Return of the Ghost of the Son of the 31 Days of Cheese - Day 9 - The White Gorilla.

This 1945 movie is one of those films that should have the label – made from 100% recycled materials.

Let me explain – the film as is the want of most jungle pictures of the era uses stock footage of wildebeests hippos and such - however this film takes things to a cynical and bizarre extreme.

For one thing the male lead – and narrator is played by Raymond Crash Corrigan who also wears the White Gorilla Suit –

The White Gorilla suit had already been used that year in a film called – The White Pongo again with Ray Corrigan wearing the suit. Well he made it.

The story is a convoluted mess that has the White Gorilla being made savage by his rejection by the other gorillas in the forest – meantime The Male lead Ray comes stumbling into a trading station where he recounts a bizarre tale of a jungle boy and his mother and their hold over  natives and the fate of the men he had led on safari from this very Trading station some months ago –

Now we never actually see Ray and the other members interact – what we do see is Ray peering at something, the narrator saying something, then flash to other people as you watch them you notice something odd about their movements – they seem a) a bit jerky like the films not running right and b) their acting is not only not very good but its’ big as is chewing scenery big.

Well the reason for this is that this film uses footage from the 1927 silent movie serial Perils of the Jungle.  This adds unintentional comic moments to the film as when the jungle boy comes riding into the native camp on the trunk of an elephant. And the difference in frames per second for silent films and sound films accounts for sometimes jerky moment of the silent footage.

At the end the fate of the silent film folks is sort of tied up with a “and we found a pile of bones” or something like that form the Narrator, the movie doesn’t really care so why should we give a damn.

There is a silly fight between the White Gorilla and another not-white gorilla and some other lady ending up in distress but Ray shoots the White Gorilla and all is well.

There was not a single reason for this film to be made other than to serve as a b-picture on movie bill – it didn’t have to be anything as long as it was about 65 minutes long.  Its treating your audience as marks “hell they’ll watch anything” – an attitude that will show up again alas.

Enjoy – if you can – with artificially flavored Banana candy.