Small House of Everything

Small House of Everything

Tuesday, February 10, 2015

FORGOTTEN FILM: THE WHITE GORILLA (1945)

Ray "Crash" Corrigan (the go-to gorilla suit guy for B movies, Tucson Smith of The Three Mesquiteers, and owner of the famous Corriganville film ranch) does triple duty in this lower-than-low budget movie:  he's the hero (Steve Collins), the title character (Konga...I did say the go-to gorilla suit guy, didn't I?), and the narrator.  Lorraine Miller (B-movie beauty who was the pride of Flint, Michigan, and one-time roommate of Donna Reed) provides the eye candy.  The rest of the cast includes George J. Lewis (Don Alejandro from Disney's Zorro), Francis Ford (a well-used character actor and director John Ford's brother), Budd Buster (who sometimes acted under the name "Bud Buster" and often as "uncredited"), and Charles King (who, as a teenager, supposedly appeared in Birth of a Nation and went on to a long career as a B-movie western baddie).  The rest of the cast (including one-time Tarzan Frank Merrill) were just archive footage from the 1927 serial Perils of the Jungle (I did say lower-than-low budget movie, didn't I?).

So you've this misunderstood white gorilla who is ostracized by the rest of his tribe, all of whom are black gorillas.  Eventually the white gorilla fights the leader of the black gorillas in a battle that will determine the fate of Africa.  Wait...what?  That doesn't make any sense.

And that, in a nutshell is the movie.

And what also doesn't make much sense is the promotion that billed this movie as featuring "Ray Corrigan, Lorraine Miller and an All Star Cast."

Written and directed by Harry L. Fraser and produced by Fraser & Merrick Pictures (thee company's only production, by the way), this is the flick that gave bad movies a good name.

Enjoy.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0039987/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

And for your edification, here's the nineteen minutes of surviving footage from Perils of the Jungle, the film that did so much to pad out The White Gorilla:

https://archive.org/details/PerilsOfTheJungleSurvivingFootage

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