O Gorila Branco

This film seems to leave you with more questions than it answers, such as what the heck were they thinking. Take the old country store setting add 4 guys sitting around spinning yarns, set it in the jungle and you have the start. Next add silent era footage for the action and put our hero on the outside looking in angle and you have this film. It's actually humorous to watch the hero coming up on the action time and again and always having a good excuse for not getting involved. The term slacker might come to mind but hey, since he has no time machine well all he can do is watch. The gorillas fighting each other is highly laughable. I almost half expected a right cross or left hook to be thrown. Another funny spot is our silent era hero saving the damsel in distress from the attack hippo. That extremely rare menace of the jungle. And of course who can leave out the end where the black gorilla comes upon the dead white gorilla, his sworn enemy and feels remorse. I mean jeez, give me a break. I almost expected to hear the black gorilla (in his best Zachary smith impression) to start with. "oh the pain, oh the agony of it all." In the end Ray Corrigan sums up the moral of the tale which wasn't the same one I came up with, but hey it's his gig. If you can find this movie cheap it is worth a look.. Other than that don't waste your time.

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.

How cheaply can you make a movie?

Take a couple of actors, have them shoot a few scenes, then splice them in to scenes lifted from a silent film and you've saved a fortune.

Such is the case of this story of a jungle expedition gone wrong. Told mostly in flashback by a survivor of the ill fated trip this is a movie that gives penny pinching a rich reputation.

Almost the entire film is told in voice over narration and its a scream. Its perfectly awful and a great deal of fun to listen to. The movie itself is a bad movie lovers dream as mismatched silent footage is put together in some really interesting ways. A small white kid travels on the trunk of an elephant, a group of native villagers bounce about at the wrong frame speed, and our hero watches it all in footage with a different grain and normal running speed.

This is a bad movie thats fun.Grab the popcorn and some friends and feel free to add your own commentary.

Warning: this is not a good movie in the conventional sense. If you want a good movie look elsewhere, but if you want a bad rib tickler look no farther.

Just when you start to think this film isn't as bad as it sounds, it gets as bad as it sounds. It doesn't bother me that there's more stock footage than there is new footage, but it does bother me that they used the same stock footage clips two, three, & four times each! The narrator is integrated into the storyline verbally, but of course can't be integrated into the storyline physically, because the stock footage which comprises the main storyline is based on a 20 year old (at the time) silent movie! To get around this minor problem, the narrator takes the role of a voyeur. He's constantly hiding in the bushes, "observing" others (who of course can't see him because his footage won't be shot for another 20 years or so after they finished filming their part). The narrator rambles on constantly about why he didn't take a shot at the lions who were trying to eat humans, or why he didn't do this or do that. That would be OK, too, but after a while it just makes the narrator (who's the supposed "hero" of the film) seem like a wimp. The real hero of the film is a fellow named "Bennett" (actually Tarzan in the silent serial). There's lots of loose ends that are never tied up (like exactly what happened to Bennett, the Voodoo Priestess, & the little Jungle Boy). There's several fights between the Bad Black Gorilla & the Bad White Gorilla that are never resolved. They fight, then the narration goes elsewhere, then the two gorillas bump into each other again, act surprised, & start fighting again. When you mix all this nonsense together, you come out with one Good Campy Fun movie that must have had an influence on Ed Wood. The "African" wildlife scenes (from the silent serial) are actually pretty good, although non-African animals (like tigers & orangutans) are mixed in just to keep the viewer guessing at which continent this film actually takes place. I guess my favorite scene is the one in which Bennett has to save a damsel in distress from a newly discovered animal: a meat eating hippo! A word of caution to parents: although this film is certainly good fun for the kids, too, the Something Weird Video version contains several shorts after the feature, which contain full nudity, which is not stated on the video box.

"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