BELA LUGOSI MEETS A BROOKLYN GORILLA (1952)

 "WHAT AN INTERESTING CRANIUM!"  

Yesterday I was at the domicile of Cheeks DaBelly & Dee Dee Deelite for our (increasingly more infrequent and that's my fault) Faerecheek Film Festival and we watched that old chestnut BELA LUGOSI MEETS A BROOKLYN GORILLA. 

I've seen this a bunch of times over the years and I was sure I already posted on this movie during a Halloween Countdown YEARS AGO!  I went and soiched and nope, I never did.  I was thinking about the post I did back in 2009 about the 4 movie Karloff & Lugosi dvd set which included ZOMBIES ON BROADWAY and I guess that's what I was thinking of.  So yes, William Beaudine directed this poverty row Bela film.  Beaudine was the guy you brought in when you couldn't afford a real director.  OK, that's mean and not at all fair because he toiled at the low end of Hollywood studios and cranked out movies like a journeyman.  And the truth be told -- I always kinda liked this movie.  It's so dopey that you HAVE to love it and it never drags.  It's a helluva lot more entertaining that AVATAR.  Two nightclub performers Duke Mitchell and Sammy Petrillo (doing their best Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis impression) are shameless in their aping of that at-the-time red hot comedy duo.  I'm sure they were brought into this movie hoping people would see the trailer and not pay attention thinking Martin & Lewis were in this film.  They're not.  And that's not a bad thing.  While I adore Dean Martin, I always hated Jerry Lewis.  As someone once said, Jerry Lewis is not funny . . . EXCEPT when he's trying to be dead serious.  But yeah, Jerry Lewis had the comedy instincts of a clam.  And that's the thing I discovered with this umpteenth re-watch and that is that Sammy Petrillo is a helluva lot funnier than Jerry Lewis ever was.  He has some terrific line deliveries that show a natural comic timing.  My particular favourite was, some time after Bela Lugosi's mad scientist Dr. Zabor stares at Sammy admiring his skull, Sammy does a Bela impression sarcastically repeating Bela's sinister words:  "What an interesting cranium!"  It's hilarious.  Duke Mitchell as the Dean Martin clone is less affective but still hilarious endlessly shoving his song "DEED I DO" down our throats.  It's such a stupid but catchy song which, in the fifties, could well have become a hit.  I'm surprised it didn't.  After all, the score for that other poverty row classic KING OF THE ZOMBIES was nominated for an Oscar, after all!

So I suppose I should briefly touch on the plot of the film . . . the film itself only briefly concerns itself with any plot whatsoever.  Duke & Sammy fall out of the sky onto a remote tropical island where they find a bunch of WASP natives and a sinister mad scientist Dr. Zarbo with his clutch of monkeys in a mad lab.  Sammy is so alluring that not only does a chimpanzeeRomona fall in love with him but also a . . . shall we say 'Junoesque" native girl named Saloma (Muriel Landers).  My dod Cheeks pointed out that Muriel Landers played Joe Besser's singing sister in a Three Stooges short.  Damned if he ain't correct; once he said that, I recognized her face.  Of course, this being the type of movie it is, Bela eventually turns Duke into a gorilla --

or more accurately Ray "Crash" Corrigan in a gorilla suit.  All the 'old dark house', 'mad scientist', remote island tropes are here in full.  In his later years, Duke Mitchell would film his passion project MASSACRE MAFIA STYLE and, the much-later posthumously completed GONE WITH THE POPE; both of which I own but still haven't managed to watch after all these years.  I have to rectify that lapse!  William Beaudine, as mentioned, directed a helluva lot of movies and TV including such gems as JESSE JAMES MEETS FRANKENSTEIN'S DAUGHTER and BILLY THE KID VS. DRACULA, the Lugosi poverty row flicks VOODOO MAN, THE APE MAN and GHOSTS ON THE LOOSE, a handful of Charlie Chans and, a personal favourite of mine, the Mantan Moreland vehicle LUCKY GHOST!  BELA LUGOSI MEETS A BROOKLYN GORILLA is way more entertaining than I had a right to expect and now I remember why i re-watched it periodically over the years.  It doesn't disappoint.