose gorilla suits that badly need a fitting don't help. Together, these elements unfortunately drain rather than promote the story's unusual potential.

On the other hand, tbere's leading lady Austin's sterling performance, more worthy of an A-production than a cheapo. Catch her beautifully shaded expressions in a role that could easily have gone over the top. Too bad her career was so brief. Then too, the ending came as a big surprise to me. All in all, it's an exceptional climax for the conformist 1950's.

Anyway, the movie's an obscurity for good reason, unless, that is, you like a lot of big cats pointlessly running around stock footage jungles. Nonetheless, writer Wood does manage to come through in the end. So thanks Ed for the memorable last touch.