Bride of the Gorilla. 1951. Alpha Video. Reviewed by Brian Kirst
One part The Wolf Man, one part King Kong and one part Val Lewton psychological horror, Bride of the Gorilla offers a much more subdued offering than the modern day horror fan is used to, but for the patient, non-ADD viewer it’s offerings are subtly acute.
In fact, complemented by the lush photography of Charles Van Enger, Bride of the Gorilla can almost be seen as a more of a reflection of one man’s deep guilt than as a beast filled caper.
After allowing his employer, plantation owner Van Gelder, to perish from a snake bite, plantation manager Barney Chavez (Raymond Burr) soon finds himself compelled to partake in savage, nocturnal wonderings in his jungle home. Has the curse of gypsy woman Al-Long (Gisela Werbisek) turned him into a gorilla or is he just over come with remorse for allowing his animalistic nature to temporarily take over?
With Curt Siodmak’s emotional script, it is actual a little of both. In fact, Siodmak (who also directed) wanted there to be no transformation scenes whatsoever as to keep things purposely oblique. With Bride of the Gorilla being a low budget black and white B-movie programmer, producer Jack Broder wouldn’t hear of it, of course. Therefore we are treated to the sight of a maiden fair attacked and carried away by the requisite monster in the final frames of the picture.
Siodmak, who actually wrote many of the Universal Monster pictures including 1941’s The Wolf Man, gets quietly intense performances out of all his performers here including Lon Chaney, Jr., the Wolf Man himself, as the local police commissioner. (In fact, The Wolf Man fans could have a field day discovering all the similarities between that classic and this lesser known outing.)
Femme fatale fans will, also, find their appetites whetted by the inclusion of the full lipped Carol Varga as local girl Larina and the notorious Barbara Payton as Dina Van Gelder, the actual bride of the gorilla.
In fact, with recent publication of John O’Dowd’s Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye: The Barbara Payton Story (BearManor Media), one hopes that even more curiosity seekers will be shortly checking out Bride of the Gorilla. As revealed in O’Dowd’s fascinating tome, Payton was a Hollywood blonde who literally went from co-starring roles in major motion pictures to skid row prostitution within a handful of years. Dead by the age of 39, Bride of the Gorilla represents her mid-point and Payton, who also co-starred in Hammer Pictures’ first Sci Fi-Horror production Four Sided Triangle in 1952, actually gives a sultry, restrained performance here. While one can understand that Bride of the Gorilla may not have been her preferred source of remembrance, ultimately there is no-one more loyal than genre fans and Payton can, now hopefully, be assured of living in perpetuity in our passionate hearts and minds.
