The Gorilla

I've seen this so many times on here: long-winded dissertations about movies that are supposedly lost (witness "London After Midnight!"). How can someone truly discuss something that doesn't even EXIST anymore? (Isn't that something akin to various religious groups prohibiting some movie because it's blasphemous, despite the fact that no one in that group has ever seen the movie?)

Three possible apologies are in order before the fact, though: 1. The previous commentator (the one who set me off on this) is old enough to HAVE seen the movie. 2. All the rest of us are wrong, and the movie IS extant (PLEASE tell us where to find it!!!) 3. Just an apology of my own, for having used this forum for a brief editorial.

All that remains of this 'lost' film is a 28-second snippet of a dream sequence, in which a giant gorilla strides through a city, dwarfing skyscrapers; therefore, anyone who writes an in-depth review of the film is either extremely old and has a great memory, or they are simply making stuff up.

The brief clip (available on YouTube) is worth checking out, if only to compare and contrast with King Kong, which came out the following year, but it is impossible to ascertain the quality of the film as a whole. The Gorilla was a sound remake of a 1927 silent movie of the same name (which is also considered 'lost', but that hasn't prevented the same person on IMDb from reviewing it), based on a 1925 play by Ralph Spence. Another film, also titled The Gorilla and based on the same play, was filmed in 1939, and starred a comedic trio called The Ritz Brothers - unfortunately, that one isn't lost.