BRIDE OF THE GORILLA is a middling voodoo horror flick from director Curt Siodmak, best known as the screenwriter for a number of 1940s-er Universal horrors including SON OF DRACULA and THE WOLFMAN. This one's a jungle romp shot on a studio backlot in Hollywood somewhere, and it's quite a lot of fun, although cheap. For a B-movie it has a lot better cast than you might expect. Raymond Burr is the bad guy lead, torn apart by lust and driven to murder to get his hands on pretty blonde Barbara Payton. Unfortunately for him, a voodoo priestess witnesses his misdeeds and curses him into transforming into a gorilla (an underused plot device). There's a little suspense but not much else, although fans of the era will doubtless get a kick out of it. The great cast includes Lon Chaney Jr. and Woody Strode as policemen and Tom Conway as a local doctor.

Great title, eh? Kind of conjures up rampaging Gorrilas protecting blonde dames from nasty explorers, thinly veiled bestiality, and a great jungle adventure for all, eh? Eh? Well, prepare to be disappointed.Perry Mason plays a guy called Bonny Chevez, manager of a warehouse at a plantation in some jungle, and Bonny's a bit of a fanny rat. He's already dumped the servant girl after sweet talking her into the sack, and now he's set his sights on seemingly brain dead and despondent plantation owner wife Dinah. Now, Dinah's much older husband isn't daft. He's got an old lady (who's a witch and mother of the servant girl) keeping an eye on things, and once he gets wind of Bonny putting the moves on his wife, he fires him during dinner.However, Bonny's done enough ground work to woo Dinah, so she's all prepared to run off with him. That night, Bonny gets a hold of the plantation owner and manages to get him killed by snake bite (He punches the guy in the stomach and the guy just lies there until the snake bites him). Soon enough, Bonny's now running the plantation and married to Dinah. Bonny doesn't realise it, but the witch is just about to put a curse on Bonny that's cause him to think (or turn into, I'm not really sure) a gorilla and run off into the jungle.Here's where the film throws an torrent of missed opportunities at you. We've got Bonny either turning into or thinking he's a gorilla, which includes his hands turning from white to black before getting all hairy (what are they implying?), but no real gorilla action at all! I mean, you've got Lon Chaney Jr in here as a cop after Bonny for the murder of the old guy, but nothing really happens until the last couple of minutes, and even then you don't get to see much. Put it this way, Bonny kills more people when he's not a gorilla, and that's one person.Woody Strode's only in this for about three minutes, then completely disappears.If you really have to see all these gorilla/ape based films, which is a bit of a minefield to be honest to begin with, I'd put this one at the bottom of your list. For a good (hilarious) ape film, watch Bela Lugosi's The Ape Man. That's a good un.

With such actors as Tom Conway, Lon Chaney, Jr., Raymond Massey, Barbara Payton, and, in a brief appearance, Woody Strode you would think this movie would be a lot better than I think it was. Hired hand kills owner, after a short while marries he the widow. He is cursed by an old witch woman who saw him kill the owner and her curse turns him into a jungle monster feared by all (a gorilla type monster, hence the title I guess). Lon is the police commissioner for the area and doesn't believe that the owner was killed by a snake, a good call since the snake they showed was a boa of some kind. There are some animals that Raymond kills but before he can go even more berserk and start on humans he is killed after he has kidnapped his wife and Lon and Tom follow him into the jungle where they fire randomly into the bush even though the wife is with him. He dies, the wife is recovered and thankfully this movie ends.

A plantation manager (Burr) defies his boss (Cavanagh) by courting his wife (Payton) then is implicated in a web of murder, deceit and witchcraft whereby he becomes a marauding jungle ape, a feared symbol of the local folklore and fable. Local police captain (Chaney) has his hands full dealing with the monster's wake, and Burr's erratic behaviour culminating in his suspicion that the two matters might be one in the same.Difficult to predict that Raymond Burr would go on to become a household name after a performance as pedestrian as the one he casually delivers here, his rich baritone a clue to why he prospered in spite of some early, lacklustre performances such as this effort. Payton plays Payton, the over-rated alternative to Marilyn Monroe, whose life descended into a tragic abyss after only a handful of films. Interesting to see Woody Strode in an early, minor role as a police officer (two brief scenes) as Chaney's offsider early in the picture.Chaney is a likable character actor, but the dialogue and plot here is very weak and uninspired, director Siodmak has difficulty with momentum and the film never hits its straps. While it might be attempting to imply the "monster within" concept, Burr never reaches deep enough to make you believe he's a man possessed, and the dialogue doesn't support that angle. In this vein, there's one effective scene in which Burr confronts his alter ego in the reflection of a mirror, but otherwise, it's a dull, soap opera fantasy.