User reviews

Laura Carson (Charlotte Austin) has just married big game hunter Dan Fuller (Lance Fuller.) On her wedding night she finds herself strangely attracted to Spanky, a gorilla gone bad that Dan keeps locked up in a basement cage. Before you can say "Ed Wood wrote this," there are gun shots, nightmares, hypnotism, and Dan's unhappy discover that bride Laura may be the reincarnation of a gorilla queen! Can you dig it? Now and then a bad movie becomes unintentionally hilarious, but most of the time bad movies are simply bad. BRIDE AND THE BEAST actually teeters between the two, and this is largely due to the two leads: even in the face of producer-director Adrian Weiss' obvious lack of talent, Austin and Fuller prove unexpectedly competent, and they actually manage to hold the worst of the dialogue at bay. What this means, however, is that BRIDE never self-destructs in the ludicrous way of such films as PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE--and in consequence it isn't so much unintentionally hilarious as it is unintentionally amusing in a mild sort of way.

The film is full of absurdities. Dan Fuller's basement, where the ill-fated gorilla Spanky is caged, has a refrigerator, but illumination is provided by torch. Servant Taro (Johnny Roth, in what seems to be his only film role) is very obviously a white man in bad "native" make-up; he runs around saying "Bwana" a lot. There is a lot of canned wild animal footage, shots of Africa that look suspiciously like shots of South America, and men in bad gorilla costumes. And Ed Wood being Ed Wood, he just can't resist writing references to angora sweaters into the script.

The print is mediocre, but it is worth pointing out that it was probably never very good to begin with, and the DVD release comes with several bonuses of no interest. Fans of cult films, and especially die hard fans of Ed Wood, will enjoy it--and for their sake I give it three stars. But just about every one else should give it a miss.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer

OK, don't laugh...I recommend this film to future actresses, directors and just plain viewers that want a good (unusual) time.

Bottom line, the movie is a stinker, like so many things Ed Wood was connected with in his life. The whole middle of the film uses terrible stock footage that has little to do with the rest of the film. Fully 30-45 minutes of the middle of the film could have been left out.

So, let's discuss the first 15-20 minutes and the last 10 minutes of the film--without giving away too much.

First of all, one thing different about this film from most Ed Wood films is that the two leads are real actors. Lance Fuller had done many movies with big names and Charlotte Austin had small roles in films such as "How to Marry a Millionaire" where she rubbed shoulders with the likes of Monroe, Bacall and Grable. And--looks-wise--Austin held her own. She was a very sophisticated and attractive looking girl.

But what makes this whole film work--for 25 minutes or so--is the fact that Austin plays the part straight. You really believe this beautiful, elegant model has a thing for gorillas.

The part that every budding actress or director should really see, though, is Austin's close-up, facials as she looks with growing lust at 'the beast.'

I'm a film buff myself, but I have NEVER seen any actress be able to convey so much with a few close ups as this woman did in the short sequence of her first gaze on the ape.

I know, I know...it sounds crazy, but you have to view it. Nothing in erotic films--for all the modern explicitness--touches what this film actress does with a few close ups.

It's a shame Miss Austin left movies shortly thereafter...she certainly had the looks and ability to have gone places in movies.

Check it out and see if you agree!

"The Bride and the Beast" starts off well with lots of potential that this could be a pretty good movie. The plot revolves around a man, his newlywed wife, and her strange connection with gorillas. Then the couple goes to Africa and the movie unravels. Forget all about the first part of the movie. Put it on the shelf for a while because you won't need to remember it again until you get to the end. You next get lots of terrible stock footage of African animals and the plot takes a side road as the husband hunts down two tigers. It's almost as though it turned into a Safari movie and a boring one at that. As you watch the different animals, the background scenery changes dramatically from shot to shot. The scenes, especially of the animals are shot in all different kinds of terrain. Very poorly done. At this point there is barely a string connecting the beginning of the movie to the middle. This goes on for quite a while. Nearing the end of the movie, they drop the safari and hunting and go back to the man, woman, gorilla plot to end the movie. It's too bad because this one had a chance if they just stuck with the original plot throughout the film. The Bride and the Beast" is disjointed and boring, not recommended.

The film is very absurd at the beginning and holds one's interest a bit, but beyond that it is just a whole lot of stuff that has nothing to do with the premise set at the beginning of the film. The film starts one way and then goes into a direction that really harbors nothing of the opening scenes and tosses into the 1950's world of stock footage Africa. Well, it is Ed Wood after all, the guy made a career out of making bad films and then he turned to making adult films and from what I've heard about them, they are not very good either.

The story, a newlywed couple is coming home after their marriage. The groom, played by Lance Fuller casually tells his wife that he has a gorilla named Spanky. Well he introduces the two and the wife seems to have a connection. Later, Spanky escapes and looks ready to get it on with the wife when he is shot by the husband. A hypnotist gets to the bottom of things when he hypnotizes the wife and she learns she used to be a gorilla in a previous life. Forget all that though as the newlyweds go to Africa where we see the husband hunt and then have to go after killer tigers and we get maybe five minutes of gorillas or anything having to do with the original plot before the movie ends!

The female lead is quite attractive, and all the cast members think so including the gorillas! Seriously, at one point the gorilla tears off the woman's nightie and I am cringing! Lance Fuller is his usual self, a guy with two expressions that managed to be in a lot of movies.

So, not very good at all, it may have been better had they gone with a more supernatural tale which is what I was expecting. Something along the lines of someone turning into a ape monster or something. No, instead we mainly get stock footage of nearly every animal in Africa and nothing that goes along with the plot at the beginning until nearly the very end.

This awful flick offers little scope for screenwriter Ed Wood's unique, uh, "talents," being mostly made up of boring stock footage. There's hardly even a plot, which may be a mercy considering what Ed Wood's plots tend to be like.

The whole "queen of the gorillas" thing is introduced early in the film, and then just dropped until about seven minutes from the end, as our protagonists head off to Africa to capture some giraffes and rhinos (Howard Hawks so ripped this off for HATARI!) and hunt panthers and tigers.

Yes, tigers. Much of the stock footage they had featured a pair of tigers, so either Adrian Weiss or Ed Wood came up with the notion that a ship carrying a pair of tigers had wrecked on the African coast.

Uh, yeah.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, this is better viewed as a RIfftrax episode than as a standalone movie.

It's got a lot of dumb writing, a lot of dumb character decisions, a lot of goofy concepts, and it's kind of what you'd expect from the poster art - dumb but with some amusing surprises.

What I found most interesting about it was the short bits of stock wildlife footage that was used, just because some animals don't quite look that way anymore, nor do you see that kind of footage really anywhere (sometimes for good reason).

As is explained early on in the film, part of the "safari" the characters go on is to capture wildlife and I'd never seen a zebra roped before this movie. Not something I went looking for, but it was quite the surprise. Probably not pleasant for the zebra, but it's just a visual you never see. (If you feel bad about it, keep in mind that it was a long time ago, and all the people who filmed it are dead now. Of course the zebra is, too.)

There are other cuts of film with rhinos, giraffes, tigers, and other animals in their environment that were probably taken well before Bride and the Beast was made, which probably puts them at least early 50s, if not late 40s or mid 30s.

The rhino stock footage shows rhinos in the wild that still have their horns as they weren't cut to protect them from poachers yet. It shows other wildlife in areas that presumably weren't wildlife parks, nor game preserves.

For that alone, it's somewhat interesting, even though those clips make up only a few minutes of the movie.

As a Rifftrax episode, I'd give it 8/10. Standalone, it's worth 5/10 judging it by so-bad-it's-good standards.

Things take a weird turn for newlyweds Laura and Dan when Laura finds herself strangely mesmerized by - maybe even attracted to - a gorilla. It seems that Dan keeps a gorilla in a cage in his basement like it's the most normal thing in the world. Oh, and he forgot to mention his basement gorilla to Laura prior to the wedding. Nice surprise! Through hypnosis, Laura learns she was a gorilla in a previous life. As the newlyweds head off to Africa for a honeymoon, it's pretty easy to see where this thing is headed. It's that predictable.

Beyond being predictable, The Bride and the Beast meanders it's way through about an hour of runtime with little to advance the main plot. Instead, the movie gets sidetracked into a story about tigers loose in Africa (don't ask). By the time we get back to the gorillas, I'd almost completely forgotten what the movie was supposed to be about. And when it's not dealing with the silly tiger plot thread, the runtime is filled with some wonderfully dull padding. Wandering through the jungle, stock footage of animals, and watching Dan rub his face - that's part of the excitement of The Bride and the Beast.

In short, The Bride and the Beast is a mess of a film. It wasn't much of a surprise to discover that the schizophrenic plot was at least partially written by Ed Wood. It's that incompetent.

2/10

This is probably the best (or at least unique) of Edward D. Wood, Jr.'s film.

What sets this film apart is that the first third of the film, dealing with reincarnation, is genuinely interesting, with fairly good dialog, acting and a genuine sense of atmospheric strangeness. The dream sequences are unique for their time and are quite effective.

Sadly, once the film moves to Africa, the film grinds to a halt. Only the downbeat ending lives up to the promise of the first part of the film, but this film shows that Wood did have his moments.

Probably the best part of the film is its unique score by Les Baxter. The music combines Baxter's trademark exotica with a genuine vein of unhealthy, yet bittersweet, romanticism that is truly singular and very effective. It might be interesting to some to know that Baxter used two cues from this film in his landmark exotica album PORTS OF PLEASURE.

Just married, big game hunter Dan Fuller (Lance Fuller) and his drop-dead-gorgeous bride Laura (Charlotte Austin) drive to Dan's home to do what newlyweds do, but only after they've said hello to Dan's gorilla Spanky (Ray Corrigan), who is kept in the basement. Having taken a fancy to Laura (he's not the only one), Spanky busts out of his cage and creeps upstairs to take a closer look, whipping off the woman's night-dress, leaving Dan no choice but to go for his gun.

Shaken by the experience, Laura suffers from nightmares about the jungle, so Dan calls in his doctor friend, who uses hypnotism to try and get to the root of the problem. Regressing Laura, they learn that she was a gorilla in a past life, which doesn't bode well for her honeymoon... in deepest, darkest Africa: gorilla country! Against the doctor's advice, the Fullers continue with their planned excursion, happily hunting and trapping wild animals, but the fun stops when they are faced with two escaped man-eating tigers, and Mrs. Fuller is carried off into the jungle by a gorilla, who wants her to be his queen!

Anyone who knows a thing or two about Edward D. Wood Jr. (co-writer of The Bride and the Beast ) surely can't help but be amused by Laura's fondness for angora sweaters. But that's not the only funny thing about this movie... I mean, there's a gorilla called Spanky that's clearly a man in a fancy dress costume, the whole notion of being the reincarnation of a gorilla is quite preposterous, and it's patently clear that lions weren't available to the film-makers, so they had to try and work a couple of tigers into the plot instead. And that ending!

That said, the film isn't as inept as one of Wood's directorial efforts, Adrian Weiss being a competent enough director to make his movie appear relatively professional, despite the daft plot; it's no work of art, but he knows how to compose a scene and keep the pace lively, even with an overreliance on stock footage at times. It doesn't hurt either that Austin is such a babe: she's a delight whenever she is on screen (even when Laura is encouraging her heroic husband to slaughter another magnificent wild animal) and it's a shame that she didn't go on to bigger and better things.

I had fun, hence my probably overgenerous rating of 5.5/10, rounded up to 6 for Austin.

Seeing Ed Wood's name as screenwriter, I flapped my arms like a fly drawn to fly-paper. Expecting a whirl through 1950's cheeze land, for which Wood was infamous, I instead got something I wasn't expecting. Not that the flick's either good or cheezy in the conventional senses: it's not. But the 78-minutes does manage to be a little different.

Back in the mid-50's, a Colorado housewife (Bridey Murphy) claimed a regression through hypnosis to a former life as a 19th century Irish girl. It became a hot public story at the time. People liked to imagine, I suspect, what previous lives they too might have had. Anyhow, I expect Murphy's story inspired this episode of movie regression.

Overall, the flick's plot is oddly flatlined by too much African stock footage that pads rather than develops; plus a leading man (Fuller) whose face remains frozen regardless the level of danger. Too bad he couldn't get interested, but then this cheapo was a comedown for his rising career. Then too, the loose gorilla suits that badly need a fitting don't help. Together, these elements unfortunately drain rather than promote the story's unusual potential.

On the other hand, tbere's leading lady Austin's sterling performance, more worthy of an A-production than a cheapo. Catch her beautifully shaded expressions in a role that could easily have gone over the top. Too bad her career was so brief. Then too, the ending came as a big surprise to me. All in all, it's an exceptional climax for the conformist 1950's.

Anyway, the movie's an obscurity for good reason, unless, that is, you like a lot of big cats pointlessly running around stock footage jungles. Nonetheless, writer Wood does manage to come through in the end. So thanks Ed for the memorable last touch.

1958's "The Bride and the Beast" was a three-time loser on Pittsburgh's Chiller Theater, long before the cult of Edward D. Wood Jr. took shape following his death in 1978. You can tell it's a Wood script, with its angora sweaters and bestiality theme, but any camp value is totally drained off by the interminable stock footage once the picture shifts to Africa 34 minutes in. Before that it's a riot, with a captive gorilla caged in a bargain basement basement making advances toward Charlotte Austin's newlywed bride, passively taking it regardless of the 'stares' that other commentators have deemed sexy (more indicative of a bored actress given nothing to work with). The stakes get raised when a psychiatrist taps into her inner 'Bridey Murphy,' and deduces by regression that the girl was a hairy gorilla in a past life! Once the action enters safari country, we get endless big game hunting, none of which feature animals in scenes shot with the actual performers, nothing but stock footage of a leopard (referred to as a 'cheetah'), a black leopard, and at least TWO tigers (who find themselves on the wrong continent!) all getting dropped abruptly after 35 minutes for the dreaded climax, when the 'gorilla her dreams' pops up out of the blue to kidnap Miss Austin and take her back to his place for a rendezvous with three of his pals (I kid you not). Admittedly, Lance Fuller (previously victimized by another Bridey Murphy ripoff, "The She-Creature") was never the sturdiest of actors, but knowing how difficult it would be to keep a straight face while walking through a studio jungle, his bemused performance seems understandable (his character certainly did nothing to deserve his fate, even stripping off his shirt at one point). The worst thing an Ed Wood movie can be is boring, and this one pays the price for 78 minutes (even "Orgy of the Dead" is more exciting). Charlotte Austin looked like a decent actress in "Frankenstein-1970," but since that was her final film, she probably picked a good time to throw in the towel (think Virginia Leith in "The Brain That Wouldn't Die"). The three films that were paired with "The Bride and the Beast" on Chiller Theater were "Caltiki the Immortal Monster," "Phantom from Space," and "Doctor of Doom."

Gorilla's,gibbons, black panthers,tigers...in Africa?

Yes...EXCEPT for gibbons and tigers. There are NO tigers in Africa other than maybe the zoos. And gibbons are in southern Asia.

These older horror movies are silly,in that they toss in predators to shake up the tension,but,for those that are aware of the critters found in different continents and lands,goof ups like this tiger in Africa makes it laughable at best.

As far as the story its self..Meh 😑. Just the typical male ego run amok,placing everyone in danger with his lack of knowledge,and the ever present damsel in dustress. If you watch it,its simply something to pass the time of day.

Well, all I can say is Ed Wood strikes again. Like Orgy of the Dead, this is another movie where he wrote the screenplay. And, as per usual, the results are exceedingly strange. This one is about a woman who falls in love with a gorilla called Spanky because it transpires that she was an ape in a previous life. Well of course, she was. This one sets the scene well initially with some deeply strange early sequences, with our leading lady looking in that dreamy way into her gorilla dreamboat's eyes. But then our heroes relocate to Africa to check out stock footage and oh my goodness, they check out a LOT of stock footage. So much in fact that the film grinds to a halt as we watch giraffes running away from Landrovers and tigers kicking about (oh yeah, there are tigers in this stock footage Africa my friends). Things do perk up by the end though when Spanky the monkey returns and we have more human-ape love action. Its often borderline unwatchable but its also exceptionally wrong-headed , so naturally its one to endure.

This a movie about a guy fighting stock footage animals that's bookended by a gorilla love story. If you can find it in yourself to not cancel the film for its late 1950s racism and misogyny you'll be rewarded with one of the most boring and incoherent films you've ever seen.

I've seen Ed wood Jr movies before,, I thought plan 9 or whatever it was called, was bad. I've watched this movie before, don't know what made me want, to see it again. So couple on honeymoon, gorilla, gets out cage and starts fondling wife. She just stands there, gorilla rips gown off, then the husband shoots it. So guess he's gonna let the beast, get some before him. Instead of getting real help for her, his doctor friend hynotizes her. Then he still wants to go on his so called animal hunt. OK you're in Africa, they don't have tigers except in the zoo. They are native to Asia. And his guy taro, named like the Hawaiian plant, wearing a turban. Marta, is killed by the tiger, and she's wearing a sari. Come on now. This is pure crap, and I watched it again to see if I was right. Anyone saying this fantastic, is crazy as Ed Jr.

I didnt realize this was an Ed Wood movie until I started streaming it. He wrote it, but didnt direct it so that might account for it being a little better than some of this other works.

Little.

Not by much.

It's a bizarre story of a woman who marries a dude who just happens to have a gorilla in the basement.

But as if that's not odd enough, she has an unnatural connection to the ape and seems to want to have sex with it!

Then it turns out she might have been Queen of the Apes in a previous life, even tho there are not queen apes. There are male silver-backs.

It's a weird movie. Better than most that Wood was connected to, but that s not saying much.

Although this isn't technically an Ed Wood film (he only helped write it), it's very silly premise of a pretty woman being attracted to gorillas in more then an affectionate way has all the signs that this is an Ed Wood film, especially in his post Bela Lugosi film days (look at his film catalog such as Orgy of the Dead). I understand he has a loyal following and I like watching Ed Wood movies' from the 50s as well, but after watching some straight I realized I can only watch them if they are being riffed by a Mystery Science Theater 3000 or Rifftrax crew. In this case I watched it riffed by Rifftrax. The straight version is available on Youtube for free, the riffed version from Rifftrax is available for pay per view, or on Tubi free with limited commercial breaks (thats the way I watched it). I think that this Allied Artist production is less funny then when Ed was doing his films alone, here are real actors not women he picked up off the street, so I kind of sympathize for them being in this garbage. Lance Fuller is distracting because he has a constant smirk on his face even when the scene is supposed to be dramatic. Maybe he couldn't keep a straight face doing this shlock? The film posters for this show a blonde but Charlotte Austin is a brunette, go figure. Looking at the IMdb ratings, 57% rate it a 3 or less and I'm in that group. However, when its riffed its pretty good so I rate the riffed version a 7. Its one of the few things left for free to watch from Rifftrax that I haven't already seen and since it had a strong female role, my wife was interested in watching it with me, something she wouldn't be interested in if it was a space or Japanese monster film. So if you're looking for a Rifftrax date night film, this is a good choice. It's interesting that the highest demographic rating for this film comes from middle aged women too! Over a 5! It gets a 2 for me, I was cheering for the tigers to eat Lance and the ending was about the next best thing.