EDITOR’S NOTE: Bride of the Gorilla was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, March 13, 1971 at 1:00 a.m. and Saturday, December 2, 1978 at 1:00 a.m.
Edward G. Robinson Jr. was originally in this movie, but the producers fired him after he was arrested for writing a bad check for $138 to the Laguna Beach Garage.
Director and writer Curt Siodmak had already written The Ape, The Wolf Man, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, and I Walked With a Zombie before making this his first directed effort. He had ten days to make it.
Deep in the Latin American jungles — a bad place to be if you stay too long — plantation manager Barney Chavez (Raymond Burr) has murdered his boss and stolen away his wife Dina Van Gelder (Barbara Payton). Bad news for them: Al-Long (Gisela Werbisek), a witch, saw the crime and cursed Chavez to transform every night into a gorilla. A cop by the name of Taro (Lon Chaney Jr.) puts the murder of the rich man and all the gorilla killings together. The natives believe Sukura, a demon, is the killer. And as for Dina, Barney seems way too into going out alone amongst the wildlife at night when he should be in bed with her. By the end, Lon Chaney shoots a weregorilla, and Burr sees his own reflection before he dies, which feels like the roles are reversed from what we should be watching.
Speaking of bad checks, Payton got arrested for that and had a reputation as a drinking party-scene girl before she even started acting. Even after rehab, her parents would indulge in heavy drinking with her. Two years after this movie, Payton was paid $1,000 for her autobiography, I Am Not Ashamed. It had unflattering photographs of her, and she discussed how she was homeless and had been beaten while a call girl. She died in 1967 at the age of 39 of heart and liver failure. Her parents died of alcoholism a few years later.
Woody Strode is in this as a cop. He’d have an affair with Payton, which would have caused a big uproar in 1951.
You can watch this on Tubi.
