Bela Lugosi Week Film 5: Bela Lugosi Meets A Brooklyn Gorilla

This week I've decided to do something a little different here at Blues In The Night. Every film reviewed this week will star Bela Lugosi. For film #5 we visit Bela as a mad scientist on a jungle island in the Pacific.

Bela Lugosi Meets A Brooklyn Gorilla
1952
Directed By William Beaudine



SYNOPSIS

The comedic team of Duke (Duke Mitchell) and Sammy (Sammy Petrillo) wind up on an island in the Pacific Ocean. Upon meeting the natives they're introduced to the chief's daughter, Nona (Charlita.) She was educated in the United States and now works for Dr. Zabor (Bela Lugosi) who lives in an old castle on the island. She takess them to the Doctor to see if he can help them escape. Zabor loves Nona, but when she sets her sites on Duke... Zabor's jealousy takes over and he uses his scientific knowledge to get revenge.



MY THOUGHTS

A masochists dream!

I knew about the film for several years before seeing it and often wondered why it hadn't been used on Mystery Science Theater 3000. Now I know why. The show would have been canceled before the episode ended.

The comedy stylings of Duke Mitchell and Sammy Patrillo are a complete rip off of Martin + Lewis. Except Duke Mitchell lacks Dean Martin's suave coolness and great voice, though he does sing a few songs (uggh.) Sammy Patrillo does a decent Jerry Lewis, though he's far, far more annoying (if that's possible?)

With the piss-poor script, the two are not given any funny material to work with, nor do they have any charisma to pull off the obvious knock-off roles. The script is especially unkind to the natives. The 'foreign language' sounds like baby talk spoken with deep voices. The ones that speak English do so like: "Me am hungry." Oh yeah, and their island is named Cola Cola. For a horror-comedy... there is no comedy and the only horror is realizing you're watching something this bad.

Bela Lugosi, once again, is given little to do. His character is very moody and quick to anger over the most minor problems. He looks terrible, most likely from his drug addiction that plagued him significantly in his final years. Ed Wood would come calling next. His films with Lugosi would be an improvement over this stinker.

The film was made by director William "One Shot" Beaudine, who cranked out hundreds of films in his career. He'd made over 300 by the time he made this one, so at least the film didn't look inept. There's no glaring errors at least from his area. It's far from polished though. He got his nickname because he usually only did a scene once.

Not surprisingly, there are several logic problems with the film.
1. The small island somehow can support lions, tigers, giraffes, elephants, wildebeests and more large animals despite there being much room or adequate food supplies.

2. Duke and Sammy made it to the island by falling out of an airplane. Even flying low over the sea, they would have been seriously injured hitting the water. Except for significant brain damage, they are perfectly healthy.

Those may be explained during the lame cop-out ending.

I kept expecting this film to go from "terrible" to "so bad it's good" but that never happened. This is likely the worst film I have ever seen and I'll spend the rest of my days trying to forget it.