The Bride And The Beast!

What is it with women? The Bride and the Beast asks this eternal question and comes up with a surprising answer. We meet our heroine played by Charlotte Austin, a woman freshly married to Lance Fuller, a hunter of exotic animals as she becomes more and more fascinated with his pet "Spanky". This is a script written by the infamous Ed Wood and nowhere does it pop with pure Woodian weirdness than the name "Spanky". Spanky is a gorilla (played not by Ray Corrigan but by Steve Calvert who took over the classic "Naba" suit) and the lovely Charlotte seems to want to spend quality time with him, being compelled somehow by echoes of a past life.

This a movie which makes you think of others -- most notably The She-Creature in which a woman when hypnotized becomes the ancient avatar of olden days. It's all about reincarnation and women seem to hold the key, their connection to a wicked wild past just a mind meld away.

The ending of The Bride and the Beast must be seen to be believed. There's nothing in this movie to shock the kiddies unless they are really intensely paying attention, but when you've finished this movie you will ask the question about what you have just seen. Weird is a word often thrown around, often my the likes of me, but weird is the true word for this fascinating film.

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The White Gorilla!

The White Gorilla from 1945 is one of those movies that's hard to explain. It begins from two places. The first is a 1927 silent serial titled Perils of the Jungle. This now mostly lost movie is preserved in some oddball fashion within the bare parameters of this 1945 flick which stars Ray Crash Corrigan in abundance. What I mean by abundance is that Corrigan plays three parts pretty much simultaneously.

The story begins in one of those familiar jungle safari hangouts with three fellows (all actors who normally play henchmen) pondering and then in stumbles the wounded Ray Corrigan. He is a great white hunter type who had been with a safari which has come under threat by a native tribe as well as just about every animal in Africa. He tells the story of what happened to his charges in a leisurely pace as he recuperates.

We meet another stalwart great white hero as he strives to save a girl from danger time and again . There's some kid in the story who seems to be comfortable with elephants and a witch shows up later who is in charge of some kind of tiger cult. Mostly it's rambling around observed from a distance which once in a great while intersects with more recent footage of a prowling white gorilla.

Later the "hero" staggers into the bush to save yet another damsel who shows up in the middle of the movie and battles the White Gorilla.

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White Pongo!

White Pongo came out in 1944, one year after Nabonga and features Ray Crash Corrigan once again as an ape, in fact he's likely two apes. The story is at once simple and complex -- a safari heads into the depths of the African jungles to find a lost scientist. It turns out the team is made up of all sorts of folks, some of them not so trustworthy. Our heroine is payed by Maris Wrixon and she's the obligatory love interest who will inevitably fall victim to the ape dubbed "Pongo".

But despite some pretty decent exteriors, some pretty tight casting, the script lets the movie down with exceedingly little novelty. It's pretty standard safari drama, with a romance breaking out between the "Lady" and a lowly guard. Her noble-born boyfriend objects and that creates moments of mild friction. Then there is a major turn of events and people turn out to be not who we thought, though casting made you suspect. All the time Pongo muddles around in the brush looking at once puzzled and inclined to do something. Eventually he does.

The movie ends with a big battle between Pongo and another gorilla and the ending might surprise you, that I will admit. The Pongo suit was used a couple of more times in movies which make this one look like Citizen Kane in terms of production value. The first one we look at tomorrow.

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Nabonga!

Nabonga is a pretty decent flick, for what it is -- a low-budget jungle adventure. The key is an above average cast led by the great Buster Crabbe. Barton MacLane is a delightful baddie and Julie London is a pretty damsel with Fifi Dorsay stealing a number of scenes. Also featured is Prince Modupe in a role as native assistant which rises above the usual racist limits put on parts like that.

But the main show is Nabonga, which according to the poster means gorilla. The gorilla in question this time is Ray Crash Corrigan, one of the great gorilla men in his suit which was larger and more dynamic than many which had come before. Corrigan's gorilla was a fantasy, a creature not real but terrifying and capable of emotions. It's an illusion in the same way King Kong is an illusion, not a real ape, but something only available on screen.

The story is simple -- a man steals money and flees with his daughter. But their plane crashes and only the girl survives ultimately -- growing to become a legendary "White Witch". She is sought by Buster Crabbe's character many years later, the son of the man who was blamed for the crime and who killed himself. With the help of Prince Modupo, he finds the plane and the Witch. MacLane and Dorsay are lurking about to steal the money but things go haywire when it's revealed that an enormous ape named 'Samson" protects the girl and the treasure.

It's a cheapo flick, but they do well with what they have and a little suspension of disbelief will carry you away. I reviewed this movie nearly a decade ago here at the Dojo and my opinion has changed -- I was very harsh to this low-budget effort.

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The Ape!

The Ape is one cockamamie movie. Boris Karloff made a deal with Monogram Pictures for nine movies (which included three turns as Mr. Wong a Chinese detective) and this humble 1940 effort is the final one of those. Here he is a country doctor with a difference, former researcher he is a man who is driven by a compelling need to cure the lame and prove his theories. To that end he makes use of what comes his way and that includes two men who are murdered to get at spinal fluid used to make a beautiful young girl walk again.

Now mix with this set-up the arrival of a circus, a circus with a ferocious gorilla who kills his abusive trainer and in the doing sets fire to the whole shebang. The circus folk move on but the small town in which the doctor lives and works must find the escaped gorilla. The doctor finds it first, kills it and uses the ape's hide to prowl the night getting his precious spinal fluid. (I told you it was weird.)

I won't say more, so as not to spoil, but most of this you can see coming a mile off. The gorilla portrayed by Ray Corrigan is pretty darn tough but not as tough as a crazy Boris Karloff it seems.

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Beneath The Dojo Of The Apes!

I love monster movies and science fiction movies and horror movies, and one thing they all have in common is apes. From Kong the immortal King to the amiable Cornelius and Zira, to a murderous monster named Satan, simians, apes and gorillas have shambled across the silver screen as long as the movies have been made. So I'm digging into the Dojo collection and picking out all those many many gorilla movies I've been gathering up over the decades and dusting them off for a fresh view. Coming your way are veterans like Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, George Zucco, Ray "Crash" Corrigan, Buster Crabbe, and many many more.

One focus will be on the myriad and varied rip-offs that popped up across the globe in the wake of the hubbub about the King Kong remake by Dino DeLaurentis and others. It seems everyone wanted a slice of that big monkey pie and some of the films which tumbled onto the silver screen must truly be seen to be believed. Actually I saw them and I still don't really believe them.

Also I plan to take some time to take a gander at some of those wonderful apes which have graced the pages of the comics over the years. DC Comics especially was fond of the gorilla and used them intentionally as a marketing device. All this and whatever else occurs to me and I can make time for before the witching hour strikes.

This month-long look at gorillas and such is dedicated to the memory of Ray "Crash" Corrigan, one of the finest ape men and my favorite of the lot. This October Halloween season the Dojo will feature devilish apes doing what they do best -- making monkeys out of men. Buy a banana and hang out!

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Nabonga!

I've been wanting to catch this flick for quite some time, ever since I learned that it included the work of not only Buster "Flash Gordon" Crabbe, a serial idol and all-around good guy, but also Ray "Crash" Corrigan, another serial idol of lesser impact who had a reasonably successful career playing gorillas on screen. That these two should meet up in this jungle thriller after the classic battle in Flash Gordon between Buster and Crash as the Orangapoid seemed too good a deal to pass up.

But alas this is a pretty tired PRC effort. The plot sounds great. An embezzler and his young daughter crash in the jungle and she grows up to become a mysterious "white witch" (Julie London). Buster is the son of the man who suffered the embezzlement and ended by killing himself because of it. Seeking redemption for his dad, Buster follows rumors to the jungle but is pursued by a man and woman (Barton MacLane and Fifi D'Orsay) who want to rob him of the suspected treasure he seeks. Helped by an unusually refined African native (Prince Modupe), Buster finds the girl and her pet gorilla (Crash) and the story finds its climax and conclusion.


Flash
But that's the short version, and the movies alas fails to build much tension along the path. The players are pretty good, but there's little sense of real danger (aside from some crocodiles) and most of the action happens off screen. I'm assuming that's because of budget limitations and censorship requirements.


Crash
I like the people in this movie, and I like the story. But the unfortunately the final result is pretty tepid stuff.

To get a look at more images from the movie, check out this site dedicated to Julie London, who makes her debut in this movie.

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White Pongo!

Now that I've finally at last seen it, I don't know why I lusted to see this movie for so many moons. It's got that evocative, or at least mysterious title I suppose.

White Pongo is a PRC movie about a gang of white hunters who want to track down a white "Pongo" (native word for ape) which they are convinced will prove to be the missing link. It's all hokum of course, but it gets the assembled set of psuedo-British vintage whitefolk on the trail. And a long trail it is too. They wander through the jungle at length. You know the action in a movie is too slow when you speed it up and it still seems reasonably normal. The folks in this movie just plain walk slowly.

They eventually find a plant that attracts "pongos" and they set up a trap, though that plan comes to smash when their guide proves to be a criminal and ties everyone up save for the obligatory white woman who is kidnapped. There's a love triangle in this somewhere and frankly there are too many characters, some just fall away with little to do. Eventually the White Pongo tracks after the girl and threatens her very briefly before fighting with another regular black ape. The hunters having escaped wound him and capture him bringing the movie to a close as they promise to take this missing link back to civilization. That's for another movie, not this one alas.

It's a mess really. The acting is okay, but the story is ragged. The ape suits aren't terrible by the standards of the day. Apparently this is a Ray Corrigan outing, and he's always reliable. There's a beastial quality to his ape suit that isn't found on all of them, an odd human ferocity. But alas the battle between the apes is pretty lackluster and frankly poorly shot. The biggest problem with this movie is pacing. It's just plain slow with lots of aimless wandering to eat time. There's not a bad movie here buried under all that stock footage.

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