75 Years Ago, A Forgotten Monster Movie Wasted The Talents Of Two Hollywood Legends
Fans of classic horror probably know the name Lon Chaney Jr. His father, Lon Chaney Sr., was a legendary silent actor known for roles like the Phantom of the Opera. The younger Chaney was no slouch, though, as he's best known for starring in the classic 1941 horror film The Wolf Man. A decade after he transformed into a werewolf, Chaney appeared in another horror movie about a man who transforms into a monstrous, hairy beast. The amusing twist is that this time around, Chaney wasn't the one turning into a horrible creature in 1951's Bride of the Gorilla.
Originally released on October 24, Bride of the Gorilla was the directorial debut of Curt Siodmak, and while this was Siodmak's first time behind the camera, he was already a very important figure in this era of Hollywood horror and a frequent collaborator with Chaney. Siodmak wrote The Wolf Man and some Universal Monster sequels like The Invisible Man Returns, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, and Son of Dracula. He also penned I Walked with a Zombie, one of the first zombie movies — albeit one that focused on a warped, racist version of Haitian folklore rather than the undead. Bride of the Gorilla feels very much like a greatest hits compilation that takes aspects and themes of these earlier movies, only it's decidedly a B-movie and is a much less successful effort.
Chaney doesn't star in Bride of the Gorilla, instead he plays a police commissioner in some unspecified Latin American jungle who becomes concerned that there's been foul play. Raymond Burr, an actor who would become famous later in the decade for his role in the American edit of Godzilla as well as on the legal drama Perry Mason as the title character, plays a plantation manager named Barney. He has the hots for his elderly employer's beautiful young wife Dina (Barbara Payton), and to get him out of the way he kills the old man by tripping him in front of a venomous snake which promptly bites him. The perfect crime… except the victim employed a witch as a member of his household staff and she catches Barney in the act. She places a curse on him that causes Barney to venture into the jungle at night and transform into a gorilla-like demon creature known as the Sukara. Chaney's police commissioner and Dina, who wants to remarry Barney, soon grow uneasy about how much Barney seems to love the jungle, as well as over the reports of animals getting brutally mauled in the night.
Despite having a similar transformative curse at its center, Bride of the Gorilla is no Wolf Man. Barney's transformed gorilla form is barely in the movie and nothing close to the sequence when Chaney's Larry Talbot first changes into a werewolf in that horror classic. Beyond that, there's no pathos. All of the Universal Monsters are deeply tragic figures on some level. With The Wolf Man, there's a real sense of pathos for Talbot as the curse consumes him. With Burr's Barney, there's not much beyond the sense that this murderer had it comin'.
There's not much emotional tension in Bride of the Gorilla's characters or plotting, which combined with underwhelming visuals and unconvincing melodrama makes the 70-minute film feel longer than it is. (The poster, which you can see part of at the top of this article, suggests a much more lurid and exciting film than what we actually got.) However, the most charitable read of the film is that Barney's cursed punishment is not just because of his wife-stealing murder via serpent but because of his disdain for the native culture. Even before he kills his employer, Barney is disrespectful of the jungle and the people who have lived here since before white men established a plantation. The curse doesn't just turn him into a gorilla-like monster; it forces him to engage with the jungle.
Of course this reading of Bride of the Gorilla can only go so far. The movie isn't drawing on real tradition or based itself in a real place; it's just an exotic Latin American setting and loose invention of folklore to create a titillating curse. Many of writer-director Siodmak's other movies, especially I Walked With a Zombie, play with other traditions in a similarly flawed way. The sympathies might be on the right side but the execution is part of the problem.
As a movie on its own terms, Bride of the Gorilla is a second-tier horror flick that monkeys with some interesting ideas that it's either unwilling or unable to fully do justice. As part of horror's tradition of using other cultures, not to mention its place in the filmographies of Siodmak, Chaney, and Burr, it's a worthwhile curiosity.