Bela Lugosi Meets A Brooklyn Gorilla (1952)

Movie title: Bela Lugosi Meets A Brooklyn Gorilla
Starring: Bela Lugosi (Bet you didn't see that one coming.)
My rating:

I'll admit to a fondness for bad movies. Call it my inner Tom Servo, but I enjoy watching really hopeless films and pointing out all the places where the filmmakers blundered. And if there's one thing I've learned in watching bad movies it's that there is nothing worse than a film that's simply boring. And if there is one thing that's worse than that, it's a comedy film that isn't funny.

BELA LUGOSI MEETS A BROOKLYN GORILLA manages to capture both of those dubious honors without breaking a sweat. This is a wretched movie with absolutely nothing to recommend about it. Its film prints exists purely to use up atoms that could be of better use as food for starving children, as gold to bring developing nations up out of poverty, or -- to set our sites somewhat lower -- as prints of better movies where the human actors aren't actually out-acted by a trained monkey. (To be fair, the trained monkey in this film is rather adorable.)

First of all, let's begin with a look at the main cast. The "comedy" duo which stars this film are Duke Mitchell and Sammy Petrillo, who are a blatant rip-off of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. And when I say "blatant rip-off" I mean that (according to legend) Sammy Petrillo was ordered to refrain from future performances as this character under threat of legal action from Jerry Lewis.

And you can understand where Lewis was coming from. I mean, Jerry Lewis' standard character was more annoying than an eight-year-old on crack, but this guy is Jerry Lewis turned up to 11. He's so mind-alteringly aggravating that I can only imagine that he had to hold off a lynching from his fellow cast-members with a well loaded machine-gun.

He's whiny. He's annoying. He hops and skips and warbles his way through the film. He's awful, really. He makes me want to revise my opinions on capital punishment.

He, incredibly, is actually the most entertaining thing about the movie. And he's horrific.

See, the problem is this. If you're making a comedy movie (and if you're giving your film the title of "Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla", you damn well better be making a comedy), then you really need to put some jokes in it. I'm not asking for much. Good jokes, bad jokes, corny jokes, silly jokes. Anything will do. But, really, virtually all of the jokes fall under the jurisdiction of the Sammy Petrillo character. Everyone else is in a sort of holding pattern waiting for the jokes to fall from the typewriter of the writer.

But the jokes never came.

And we all grew weary and sad.

But now we must turn our attention onto the eponymous Bela Lugosi. Oh, the poor man. I have no idea what he was doing in this film, and judging from his performance, neither does he. He deserved better than this.

I haven't mentioned the plot yet, because the film barely has one. Duke Mitchell and Sammy Petrillo fall out of a plane (yeah) and land on an island somewhere in a Pacific Ocean populated by a bunch of white looking "natives". The production of the jungle doesn't look half bad, but the extras are clad in very cheap fake animal skins and in at least one scene I believe these primitive people are actually wearing Hawaiian shirts in an attempt to look native.

Anyway, the plot, as I was saying, involves these two dopes on a primitive island. Also on the island are the obligatory love interest (a native girl), the obligatory love interest's father (the chief of the village), and a mad scientist who is supposed the "only white man on the island" (a statement true only if you discount everyone else living on the island). Oh, and the comic relief comes in the form of the love interest's enormous sister who for some reason falls in lust with Sammy Petrillo. (Two problems with this. First of all, if you're making a comedy film and your script requires an obvious comic relief, then the story isn't as funny as it needs to be. Second, no, the large sister isn't the most attractive woman on the island, but, hey, Sammy Petrillo is the most annoying man on the planet. Where does he get off turning away anyone's advances?)

You see, the story revolves around Duke Mitchell being in love with the Chief's daughter. The mad scientist (you didn't need me to tell you this is the Bela Lugosi role), apart from being mad, is also in love with the same girl. And since he runs experiments on evolution (you're hearing Darwin on spin-dry) you just know we're in for some "hilarious" hijinks involving monkeys. Or people in unconvincing gorilla suits.

The actual trained monkey is arguably the best thing about this movie. And my understanding is that he actually is the same chimp who appeared in much better movies of the era, so if you're a big fan of the monkey you can see him in something else better.

Don't be fooled into thinking this might be a wonderfully fun, camp bad movie. This is a horribly annoying awful film and no one should waste their time watching this in hope of finding even some unintentional laughs. Avoid at all costs.