Mistaken identity is a common, wholesome accident that has led to 69% of wrongful convictions in the United States alone. It is a simple error in human’s lexicon of errors. Don’t worry about it. As the saying goes: Feces Happens! At times another saying goes like this: We are not defined by our past, but by the choices we make in the present (like deciding instead of watching a great movie you slip on the discarded peel of Hollyweird’s worst howlers). Like most legendary sayings there must be some basis in fact, like this one: “Even a man who is pure in heart and says his prayers by night may become a married gorilla when the monkey bane blooms and Amazon moon is bright.” (slaps forehead) I’m so sorry. I was mixing two films by accident. I feel it’s an accident because the jungle fever dream film Bride of the Gorilla I was talking about could never be confused with the Universal classic The Wolf Man. They are absolutely two different films… except for the whole gypsy curse thing… and the actor from that movie stars in this one as well… and it is written by the same guy who wrote the other… and directed by the same guy… Are they two different movies?
Monkey see. Monkey do. Filmmaker see. Filmmaker do (stupid movies). Just as old Gorilla-sides (irony, for sure) Raymond Burr’s character Barney Chavez is tortured and cursed throughout the film, the audience will feel the same while feasting upon this beast of the cinematic banana split. In a (terrible) movie filled with thrills, chills, and down-right ludicrous stock footage (it looks like a caged leopard shredded and peed on the prints), it is astonishing how lucky Producer Jack Broader was in securing such a cast. Not only did he land a pre-Perry Mason Burr, but slithering through the flicker is the likes of Lon Chaney, Jr. (acting real bow-wow here), John Ford stock company man Woody Strode (who should have been nominated for Sgt. Rutledge), and future gossip column jungle-queen Barbara Payton! Broader, who would go ape producer such chimps as Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla and The Navy vs. The Night Monsters could have counted his blessings with a cast like that for later late-night TV airings, but he also scored as his director the creator of the wolf-man mythos, Curt Siodmak! With a crew like this, why is the film such a King Kong-sized disaster? The film does its best with such a ridiculous title (originally to be called The Face in the Water) but even in the thickness of the jungle it is clear Siodmak is ripping the storyline of the wolf man, as even at one point the director considered switching Burr and Chaney in their roles, making it another movie where Chaney is cursed to turn into a hairy, raging beast (maybe he didn’t cash the checks fast enough?). Filled with creative set designs, a plot easy enough to follow (simple is another word), and solid use of dolly tracks for smooth POV shots don’t save this chimpanzee from leaping from tree to tree of bonkers movie legacy (talk about getting the monkey off your back when the circus leaves town).
Waaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyy down in the jungle deep (Matlock is not his name!) plantation owner Chavez has a little love-sick baboon for his boss’ wife (Payton, with great hair for such a remote location). One night when Chavez tricks his boss into being bitten by a poisonous snake (in the grass), the old witch doctor sees all and puts a ting-tang-walla-walla-bing-bang of a curse on Chavez that he will turn into a hairy, snarling Gorilla upon the sight of the moon (I guess he should have told her he was in love with the wife?). Everything is fine at first, with Chavez pulling some cunning lawyer tricks (mmm… maybe this will come in handy later on) that fool police commissioner Taro (Chaney), but nothing can fool mother nature when Chavez starts some monkey business with local natives, killing their livestock and families! Noticing Chavez has more interest in swinging in the jungle than with her, she follows him one night and sees him turn into the jungle demon the natives call ‘Sukura’ (a way better title than the one they went with). Will the curse be lifted or will Chavez have to swing for his crimes? Get your hairy palms on this vintage ape-ish cult classic and hang around to see what happens!
Swinging into action at a short-tailed seventy minutes, Siodmak would later turn to more screenwriting efforts with such vintage vines as Creature with the Atom Brain, Curucu, Beast of the Amazon, and Love Slaves of the Amazons before writing the science fiction classic novel Donovan’s Brain. You can find this on streaming platforms due to barking up the tall trees of Public Domain Forest. The next time you get lost in the jungles of awful film stock remember to paws a second and think what Robert Benchley once said: “The surest way to make a werewolf out of a chimp is to quote him.”
