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Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla (1952) - Bela Lugosi, Mitchell and Petrillo

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Offline metaldams




      Well folks, never let it be said I don’t review the best in high brow entertainment.  This week it’s the 1952 film BELA LUGOSI MEETS A BROOKLYN GORILLA.  A film that has made fifty worst movies of all time lists yet at the same time, I can’t think of a better time to review this one than now.  For the month of October, I wanted to do nothing but horror related comedies and since the Bud and Lou ones have already been tackled, I’m taking a month off from them.  So this one fits the horror comedy bill.  Then add to the fact last week was a Martin and Lewis film and it was obvious this had to be the movie I reviewed next.

      What, no Martin and Lewis, you say?  Technically, you’re correct, but in spirit, you’re wrong.  This film, in addition to starring Bela Lugosi (obviously), stars the comedy team of Duke Mitchell and Sammy Petrillo.  They are flat out Martin and Lewis impersonators to the point where Lewis felt threatened - so this is their only film.  Whatever you may think of the comedy, there is no denying the jaw dropping accuracy of seventeen year old Sammy Petrillo’s Jerry Lewis impersonation.  In look, sound and manner, he’s more Jerry Lewis than Jerry Lewis.  So that alone is enough for me to hold my interest.

      But there’s more.  Paul Payne, if you want to turn away after what I say, I don’t blame you.  There’s a mad scientist, played by Lugosi, turning a comic (Duke Mitchell) into a gorilla.  This is because Lugosi wants the leading lady for himself and turns her love interest into a gorilla so he can have her.  So what if he can be her Grandpa?  But yes, we see Petrillo playing charades with the gorilla, totally bringing to mind a lower but fun Stooge or Bowery Boy type moment.

      Speaking of Stooge, Lugosi’s henchmen?  Played by Mickey Simpson, A.K.A. the husband who tears telephone books in GENTS IN A JAM.  But that’s nothing compared to Petrillo’s love interest.  None other than Muriel Landers from SWEET AND HOT.  So if you’ve ever watched SWEET AND HOT and thought you wanted to see her chase around a loud Jerry Lewis impersonator in an unrequited big girl/skinny guy love plot - here’s your chance!

      What really brought me to this film, though, is Bela Lugosi, who I’m a huge fan of.  By 1952, Bela was washed up.  This is his second film in the four years since ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN and first in the U.S.  Bela’s career down turn is for two reasons.  One is he was a hard to employ alcoholic and morphine addict.  Secondly, his style of film, the gothic horror, was no longer being made and wouldn’t return until, as Bella’s typical bad luck would have it, in 1957 - the year after he died.  Bela really isn’t given much to do here.  The only scenes of note are his first meeting with the comedy team where they totally play up his Dracula image.  The other part is when Bela, in that unmistakable Hungarian accent, gets a mini monologue explaining a lot of scientific jumbo jumbo.

      The director of this film is the notorious William “One Shot” Beaudine.  He made very good movies in the silent era, Mary Pickford’s SPARROWS amongst them and also W.C. Fields THE OLD FASHIONED WAY.  After that, he was a poverty row mainstay, including a few of the Lugosi Monogram films of the early forties.

      No deep plot to dissect in this one or extended comedy gags.  This is simply a film for me that has a jaw dropping Jerry Lewis impersonator, Bela Lugosi close to the end (this would be his last film before Ed Wood), and some of the lower brow aspects of Stoogedom sprinkled in for good measure, namely the ape stuff.  Fun for me because there are enough links to other things I like, but to somebody who doesn’t watch black and white who has no reference for this kind of thing, I imagine this film would not be the ideal intro.
- Doug Sarnecky


Offline HomokHarcos

I've only once seen Jerry Lewis, and that was last week in Hollywood or Bust, but already I could tell how much of a ripoff Sammy Petrillo is. I was eager to watch more Martin and Lewis, and I'm a fan of Bela Lugosi, so what were my thoughts on this movie? Not too good.

On the plus side, Bela Lugosi was the main villain. I prefer him that way, a disappointment of mine was watching The Gorilla with the Ritz Brothers and finding out he played a butler instead of the main villain, at least in this movie he's evil. In a way his role here (and the movie as a whole) reminds me a lot of Zombies on Broadway, from the duo being inspired by a comedy team that was already popular, being nightclub performers, and finding Bela Lugosi as a mad scientist wanting to perform experiments on them. Unfortunately, he doesn't get as much screen time as I would have liked, taking a long time to finally show up on screen.

I like Dean Martin's music, so I was happy with the musical performances in Hollywood or Bust. Here, Duke Mitchell was just some guy singing songs on screen, and didn't make much of an impression on me. We got a gorilla mix-up scene, instead unlike the several other mix-ups, he really was a gorilla. Well, that's the way it appears until...

It's revealed the whole thing was just a dream. I thought that was very ridiculous. What was the point of that? This might be the worst dream reveal I've seen in a classic comedy like this, and brought down the movie (even if it wasn't that good in the first place).


Offline Dr. Mabuse

Here's a cinematic rarity:  a 1952 "horror-comedy" with Bela Lugosi and a pair of Martin and Lewis imitators.  The result is a strange cultural artifact, yet perversely watchable (I actually saw "Brooklyn Gorilla" on the big screen several years ago . . . and the audience loved it!). Lugosi makes the most of his limited footage as a traditional mad scientist.  You wanna talk audacity? Dig the ending that resembles "The Wizard of Oz."

Jerry Lewis and producer Hal Wallis tried to stop the release of this Z-grade turkey, but it escaped anyway.  And Dean Martin's feelings about Duke Mitchell and Sammy Petrillo? "Let 'em make a buck."


Offline Umbrella Sam

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Well this is one I’ve always been curious to see simply from the title alone. Truth be told, I’ve never really been a particular fan of Jerry Lewis or Dean Martin (although there are some Dean songs I like), so the idea of it being dominated by two imitators of them isn’t exactly the most appealing thing, although even I have to admit that Petrillo’s Lewis imitation is pretty spot on. Also to his credit, did have an occasionally funny line, such as the line about him not understanding what he was talking about in the native language. Probably the biggest surprise, though, was that Duke Mitchell (who’s apparently the same Duke Mitchell that sang for Fred Flintstone a couple times) actually does kind of have a charming personality and I liked his performance.

Just reading that title, I was expecting a film that was so bizarre and cheap that it was laughable, and to be fair, there were some moments like that. One scene I think of in particular is when Sammy is calling all the animals and it’s so obviously made up of stock footage of animals of varying film qualities, that was kind of funny. But in general what you have is a film that moves at a very sluggish pace; they just kind of keep doing the same thing over and over again, with Sammy running away from Muriel Landers or getting stuck in a cage with a monkey multiple times. Even Lugosi gets kind of tiresome after a while; I was expecting him to bring some life to this, but he really comes off as nothing more than a generic bad guy after a while, it’s really only when he’s first introduced that it ever feels like there’s a spark of the old Lugosi, which to be fair, could be because that’s what they were so clearly trying to remind the audience of with the Dracula joke. And yes, the “it was all a dream” reveal is, as is usually the case, dumb.

So, yeah, it’s bad, but not exactly in the way I was expecting. Yeah, there were some over-the-top moments, but not as many as I would have expected with a title like that, and this film instead makes the grave mistake of being flat out boring. Again, I do like Mitchell, and every now and then there’s a funny line, but I’m with HomokHarcos on this one. Not a good first impression.
“I’ll take a milkshake...with sour milk!” -Shemp (Punchy Cowpunchers, 1950)

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Offline Paul Pain

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Screenplay by Tim Ryan

Remember Tim Ryan and Wally Brown?  French Fried Frolic?  Columbia short from the early 1950s?  Yeah, we reviewed that.  He helped create this dumpster fire.

If I have time next week, I might just check it out though.
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