Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla (1952)

... aka: Boys from Brooklyn, The
... aka: La isla de los gorilas (Island of the Gorillas)
... aka: Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla
... aka: Monster Meets the Gorilla, The
... aka: White Woman of the Lost Jungle

Directed by:
William Beaudine

William Beaudine, one of the most prolific directors of all time with well over 400 film and TV credits to his name, was at the helm of this notorious turkey that reunited him with horror legend Bela Lugosi, who'd previously played mad doctors in the Beaudine films The Ape Man (1943) and Voodoo Man (1944) and plays the same here. Called White Woman of the Lost Jungle in the early stages, this was filmed in a little over a week for no more than 50,000 dollars (some sources claim as little as 12,000). Besides the presence of Lugosi, it's also notable for attempting to cash in on the Martin & Lewis craze going on at the time by drafting nightclub crooner / Dean Martin clone Duke Mitchell and the inhumanly irritating Jerry Lewis wannabe "comedian" Sammy Petrillo for the lead roles. This was actually going to be the first of many vehicles for its stars (a horrifying thought) until Paramount producer Hal B. Wallis (who had Martin & Lewis under contract at the time) threatened to sue. According to associate producer Herman Cohen, after the film was completed Wallis attempted to buy the film in hopes of destroying it, but that obviously never happened. Perhaps it should have!

On their way to Guam to entertain the troops (as if war isn't bad enough already without having to be subjected to these two!), Duke and Sammy crash land their plane on a tropical island called Cola-Cola and are taken back to a village by a peaceful native tribe ruled over by Chief Rakos (Al Kikume). There, they are treated to a luau, dancing and all the bananas they can eat, and also find a little time for romance. In Duke's case that's a good thing, as the chief's pretty daughter Nona (Charlita), who conveniently speaks English because she was educated in America, shows interest in him after he swoons her with a wretched song called "Deed I Do." In Sammy's case that may not be such a good thing as he's paired up with Nona's persistent kid sister Saloma (Muriel Landers) - whom he refers to as "two-legged blimp" and "baby elephant" for obvious reasons - and she won't take no for an answer.

Since the above isn't enough monkey business to sustain a feature, Lugosi shows up to help provide some in the literal sense. His character - Dr. Zabor - is the only white man living on the island and he's there doing some kind of research involving evolution that he sums up in just a few lines of incomprehensible dialogue. Nona works in the doctor's lab and when she and Duke begin seeing one another, Zabor (who's in love with his young assistant and thus extremely jealous) decides to use a special serum he's devised that can devolve animals to an earlier developmental stage to transform Duke into a guy-in-a-cheap-monkey-suit gorilla. The resolution to the story is actually pretty clever and amusing. It's just the tedious journey there that's the problem.

What really sinks this silly but potentially amusing movie is Petrillo, who speaks most of his dialogue in a forced / high-pitched / squeaky / whiny voice, screams, mugs and makes Lewis' annoying shtick almost look restrained by comparison. He's not the least bit funny and all I kept thinking was how much better this film would've been had HE been transformed into a gorilla instead of his more docile partner simply because we'd no longer have to listen to his grating voice. The highlights for me personally were some cute scenes centering around "Ramona the chimp," who's actually billed on some of the posters and is supposedly played by the same chimp who played "Cheeta" in the Tarzan movies.

As far as Lugosi is concerned, he plays his role straight (despite being given lines like "I'm Dr. Zabor. Welcome to my creepy joint!") and is fine. If anything, this film proves that it does indeed get worse than starring in Ed Wood movies as the films Lugosi made for the supposed "worst director of all time" are infinitely more interesting and entertaining that this one. Now a common public domain title, Brooklyn Gorilla is extremely easy to find on cheap DVDs or online for free.

★1/2

Mais ne nous délivrez pas du mal (1971)

... aka: But Don't Deliver Us from Evil
... aka: Don't Deliver Us from Evil

Directed by:
Joël Séria

Going into this blindly, I expected Satanic schoolgirls in a convent but instead, much to my surprise, got an early telling of the real-life Pauline Parker / Juliet Hulme murder case that scandalized New Zealand in the 1950s; a story later brilliantly told again by Peter Jackson in his breakthrough film Heavenly Creatures (1994). While Deliver may have beaten Jackson's movie to the punch by over two decades, Creatures is clearly the superior film of the two. For starters, it's factually more accurate in regards to the real case; even frequently utilizing direct excerpts from Pauline's diary in telling the story. Second, it attempts to actually flesh out the characters and make sense of both the brutal crime and the girls' odd, unhealthy and obsessive relationship. Finally, it's more visually inventive, better-paced, directed, written, shot and acted. Comparing both films side by side, Deliver seems downright primitive by comparison with numerous scenes dragged out endlessly for no reason whatsoever and all of the insight, intelligence and depth of the later film stripped away. In other words, there's a good reason Creatures is famous and this film is not. However, it's hardly fair to penalize Deliver because another film came along later and did the same thing better, so I'll be judging it on its own terms.

Things center around Anne de Boissy (Jeanne Goupil) and Lore Fournier (Catherine Wagener), a pair of rebellious teen sociopaths who get a kick out of doing various evil things. As Anne writes in her diary (which is used to narrate portions of the movie): "To sin has become our chief aim. Let the other idiots live their lives doing good." The girls entertain themselves at St. Mary's Catholic boarding school confessing fake sins just to give themselves a thrill, ratting out lesbian nuns they watch through keyholes, envisioning the priest (who amusingly refers to cinema as a "vehicle for depravity and degradation") giving a sermon in the nude and stealing lesbian erotica to read under the blanket with a flashlight when they should be sleeping. Right before summer break, the girls steal wine, robes, a goblet and other things, which they plan on using for a Satanic blood ceremony where they will wed themselves to the Devil (and symbolically to one another).

As summer rolls around, Anne's parents go out of town for 2 months and leave her in the care of their handyman Gustave (René Berthier), who oddly seems to disappear from most of the rest of the film. The two girls begin spending every waking moment together; gleefully laughing as they do and say all kinds of horrible things. They mockingly seduce an uneducated farmer's son (Gérard Darrieu), which almost gets Lore raped, and later make jokes about his family being poor before setting their barn and hay ablaze. They make the half-wit gardener (Michel Robin) assist them in their Satanic ceremony, which also ends in Lore almost getting raped, and then they poison his beloved pet birds. To cap off their wonderful summer, they pick up an older married man (Bernard Dhéran) whose car has broken down, take him back to Anne's house, strip down to their underwear and ask him all kinds of invasive questions about his sex life. Not surprisingly, Lore is almost raped a third time until Anne beats him over the head with a piece of firewood and kills him. The girls sink the body in the lake and return to school, where paranoia begins to chip away at them and they decide to go out in a blaze of glory in front of their parents and the entire school.

Director / writer Joël Séria seems content to cherry pick from the real case here and there as it suit him. He never bothers attempting to characterize the girls nor does he attempt to understand them, their motivations or even their environment. Because the supporting characters are thinly drawn and often shown as buffoons, there's no palpable, believable sense of oppression from authority / religious figures for the girls to rebel from. They are simply sadistic and evil young women who do sadistic and evil things just because they want to. The movie really has nothing much to say outside of trying to shock and provoke Catholics with its rampant blasphemy. Not that there's a problem with that per se, but something a bit more substantive could have made this far more disturbing and compelling. The only thing I personally found difficult to watch was Anne's cruel treatment of her kitten and some birds. Supposedly, the bird scene (including a moment where Anne crushes one in her hand) were accomplished by sedating the birds, so at least they weren't harmed making this.

Putting my mild disappointment aside about what this could have been, it's still entertaining enough as a piece of Euro-trash if you keep your expectations low. To pretend like it's high art because there are subtitles and angelic voices going "la la la" on the soundtrack every once in awhile is to be kidding oneself. The acting is OK (though the characters are all extremely unlikable and unsympathetic), it's a nice looking film, a few moments are genuinely disturbing, there's some decent sick humor and the grim ending is pretty memorable and surprising.

Because of the subject matter, this was banned in several countries (including in its home country for a short time after a debut at the Cannes Film Festival) and was never made available in America until the 2006 "director's cut" DVD release from Mondo Macabro. In the UK, a theatrical release was "presented" by Antony Balch in 1971, which boasted it was "The French film banned in France!"

★★1/2

Goodbye Gemini (1970)

... aka: Ask Agamemnon
... aka: Extraños gemelos (Strange Twins)
... aka: Mon frère... mon assassin (My Brother... My Killer)
... aka: Twinsanity

Directed by:
Alan Gibson

Blonde-haired, blue-eyed twins Jacki (Judy Geeson) and Julian (Martin Potter) have more than just clean-cut good looks in common. They're both also extremely immature, childish, naive, spoiled and really need to grow up. They're also so clingy, affectionate and dependent on one another they turn suspicious eyes wherever they go because everyone assumes they're lovers. When we first meet the duo, they're on their way to London via bus to take up residence in a posh new flat. We're never given insight into how they got their money, where they come from, what kind of upbringing they had or how their life was before this London trip, but we can assume something wasn't quite right. After all, one of the first things they do upon arrival is trip their grumpy landlady down a long flight of stairs with a strategically-placed teddy bear! Of the two twins, it's Jacki who seems to want to live a normal life. However, they soon discover "normal" is anything but when they begin hobnobbing with some rather unsavory types.

Unemployed bisexual hustler Clive (Alexis Kanner) becomes their first acquaintance after he actively seeks them out at a club and, along with his more level-headed female friend Denise (Marian Diamond), the quartet begin indulging in drink, drugs, parties and sex. But the fun times don't last. For starters, Julian can't seem to move past his unhealthy obsession with his sister. In fact, his unrequited sexual desires for her are driving him a bit mad and he can't help but to paw at her, kiss her and spy on her changing clothes. He also becomes extremely jealous when other men show any interest in his sibling. Clive's been showing interest but he has bigger fish to fry: He's gambled away all his money and is indebted to a violent goon (Mike Pratt). In order to get some quick cash he decides to ply his new pal with booze and drugs and then lure him to a hotel room where he takes photos of him having sex with a pair of drag queens (!!) Blackmail, murder and a police investigation follow.

This is an unsuccessful and pointless but sometimes interesting little film that's more entertaining as a time capsule look at Swingin' London than it is a drama or a thriller. Some part of me seriously doubts sexual mores were so loose even in the underground during the early 70s (observers of the brother's incestuous behavior behave like it's no big deal and every guy seems to be into what one character hilariously refers to as "the queer boy circus"), but it's a unique angle to take nonetheless. Unfortunately, the director drops the ball after the first half of hedonistic weirdness when he settles for a routine 'killer on the lam' story line, resulting in a film that is neither compelling as a drama nor thrilling as a thriller. As a huge genre fan I think it says a lot about the potency of the 'thrilling' scenes that I found myself more entertained watching a transvestite do a strip routine at a bar than I was whether "whoever did it" will get away with murder or not.

Director Gibson isn't very well-regarded in horror circles and movies like this and his two Hammer Dracula films (which are arguably the two worst in the entire series) show why. His direction here is flavorless, completely devoid of an individual signature style and he shows no attention whatsoever to visuals or detail. I guess if he does anything right it's getting solid work from his lead actors, which actually is a pretty big accomplishment considering the script they had to work with. The known names in the supporting cast - like Michael Redgrave and Freddie Jones - are given nothing of interest to do. This is still somewhat notable for containing the first score by Christopher Gunning, who'd go on to win multiple BAFTA Awards, and also has a pretty good theme song in "Tell the World We're Not In" by The Peddlers.

Shot under the title Ask Agamemnon (also the title of the novel by Jenni Hall it was [loosely] based upon), this was released theatrically by Cinerama Releasing both in the UK and the US in 1970. It received a VHS release here in America in 1988 on the Prism label under the title Twinsanity, which boasted some rather misleading cover art. In 2010, Scorpion Releasing put out a DVD, which contains a commentary track from producer Peter Snell and Geeson.

★★