The Bride and the Beast (1958)

User Rating:

2.8/10   

Director:

Adrian Weiss

Writers:

Adrian Weiss (story)
Edward D. Wood Jr. (writer)

Release Date:

23 February 1958 (USA)

Genre:

Horror

Tagline:

Human mate for jungle brutes!

Plot:

When Laura and Dan get married, she's more interested in Dan's gorilla. It's revealed through hypnosis...

Plot Keywords:

Gorilla | Nightmare | Airplane | Alligator | Honeymoon

Cast

Charlotte Austin	...	Laura Carson Fuller
Lance Fuller	...	Dan Fuller
Johnny Roth	...	Taro, Houseboy-Guide
William Justine	...	Dr. Carl Reiner
Gil Frye	...	Capt. Cameron
Jeanne Gerson	...	Marka, Cook
Steve Calvert	...	Gorillas
Trustin Howard	...	Soldier-Messenger (as Slick Slavin)
Eve Brent	...	Stewardess (as Jean Ann Lewis)
Bhogwan Singh	...	Man in Hut Killed by Tiger

Also Known As:

Queen of the Gorillas

Runtime:

78 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Filming Locations:

Bronson Caves, Bronson Canyon, Griffith Park - 4730 Crystal Springs Drive, Los Angeles, California, USA

Company:

Allied Artists Pictures

Trivia:

Steve Calvert's friend Bobby Small, who worked primarily as a circus clown, donned the alternate gorilla suit in scenes that required two apes in the same shot.

Movie Connections:

Featured in Mule Skinner Blues (2001)

Gorilla My Dreams

Laura Carson (Charlotte Austin) has just married big game hunter Dan Fuller (Lance Fuller.) On her wedding night she finds herself strangely attracted to Spanky, a gorilla gone bad that Dan keeps locked up in a basement cage. Before you can say "Ed Wood wrote this," there are gun shots, nightmares, hypnotism, and Dan's unhappy discover that bride Laura may be the reincarnation of a gorilla queen! Can you dig it? Now and then a bad movie becomes unintentionally hilarious, but most of the time bad movies are simply bad. BRIDE AND THE BEAST actually teeters between the two, and this is largely due to the two leads: even in the face of producer-director Adrian Weiss' obvious lack of talent, Austin and Fuller prove unexpectedly competent, and they actually manage to hold the worst of the dialogue at bay. What this means, however, is that BRIDE never self-destructs in the ludicrous way of such films as PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE--and in consequence it isn't so much unintentionally hilarious as it is unintentionally amusing in a mild sort of way.

The film is full of absurdities. Dan Fuller's basement, where the ill-fated gorilla Spanky is caged, has a refrigerator, but illumination is provided by torch. Servant Taro (Johnny Roth, in what seems to be his only film role) is very obviously a white man in bad "native" make-up; he runs around saying "Bwana" a lot. There is a lot of canned wild animal footage, shots of Africa that look suspiciously like shots of South America, and men in bad gorilla costumes. And Ed Wood being Ed Wood, he just can't resist writing references to angora sweaters into the script.

The print is mediocre, but it is worth pointing out that it was probably never very good to begin with, and the DVD release comes with several bonuses of no interest. Fans of cult films, and especially die hard fans of Ed Wood, will enjoy it--and for their sake I give it three stars. But just about every one else should give it a miss.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer