Thursday, June 21, 2012

Don't Open That Door! Bride of the Gorilla

Yowza, the second installment of my weekly column over at PopMatters.com, Don't Open That Door!, is up and running. This week's entry is the 1951 opus Bride of the Gorilla, starring raymond Burr, who would go on to TV glory as Perry Mason and Ironsides (and who would appear in the American version of Japan's 1956 monster-fest Godzilla). It's an oddly hilarious movie. To quote myself:

"Bodacious blonde Dina van Gelder is married to elderly, unsatisfying Klaas van Gelder and tucked away in a remote rubber plantation somewhere in the Amazon. (Hmm, “Gelder” sounds a lot like “gelding,” meaning “one who’s been castrated.”) Dina is bored and sweaty in the jungle and gets easily distracted by things like Klaas’s foreman, Barney, who is doing his best to create an love triangle of Amazonian proportions. (Hmm, “Barney” sounds a lot like “Barney,” meaning “purple dinosaur who loves children.”) What he doesn’t realize is that friendly Dr Viet also has a burning (though Platonic, we think) love for Dina—making this love triangle into a love quadrangle—while svelte serving girl Larina is hot for Barney. So it’s actually a love quintangle. (Quintangle, indeed.) Everybody keeping up? Spooky jungle-witch woman Al-long occupies herself by keeping an eye on things, which is probably just as well, seeing as how there’s all this drama and nobody’s even turned into a gorilla yet."


You can read the whole article here here, and you really should. Don't forget to Like it on Facebook, share the link, Tweet about it, +1 it on G+ or whatever it is you do tp spread the word about happy things. Thanks!

No comments:

Post a Comment