The White Gorilla

Anybody who thinks Bela Lugosi's poverty row horrors represent the absolute pits of 40s film-making has yet to see The White Gorilla, a piece of stinking crud of the cut-and-paste school of exploitation that even makes Jerry Warren's Creature of the Walking Dead start to look good. You may even begin to regret unkind words you've had for cut-and-paste 80s ninja pap peddler Godfrey Ho.

Any giggles at how bad this movie is will soon subside into yawns and groans as the sixty soul-scarring minutes of animal stock footage and recycled silent movie scenes take their toll on the viewer's dignity. The only reason it gets a rating of 3 from me, as opposed to a 1 or 2, is the occasional appearance of the guy in the white gorilla suit with the unusually large posterior.

"With every bone in my body aching, I limped away," the protagonist says at one point. You will likely feel much the same after sitting through all of The White Gorilla, a barnstorming candidate for IMDb's Bottom 100 list if ever there was one.

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.

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.

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.

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.