The Bride and the Beast (1958)

To me, this movie is perfection.

Overrated

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

Rugged big game hunter Dan Fuller (a solid and likable performance by Lance Fuller) discovers much to his dismay that his lovely new bride Laura (a nicely sexy portrayal by fetching brunette Charlotte Austin) has a most troubling and peculiar affinity for gorillas. Dan is forced to shoot his pet ape Spanky (Steve Calvert in a funky suit) dead after the big brute breaks free from his basement cage and goes after Laura. Dan takes Laura with him on a safari to Africa. The expedition not only runs afoul of two lethal tigers, but also a couple of hulking gorillas who abduct Laura. Director Adrian Weiss milks plenty of compellingly aberrant thrills from the typically outlandish script by the notorious Ed Wood, Jr.: Weiss treats the weird and perverse premise with admirable seriousness, relates the gloriously wacky story at a steady pace, and concludes things on a bravely downbeat note. Naturally, Wood's script features the inevitable reference to angora sweaters and incorporates a pretty far-fetched reincarnation theme into the already heady mix (Laura was a gorilla in a previous life!). Kudos are in order for the surprisingly sound and sincere acting by sterling leads Fuller and Austin; they receive sturdy support from Johnny Roth as loyal native houseboy Taro and William Justine as helpful psychiatrist Dr. Carl Reiner. The scenes with the savage tigers attacking people are staged with rousing aplomb. Roland Price's sharp black and white cinematography and Les Baxter's sweeping orchestral score are both up to par. A pleasingly offbeat and unusual little oddity.

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

"The Bride and the Beast" (1958 - 73 minutes), photographed originally in black & white, is a supernatural drama of terror and scientific fiction produced and directed by Adrian Weiss. The script is of the fantastic Edward D. Wood Jr, the known Ed Wood, director, writer, producer and actor, also called "the worst movie maker of all time" for carrying through cheap films of dubious quality and with amateur actors. The incredible thing is that, after his death, all his work had become "cult", turning him into one of the most acclaimed accomplishing of the sort. The film tells the history of Dan Fuller, a young and famous hunter and his pretty bride, Laura, that is strangely seduced by a gorilla. Dan keeps in captivity, in the basement of his house, an enormous gorilla that he brought from Africa. In the night of his honeymoon, the dangerous beast becomes very aggressive, escapes from its cage and goes up to the room to meet the young woman. Something very strange happens between the beauty and the beast and Dan has to kill the gorilla. From there, Laura starts to have terrible nightmares, making her husband calls a psychiatrist. When the doctor hypnotize Laura, he discovers that she was a gorilla in one of hers last life's. Dan has set appointments to a new safari in Africa and takes his wife with him. Nearest the wild animals, the couple will live moments of great tension when Laura is kidnapped by one gorilla. A classic trash movie.

i was pleasently surprised at the first half an hour of this film. i was expected the usual hand held cameras, dodgy acting, minimum scene listing etc. i came to the conclusion that this film must have been made later into Ed Woods career until i looked at the box and saw it predates Plan 9. granted the stock safari footage later in the film and the impression we get that Ed Wood forgot his own plot during the indian tiger's sequence, this film i would rate higher than the rest of his other works. underneath all that is bad you can genuinely see that he had a vision.