Not to be confused with Bride of the Monster, this cheap tale of the supernatural continues the "50 Classic Sci-Fi Movies" box set's preoccupation with films featuring people strolling through the jungle. Peeking ahead in the collection, I see lots of Gamera and sword and sandal movies on the horizon, which is heartening, because I'm just about at my limit when it comes to movies that feature the time-honored scene of people walking through the jungle, then one of them points and says, "Look over there!" so the movie can cut to a few minutes of stock footage of a leopard or an elephant.

Bride of the Gorilla stars Raymond Burr, who most of you probably know as the reporter from the Americanized version of the original Godzilla, and many others of you know as the portly super-lawyer Perry Mason. What I didn't know until I watched this film was what a barrel-chested ass-kicker Burr was before he took on the shape of a sphere. He plays the boss foreman of a Caribbean plantation in this movie, and there's really no doubt looking at him that he could bust some heads if he wanted to. Sort of shocking, really, like when people see a young Ricardo Montalbon for the first time and discover what a huge, muscled Adonis he was. Only then do they realize that the buff chest he displays in Star Trek II is, in fact, his own and not a prosthetic as popular urban legend has it.

Anyway, I don't know what the first "plantation owner riles up the natives and gets a voodoo curse slapped on him" film was, but this one hews pretty close to the conventions of the genre -- and yes, I am happy that "plantation owner riles up the natives and gets a voodoo curse slapped on him" can be a genre unto itself. When Burr spurns a local girl in favor of a rich man's disillusioned wife, it leads to Burr sort of murdering the rich guy (mostly just by not saving him from a snake attack), marrying the widow, and pissing off the native girl's resident old crone so that she puts a curse on Burr that will turn him into a savage gorilla-man. From time to time, Lon Chaney Jr. shows up, because at the time there was a Hayes Office law that required any movie involving humans turning into monstrous animals had to feature Lon Chaney Jr. in some capacity.

Bride of the Gorilla is basically a water treading movie. It's not that bad, but it's not that good. The acting is all decent, but there's never any reason to be all that concerned for the sad fate of Raymond Burr. He's not exactly an asshole, but he's not the sort of character who evokes sympathy in the viewer, either. Lon Chaney should have given him some pointers. Likewise, the rich guy he sort-of kills is never especially villainous, and the rich woman is never much of anything other than present. There's no surprises, but at just a few minutes over an hour, Bride of the Gorilla is short enough that it doesn't wear out its welcome. It's certainly better than any of the other jungle adventures we've sat through up to this point in the box set.

Labels: Set: Sci-Fi Classics