Bride Of The Gorilla!

Bride of the Gorilla sounds for all the world like the cheesiest movie you can imagine, but surprisingly it's filled with restrained intelligent characterizations in a yarn which is at least as much  psychological thriller as old-fashioned monster flick. With both the writer (Curt Siodmak) and the star (Lon Chaney Jr.) of Universal's The Wolfman on board you'd expect just that -- a monster movie in the classic mold. But it ain't so.

At the center of the story is Raymond Burr who dominates the screen as a callous even villainous bloke who wants what he wants and that includes the wife of his employer Barbara Payton. He engineers the death of said boss and in a whirlwind has everything his heart desires. But old curses come to be and he finds himself drawn inexorably to the jungle just outside his door. Slowly he becomes less interested in the civilized world and more fascinated with the savage one.

Lon Chaney is the local sheriff of sorts and sees this transformation. Along with Tom Conway, the local doctor they watch the drama unfold as love gives way to compulsion and murder. Does Raymond Burr really become a gorilla, a savage animal or is it all in his mind? Siodmak, who also directed this flick is having his cake and eating it too, keeping the truth of Burr's situation uncertain. It's the story of the Wolfman minus the confirmation of the supernatural.

Watch this movie and make your own judgment  about whether a man becomes a beast or if he's always been one all along. It 's the only way to decide.

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Dojo Classics - Gorilla At Large!

Gorilla At Large is an outstanding title for a movie. Alas this 1954 (originally 3-D) effort falls short of the stellar title.

The set up is pretty basic. A small circus features a somewhat weird headline act which combines a beautiful trapeze artist Laverne (Anne Bancroft) and a seemingly vicious gorilla called "Goliath" for a thrill spectacle to go along with the usual rides and whatnot. The place is owned and run by Cyrus Miller (Raymond Burr - not yet Perry Mason and doesn't even rate a mention on the posters somehow) who also it seems is married to  Laverne and there is history galore as the circus it seems is bristling with ambitions and dashed dreams.

Into this mix come two innocents, a pair of lovebirds named Joey (Cameron Mitchell) and Audrey  (Charlotte Austin) who are just using the circus to scare up enough money to get hitched and for Joey (a Marine vet) to go to college and get his law degree. But Laverne seems to have eyes for Joey's muscles much to the chagrin of her hubby who it seems might've once upon a time had the Joey role himself, as Laverne's former husband Kovacs (Peter Whitney) still works for the circus as Goliath's trainer.
 

Throw in a few more oddball characters including weirdly Lee Marvin in a comedy relief role, and you have a  brew which bubbles along while the movie tries over and over to attack your sense with some meager 3-D gimmicks (which by definition fall flat in my dvd versions...sigh). A few murders happen and Lee J. Cobb shows up to do his turn as a small town cop trying to find out what dark secrets lie beneath the big top, and after a while he starts taking direction from the erstwhile Joey. Why Cobb doesn't smack the smart alec kid is anyone's guess, but he doesn't and I guess we're supposed to root for Joey, but I find him mostly a doofus.

Goliath is played by George Barrows, a veteran ape actor who is not terribly convincing as an ape, but certainly puts on a pretty decent character.

Barrows had played "Ro-Man", the peculiar helmet-headed alien invader in the aptly named Robot Monster from 1953,

Gorilla at Large is harmless movie with a rather impressive cast but a seriously stupid mystery which makes less sense the more you think on it.

I watched Gorilla as Large on a Midnite Movies Double Feature. The other flick was a tiresome 1981's yawner titled Mystery on Monster Island which is not worthy of an individual review (at least by me). Aside from some brief scenes by veteran Peter Cushing the movie is a large waste of time. To be fair though it does contain some of the most laughable forced perspective giant monsters I've ever seen in a professional movie.

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The Horror Of Godzilla!

No one would think that the American Godzilla King of the Monsters was a horror film. It has Godzilla of course demolishing Tokyo under the watchful eye of inserted American prop Raymond Burr, but the movie is just that a "monster movie" and not a "horror movie". There is too much gusto, too brisk pacing in the story to evolve much of a horror mood. Outside of some great music it's really not very scary.

Not so with Gojira the original from which the American flick is derived. That's a horror movie, a movie that somberly takes you into a nightmare world of monstrosities that rip homes and terrorized children. In Gojira the pain and suffering is felt to the soul as people die under Gojira's power. The destruction of one man's dreams also makes you empathize with the sacrifice it takes to subdue the existential threat. The Oxygen Destroyer is a gimmick, but not one that will work minus the ultimate sacrifice, giving the story a scope the American verison avoids.

Both are dandy flicks, both are fun. But Gojira is scary, scary right down in your soul.

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Godzilla 1985

After years of camp sequels, the boys at Toho figured it was time in the early 80's to revive the sagging Godzilla franchise by going back to basics, and so they essentially ignored all the stories after the original Gojira/Godzilla and offered up a "new" sequel which treated Big G as a monster again and not as a giant pal for kids the world over.

I remember going to the American version, this one with Raymond Burr reprising his role from the original Ameerican adaptation. It's interesting in a way that these Godzilla appearances caught Burr on both sides of his career, once as an up and coming film star and again as a mostly retired TV star. Godzilla 1985 was a decent monster movie with just enough of a serious tone to offset the memory of the late 70's monster romps (as fun as they could be). I even snagged a copy of the poster after the run and still have it around here somewhere. I used to keep it up in my classroom much to interest of my students, many of whom only had vague notions of Godzilla.

Surprisingly engaging is Dark Horse's reprint of the original Manga story which adapts the orignal Japanese version of this Godzilla epic. I'm not a Manga fan by any means, but it's hard not to see the craftsmanship in this story. I have a hard time investing in the characters since most of them are drawn as children with glandular problems, but the sequences with Godzilla are actually compelling and border on spooky. He's presented as an eyeless force of nature, largely silent save for his massive honk which shakes the soul. The devastation is enormous and the story shows it.

It's a good monster story, feeling not unlike an old Lee-Kirby monsterwork with a more heinous agenda!

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