The Bride and the Beast [Queen of the Gorillas] * (1958, Charlotte Austin, Lance Fuller, Johnny Roth, William Justine, Gil Frye, Jeanne Gerson, Steve Calvert) – Classic Movie Review 4218

Charlotte Austin stars as The Bride who turns her attentions away from her explorer groom (Lance Fuller) to The Beast – his gorilla – in the incoherent, awesomely terrible Ed Wood-scripted 1958 chiller The Bride and the Beast. 

Charlotte Austin stars as The Bride who turns her attentions away from her explorer groom (Lance Fuller) to The Beast – his gorilla – in director Adrian Weiss’s incoherent, awesomely terrible 1958 American chiller film The Bride and the Beast. Under hypnosis, she reveals she was Queen of the Gorillas in a previous incarnation. Laura and Dan just are not a marriage made in heaven!

The film’s screenplay comes from the pen of the world’s worst director – Edward D Wood Jr – and that alone ensures that it at least is good for more than a few great laughs. It’s a Beast of a movie.

Also in the cast are Johnny Roth, William Justine, Gil Frye, Jeanne Gerson and Steve Calvert. The story is by director Weiss.

78 minutes of Fifties black and white horror, released by Allied Artists, it is also known as Queen of the Gorillas, Wood’s original working title.

Steve Calvert plays the gorillas, Ray Corrigan plays Spanky, the wife-stealing gorilla, and Calvert’s circus clown friend Bobby Small wears the alternate gorilla suit in scenes requiring two apes in the same shot. But when Spanky bumps into the stone wall, it wobbles!

The story is inspired by the real-life Bridey Murphy affair then in the headlines. Bridey Murphy was a 19th-century Irishwoman whom US housewife Virginia Tighe claimed to be in a past life.

Stock jungle animal footage from an old Sabu movie is worked into the movie.

The Bride and the Beast premiered in San Diego in Southern California on January 29, 1958.

The cast are Charlotte Austin as Laura Carson Fuller, Lance Fuller as Dan Fuller, Johnny Roth as the houseboy Taro, William Justine as Dr Carl Reiner, Gil Frye as Captain Cameron, Jeanne Gerson as the cook Marka, Trustin Howard as the soldier, Eve Brent as the stewardess, and Bhogwan Singh as the native killed by tiger in a hut.

The Bride and the Beast is directed by Adrian Weiss, runs 78 minutes, is made by Allied Artists Pictures Corp, is distributed by Allied Artists Pictures Corp, is written by Edward D Wood, Jr, based on a story by Adrian Weiss, is shot in black and white by Roland Price, is produced by Adrian Weiss, and is scored by Les Baxter.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 4,218

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