Sat 15 Oct 2011
A Movie Review by Dan Stumpf: BELA LUGOSI MEETS A BROOKLYN GORILLA (1952).
Posted by Steve under Films: Comedy/Musicals , Horror movies , Reviews[16] Comments
BELA LUGOSI MEETS A BROOKLYN GORILLA. Realart, 1952. Bela Lugosi, Duke Mitchell, Sammy Petrillo, Charlita, Muriel Landers, Al Kikume. Director: William Beaudine.
Now here is a film that single-mindedly redefines the Bad Movie Genre. Admirers of Bad Films talk glowingly of the ineptitudes of Ed Wood or the excesses of DeMille, but BLMABG is that rarity, a pure, ugly, abomination of a film, a high-concept atrocity that has few equals and no betters (or Worsers) in the ranks of Awful Cinema.
Start with the basic premise of making a Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis Picture — a dubious notion in itself. Only instead of Martin and Lewis, substitute the team of Duke Mitchell and Sammy Petrillo, who spend the film doing godawful impressions of Dean and Jerry. And until you’ve seen a really bad impression of Jerry Lewis, you just haven’t lived.
Add to this the sight of poor, palsied, Bela Lugosi, clearly a sick man by this time, clinging to the bare shreds of his career.
Throw in a comic-relief monkey, a few men in cheap Ape Suits, set the whole thing on a back-lot Tropical Island, then wrap it around a tired, tired plot of Shipwrecked Zanies and a Mad Scientist.
And you still can’t picture how bad this movie is till you see it. Unlike the films of Ed Wood, BLMABG is suffused with a thin veneer of professionalism. The sets and photography have a nice look, and there are none of the Continuity Gaps so beloved by Wood aficionados.
Somehow, though, it makes it even worse to realize that Actual Filmmakers spent there time on this.
Needless to say, I loved it.
October 16th, 2011 at 6:12 am
I once saw a Roger Corman movie where a scientist experiments on himself to produce ever more powerful vision. In the end he sees right through to the centre of the universe, and what he sees is so terrifying that he pulls out his eyes in order to stop these awful visions. Ten minutes of BLMABG made me feel like that.
October 16th, 2011 at 7:28 am
That was X: THE MAN WITH THE X-RAY EYES, Bradstreet. Ray Milland starred.
I’m with Dan, however, as I thought BROOKLYN GORILLA was a classic of bad cinema. Sammy Petrillo had a long career (you could look it up) and even had Jerry Lewis sue him to stop the imitation.
October 16th, 2011 at 8:21 am
A classic, indeed!
October 16th, 2011 at 3:37 pm
I just saw the trailer…
OMG !!!
This movie requires an acquired taste, like surströmming .
Not for the weak.
The Doc
October 16th, 2011 at 6:22 pm
Doc
I learn something new every day. From wikipedia:
Surströmming is a northern Swedish dish consisting of fermented Baltic herring.
I’ll pass, I think.
— Steve
October 16th, 2011 at 5:58 pm
I just watched this movie and have to agree that it was terrible. I find the real Jerry Lewis annoying, never mind this imitation Jerry. The IMDB gives it a 2.6 rating from 900 voters, a very low rating. If you value your sanity, do not watch this!
October 16th, 2011 at 6:14 pm
Here’s a link to the YouTube trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrRtIp3jylk&feature=related
but the entire movie can been seen here
http://www.archive.org/details/BelaLugosiMeetsaBrooklynGorilla
My connection tonight is not good enough to watch it. I may try later.
I never heard of the movie nor either Duke Mitchell or Sammy Petrillo until yesterday, when I posted Dan’s review.
October 16th, 2011 at 6:29 pm
OK. I’ve watched the first three minutes. It is a wonder that the natives standing around watching the proceedings can keep a straight face. Charlita the native girl looks nice in her skimpy native dress, though.
October 16th, 2011 at 6:16 pm
Thanks for the warning, Walker, but after the trailer I’m in no danger to watch more !
It may be a classic in its kind, and Bela Lugosi is a great actor in REAL films, but an iron maiden also is a classic, and still…
The Doc
October 16th, 2011 at 8:00 pm
In the stills I thought that was Jerry Lewis. I was thinking, why was he slumming with an literally-on-his-last-legs Lugosi?
October 17th, 2011 at 2:27 am
Steve,
DO pass on the sürströmming ! According to a German Higher Court, the spilling of sürströmming-sauce in the staircase of a building is enough to get evicted as a tenant. It was deliberate, of course.
Never smelled the stuff myself.
Danger- Keep off !
The Doc
October 17th, 2011 at 12:27 pm
So there I am, paging through my old TV Guides the other night, and what do I come across but a feature about William Beaudine?
This was 1963, and Beaudine was the main director of Lassie (this was the Timmy-in-the-well period). The picture accompanying the story shows a portly man with a waxed mustache, sporting a straw plantation hat, giving directions to Timmy and the mutt.
Following the full page photo was a two-page story chronicling Beaudine’s career from silents to TV, with quotes from people whose careers he’d started or advanced, sometimes at the expense of his own.
The most impressive of the quotees is Walt Disney, who marveled at the fact that Bill Beaudine, who was important in films when he was getting started, was still making TV all those years later.
The cast of Lassie was also heard from,particularly June Lockhart (whom he sometimes addressed on the set as “Ginsburg”).
Beaudine’s family also was profiled, with the notation that his son was Lassie‘s production manager, and that his grown grandchildren were getting into various aspects of the film world.
This piece aside, the only other extended writing about William Beaudine I’ve ever seen was the piece Michael Medved wrote in his Golden Turkey Awards book, which shortlisted Beaudine for Worst Director.
I’ll make the educated guess that Medved never saw the early half-hour episodes of Naked City, including the pilot.
So that’s what I did over the weekend.
How about you?
October 18th, 2011 at 4:00 am
Beaudine was a fine director – in the silent era. “Sparrows” is a gem, easily the finest film Mary Pickford ever made. How he got from there to doing BLMABG is a mystery; not only does Hollywood eat its own children but it regurgitates them, too.
October 18th, 2011 at 1:40 pm
Coincidentally enough SPARROWS had its premiere showing on TCM last month.
October 19th, 2011 at 12:44 pm
If you read the TV GUIDE article, there’s no mystery: Bill Beaudine just liked to make movies, and had no compunction about where or when or for how much he made them. He wanted to work, and work he did, right to the end of his days.
At some point or other, Beaudine made just about every kind of movie there could be, except perhaps epics. If he had made an epic, he would have filmed it faster than anyone ever had (and probably spent less money in the process).
Bill Beaudine was, in sum, a happy man.
And who among us can say him nay for that?
October 26th, 2011 at 8:06 am
Somewhere I read that the studio where Brooklyn Gorilla was filmed was also used by several popular TV programs. A bemused George Burns, among others, visited the movie set often. Burns and Lugosi would have met nearly twenty years before as they were both in W.C. Fields’ “International House” (Paramount 1933).