The Bride and the Beast

1958 "Human mate for jungle brutes!"
3.4| 1h18m| en
Details

When Laura and Dan get married, she's more interested in Dan's gorilla. It's revealed through hypnosis that she was Queen of the Gorillas in a previous incarnation.

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Producted By

Allied Artists Pictures

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Reviews

Colibel Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.
Kailansorac Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.
Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.
Marva It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,
Woodyanders Rugged big game hunter Dan Fuller (a solid and likable performance by Lance Fuller) discovers much to his dismay that his lovely new bride Laura (a nicely sexy portrayal by fetching brunette Charlotte Austin) has a most troubling and peculiar affinity for gorillas. Dan is forced to shoot his pet ape Spanky (Steve Calvert in a funky suit) dead after the big brute breaks free from his basement cage and goes after Laura. Dan takes Laura with him on a safari to Africa. The expedition not only runs afoul of two lethal tigers, but also a couple of hulking gorillas who abduct Laura. Director Adrian Weiss milks plenty of compellingly aberrant thrills from the typically outlandish script by the notorious Ed Wood, Jr.: Weiss treats the weird and perverse premise with admirable seriousness, relates the gloriously wacky story at a steady pace, and concludes things on a bravely downbeat note. Naturally, Wood's script features the inevitable reference to angora sweaters and incorporates a pretty far-fetched reincarnation theme into the already heady mix (Laura was a gorilla in a previous life!). Kudos are in order for the surprisingly sound and sincere acting by sterling leads Fuller and Austin; they receive sturdy support from Johnny Roth as loyal native houseboy Taro and William Justine as helpful psychiatrist Dr. Carl Reiner. The scenes with the savage tigers attacking people are staged with rousing aplomb. Roland Price's sharp black and white cinematography and Les Baxter's sweeping orchestral score are both up to par. A pleasingly offbeat and unusual little oddity.
Andrew Leavold Just one of a slew of "girl and gorilla" films from the 1950s, The Bride And The Beast is from Ed Wood's script originally called "Queen Of The Gorillas". Bankrolled by Allied Artists and directed by a "professional" Adrian Weiss, it means a much slicker film, with important things like continuity and production values, but there's no mistaking the demented voice of Ed-baby and the weird undertow of aberrant sexuality all the way through the film.The Bride And The Beast opens with Laura and Dan, just married and already planning a honeymoon safari to Africa. Dan, the quintessential Great White Hunter, has decked out his pad with hundreds of trophies, has a native servant Taro (played by an American actor in black-face) who calls his master "Bawana", and keeps a huge gorilla named "Spanky" (that's actually Ray "Crash" Corrigan under all that fur) in a cage in his basement. Laura, who admits she's had a strange psychic connection with man's hairy cousins her entire life, presses up against Spanky's cage – and the sexual tension is electric! Later on their honeymoon evening while the couple are sleeping in separate beds – and there's a clear signpost – Spanky escapes from his cage, and starts to get overly amorous with Laura. Dan shoots the monkey dead, and they return to their separate beds. Happy Honeymoon.Laura is clearly shaken by her hairy ordeal, and the family doctor, who just happens to be an expert in hypnotism, is intrigued by her fetish for angoras and dreams in which she's covered in "kitten's fur". Regressing further under hypnosis, she discovers she was a gorilla in a previous life, and re-experiences her death at the hands of native hunters. Here's two of Ed's peccadilloes springing to life from the script's page: his transvestitism, and his keen interest in reincarnation and hypnotism. The doctor's character was directly inspired by his chiropractor Tom Mason, Bela Lugosi's body double in Plan 9, who's credited here as "script consultant".Things get bogged down when the Great White Hunter takes his bride to Africa. Ah, Africa… stock footage capital of the world! I suspect the two never leave the studio – none of the shots of wild animals match the action, and when driving a truck, they drive past the same clump of trees seven or eight times – in the middle of the savanna! The last half is essentially a lame chase between Bawana and a couple of renegade tigers – that is, until Laura cracks her skull and regresses even further. She's now in "Gorilla country" – hmm, I wonder how things will end? It's Beauty And The Beast if Walt Disney wore fur bikinis, and imagined being fondled by gorillas named Spanky. It's time to unleash the Beast in all of us – happy honeymoon as we marry up The Bride And The Beast.
thepringlegame i was pleasently surprised at the first half an hour of this film. i was expected the usual hand held cameras, dodgy acting, minimum scene listing etc. i came to the conclusion that this film must have been made later into Ed Woods career until i looked at the box and saw it predates Plan 9. granted the stock safari footage later in the film and the impression we get that Ed Wood forgot his own plot during the indian tiger's sequence, this film i would rate higher than the rest of his other works. underneath all that is bad you can genuinely see that he had a vision.
Leslie Howard Adams Let me see if I have this straight; Adrian Weiss produced it, Adrian Weiss directed it, and Adrian Weiss wrote (relative term) it, but this is an "Ed Wood film.?" Heck, he probably improved it. And it was most likely his imput that had Charlotte Austin staying with the gorillas over Lance Fuller. After all, in the dark, gorilla fur/hair could possibly pass for cashmier.