BOLLYWOOD GOES APE

Way, way back when I first began this journey into the mysterious cinematic regions of the Gorilla Men, I recall coming across a mention of an East Indian picture called GORILLA that one would naturally assume, had a gorilla suited lead. Unfortunately, I was unable to uncover much about it and apart from coming across a few muddy pics of lobby cards on Ebay, I haven't given it much thought in quite some time. My usual auction crawl revealed the lovely poster above - and the angry fellow tossing about the native has given me a renewed desire to find this early Bollywood offering. The possibilities of a large scale musical dance number featuring a shaggy simian boggles the mind!
The poster above also features a nicely reworked swipe from THE BRIDE OF THE GORILLA, released two years earlier.

BRIDE OF THE GORILLA IN THE RUE MORGUE?

ORIGINALLY POSTED 7-24-2008
I spend so much time looking for the occasional rare image or shred of gorilla film ephemera I don't already have in my digital Gorilla Men collection that I often fail to stop and appreciate what I already have! Flipping through the hundreds of pics on my hard drive I came across an interesting ad mock-up for BRIDE OF THE GORILLA (1951), one of my favorite gorilla suit films. Scrutinizing the ad, I quickly noticed that there was a portion that was lifted off a lobby card from the original release of MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE - the ape hovering over the women on the lowermost portion is Charles Gemora as Erik atop Sidney Fox. The gorilla of BRIDE is Steve Calvert performing in the suit he had purchased from it's original owner, Ray 'Crash' Corrigan. RUE MORGUE had a Realart re-release so perhaps their promotion department tossed it into the mix when putting together the campaign for BRIDE. It is certainly odd though - the pilfered pic only appears in the print ad and the corresponding 3 sheet.

PRIMITIVE! PASSIONATE! SAVAGE SCENES NEVER BEFORE UNFOLDED!

 ORIGINALLY POSTED 7-10-2008

Now that's a tagline!
BRIDE OF THE GORILLA (1951) is favourite of mine. Yes, it has a plot that is heavily cribbed from Universal's WOLFMAN (Curt Siodmak wrote both) but Raymond Burr drags the film out of the ditch with his smoldering performance. Lon Chaney JR phones in his performance as the local South American lawman but at this juncture in his career, the defeated and beaten down schtick rings pretty damn true. I wonder how ecstatic he was to shill this B movie at the local New Jersey theatre pictured below.