Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla

Bela and Jerry Lewis clone Sammy make this oddity worth watching at least once. This film was made for DVD...so you can rapidly forward through some boring romantic scenes. Amazingly this silly film sort of grows on you like a fungus with multiple viewings; somehow it is goofy-innocent in all its dumb or dumber glory. "Gorilla" kind of reminded me of Lugosi's early 1940's hammy Monogram films despite the lack of musical numbers in the earlier films; not that anyone needs Duke Mitchell's singing (which reminded me of Elvis with a chest cold). This is one of the few non-European films of Lugosi's I had never seen, so it was a fresh experience. The DVD I bought had amazing picture clarity and sound quality; just the opposite of what is usually released at $6.99. Still, without Lugosi, the "Gorilla" probably would have decomposed in its film can long ago, and I'll admit the film is primarily of interest to bad film fans.

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.

1952's "Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla" was Realart's follow up to Lon Chaney's financially successful "Bride of the Gorilla," producers Jack Broder and Herman Cohen looking for a similar hit with another horror star, shot in six days on an even lower budget of $12,000 (working titles "Bela Lugosi Meets the Gorilla Man" and "White Woman of the Lost Jungle"). Hollywood had ignored the chronically unemployed actor during the four years since his last triumph as Dracula in "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein," and here he was opposite another comedy team that only did this lone feature together, from a witless script cobbled together by Tim Ryan, husband of Irene Ryan from THE BEVERLY HILLBILLIES, better known as a tough guy actor in Poverty Row pictures (the reissue title was "The Boys from Brooklyn"). Nightclub performers known for aping Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, Duke Mitchell delivers like Martin with laid back style on two songs, while teenager Sammy Petrillo looks and sounds so much like the genuine Lewis that one might easily be confused. The actual Martin and Lewis surely wouldn't have fared much better playing two entertainers trapped on a Pacific island (parachuting off screen of course) with nothing to do but venture into the castle of Lugosi's mad scientist Dr. Zabor, working on a theory of evolution using primates as guinea pigs. Ramona the chimp falls for Sammy, but the doctor's assistant (Charlita) is sweet on Duke, driving the jealous Zabor to a desperate plan to keep her from straying by transforming the luckless crooner into a gorilla. Both Ray Corrigan and Steve Calvert are available in ratty ape costumes, Duke unable to speak but still able to belt out his signature piece "Deed I Do," giving Sammy ideas for a singing simian living close to the local zoo (while studying the later career of Bela Lugosi for Tim Burton's 1994 "Ed Wood," Martin Landau considered this one so bad that the Wood titles looked like "Gone with the Wind" by comparison). Both Mitchell and Petrillo could have carved out a niche for themselves were they not at the mercy of shopworn material, and by the time the real Martin and Lewis broke up in 1956 they too decided to call it quits (Lewis was more litigious than his partner, but only a great deal of shouting resulted). A native of Farrell, Pennsylvania, Mitchell later worked for Dean Martin himself, a man who certainly appreciated real talent, doing impressions of other singers and making a name for himself as 'King of Palm Springs.' Sammy Petrillo's belief was that Jack Broder had no intention of making their starring feature, expecting a huge payout from Paramount not to do it but went ahead to save face. Sammy truly gives it his all, but a tendency to laugh uproariously at his own lame jokes deadens all attempts at humor well before Lugosi finally makes his entrance at the 21 minute mark. The Bronx-born Petrillo later opened a nightclub called The Nut House in his adopted hometown of Pittsburgh, lending a helping hand to up and comers like Richard Pryor and Dennis Miller. At the helm for this oddity was old pro William Beaudine, of "The Ape Man," "Ghosts on the Loose," and "Voodoo Man," whose only remaining genre titles formed the 1965 double bill "Billy the Kid versus Dracula" and "Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter." Veteran cameraman Charles Van Enger also photographed "Bride of the Gorilla," a longtime Universal veteran (including Bela's "Night Monster") with a dozen Abbott and Costello titles on his resume, his most recent being "Meet the Killer Boris Karloff." It's possible that having his name in the title appeased Lugosi in some small way, he's perfectly fine in the role but it's very old and tired, no stretch for an actor so used to playing crazed doctors. The references to Dracula are numerous and not funny, and while Bela is often smiling in the early stages (17 minutes screen time), even he becomes annoyed at Sammy's antics before long, sadly looking forward only to "The Black Sleep" and the Ed Wood trio. After working with Ole Olsen and Chic Johnson, Victor McLaglen and Edmund Lowe, Joe E. Brown, W. C. Fields, The Ritz Brothers, Kay Kyser, the East Side Kids (twice), Wally Brown and Alan Carney (also twice), and most recently drag act Arthur Lucan, could an ersatz Martin and Lewis really look that bad?

OK, it was a dumb movie. It was an obvious takeoff of Martin and Lewis, but it was good, clean, innocent fun aimed at the "mad scientist and the gorilla" genre that was enjoyed by Abbott & Costello, The Three Stooges, The Bowery Boys, The Ritz Brothers, etc. Any nostalgia buff would get a nudge instead of a kick out of this film. Sammy Petrillo is almost a clone of Jerry Lewis - even his facial expressions are like carbon copies of Lewis'. Duke Mitchell, on the other hand, needed serious help. Dean Martin he ain't. He can't even sing. If just for the pleasure of seeing Bela Lugosi at his sinister best, tune in. For what few snickers it offers, it's worth a look.

... 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.