The White Gorilla (1945) Online

Harry L. Fraser, the writer and one of the producers of this movie, was also the writer of Perils of the Jungle, the 1927 serial from which he took the archive footage. The serial did have good animal scenes, so it's hard to fault Fraser for finding a way to recycle what would otherwise be badly outdated and unusable silent footage. The problem, as every other commentator has noted, is the impossibility of integrating the two films smoothly, and the terrible plot -- if there is a plot -- of the new footage.

Frank Merrill, the hero of the 1927 serial, did play Tarzan in two later movies, Tarzan the Mighty and Tarzan the Tiger, but he was playing a different and unrelated character in Perils of the Jungle.

Crash Corrigan, the hero of the new wrap-around movie, made a specialty of playing gorillas, and he often played other roles in the movies in which he donned the gorilla suit, but I believe this may be the only movie in which his human character directly confronts his animal character.

Just when you start to think this film isn't as bad as it sounds, it gets as bad as it sounds. It doesn't bother me that there's more stock footage than there is new footage, but it does bother me that they used the same stock footage clips two, three, & four times each! The narrator is integrated into the storyline verbally, but of course can't be integrated into the storyline physically, because the stock footage which comprises the main storyline is based on a 20 year old (at the time) silent movie! To get around this minor problem, the narrator takes the role of a voyeur. He's constantly hiding in the bushes, "observing" others (who of course can't see him because his footage won't be shot for another 20 years or so after they finished filming their part). The narrator rambles on constantly about why he didn't take a shot at the lions who were trying to eat humans, or why he didn't do this or do that. That would be OK, too, but after a while it just makes the narrator (who's the supposed "hero" of the film) seem like a wimp. The real hero of the film is a fellow named "Bennett" (actually Tarzan in the silent serial). There's lots of loose ends that are never tied up (like exactly what happened to Bennett, the Voodoo Priestess, & the little Jungle Boy). There's several fights between the Bad Black Gorilla & the Bad White Gorilla that are never resolved. They fight, then the narration goes elsewhere, then the two gorillas bump into each other again, act surprised, & start fighting again. When you mix all this nonsense together, you come out with one Good Campy Fun movie that must have had an influence on Ed Wood. The "African" wildlife scenes (from the silent serial) are actually pretty good, although non-African animals (like tigers & orangutans) are mixed in just to keep the viewer guessing at which continent this film actually takes place. I guess my favorite scene is the one in which Bennett has to save a damsel in distress from a newly discovered animal: a meat eating hippo! A word of caution to parents: although this film is certainly good fun for the kids, too, the Something Weird Video version contains several shorts after the feature, which contain full nudity, which is not stated on the video box.

How cheaply can you make a movie?

Take a couple of actors, have them shoot a few scenes, then splice them in to scenes lifted from a silent film and you've saved a fortune.

Such is the case of this story of a jungle expedition gone wrong. Told mostly in flashback by a survivor of the ill fated trip this is a movie that gives penny pinching a rich reputation.

Almost the entire film is told in voice over narration and its a scream. Its perfectly awful and a great deal of fun to listen to. The movie itself is a bad movie lovers dream as mismatched silent footage is put together in some really interesting ways. A small white kid travels on the trunk of an elephant, a group of native villagers bounce about at the wrong frame speed, and our hero watches it all in footage with a different grain and normal running speed.

This is a bad movie thats fun.Grab the popcorn and some friends and feel free to add your own commentary.

Warning: this is not a good movie in the conventional sense. If you want a good movie look elsewhere, but if you want a bad rib tickler look no farther.

Did you ever play that game where someone starts a story and then turns it over to the next person to carry it forward, and so on? Well that looks pretty much how "The White Gorilla" was put together, with this requirement - each story teller has to introduce a new person, and must include either a lion or an elephant in their segment. That would explain characters like the trunk riding elephant boy and his mother who acts insane to control the tiger men; really, I'm not making this up. By the end of the story, there's no resolution to the fate of these characters, they just drop out of the story along the way as if someone forgot all about them.

Ray Corrigan is certainly no stranger to ape films of the 1940's, he appeared as the man in the gorilla suit for a whole slew of these jungle epics. Here he's actually top billed for portraying both the outcast white gorilla and the story's narrator, Steve Collins. It's genuinely comical that Collins describes the on screen action from the vantage point of a treetop or some other hidden location. The technique allows him to see through jungle forests and the walls of caves as if he had X-Ray vision. Of course the reason for this, as I've come to learn from this forum, is that the film was spliced together with scenes from the 1927 silent film, "Perils of the Jungle".

Ray Corrigan and director Harry L. Fraser both made their marks years earlier in a fair share of 'B' Westerns each. Oddly, this film was the only time they crossed paths. Fraser managed to direct John Wayne in two Lone Star films in the 1930's - "'Neath The Arizona Skies" and "Randy Rides Alone".

When the film's "ultimate" battle between the titled white gorilla and a fearsome black gorilla eventually occurs, it's very much a disappointment. They wind up sort of wrestling each other in a contest that has no resolution, in fact it happens a couple of times. Corrigan's turn as a gorilla in "White Pongo" on the other hand had a genuinely creative slug fest against his opponent, using uprooted trees as weapons, definitely a livelier contest. For that reason, I'd have to give "White Pongo" the edge in viewer satisfaction over this film. In fact, I'd probably have to give virtually any other ape movie the edge over "The White Gorilla". I say virtually, because there's at least one that's definitely worse - "King of Kong Island".

This film is similar to Al Adamson's Horror of the Blood Monsters or the film They Saved Hitler's Brain in that it uses existing stock footage (presumably found very cheaply but shot years earlier)and then stuck together with new footage shot years later with a completely different cast. Somehow the people in the new film are to interact with the people in the old film. When done seriously (as in these three films) this sort of cheap paste up hatchet job hodge podge mess of a concept can produce amazingly bad results.

Even though the new footage is from the mid 1940's, its obvious the old footage is from a silent movie from the 1920's and does not match. The old footage also seems to have been transferred at the wrong speed in places. The White Gorilla Black Gorilla fight scenes (from the 1945 footage) are hilarious. That is if you do not think too deeply and see this as a visionary prediction of future race riots in the 1960's.

The production values of the old footage (said to be from a Tarzan serial) are really pretty good. However, the 1945 footage is worthy of Ed Wood Jr. and some ideas in these sequences with the Gorillas (and the pretty woman) seem to turn up 13 years later in Ed Wood's The Bride and The Beast. Adrian Weiss was the Producer of both, so there is a connection. And its safe to say fans of Ed Wood films, and serious students of bad films, would want to see movie.

Fascinatingly awful, this composite of Ray Corrigan (as the gorilla) waylaying Ray Corrigan (as the hero), interspersed with an extraordinary amount of cheesily acted old serial footage, has to be seen to be believed. Sad to say, the hero of the serial is Frank Merrill, a champion gymnast who was still a household name when I was growing up. Mind you, the chubby little jungle boy, riding on the trunk of a real elephant, does a creditable turn, but the rest of the serial players, especially including hero Merrill, heroine Gilbert and heavy Belmour (or Belmore) are strictly from hunger, enacting in a weirdly exaggerated style that went out of fashion around 1910. On the other hand, the animal footage of snapping lions would be still tolerably exciting, but it's ruined by poor presentation at the wrong speed.

As for the talkative framing story of the white gorilla, it will enthrall only Mr Corrigan's keenest fans. Production values can only be described as Poverty Row minus. It's sad to see Francis Ford, Lorraine Miller and an unflatteringly photographed Charles King mixed up, however briefly, in this charade.

"A rare white gorilla is shunned by the rest of the gorillas due to its unique nature and is forced to live a life of solitude. The time alone makes the gorilla hate all other primates and turns it into a murderous monster. A final confrontation between the white gorilla and his former tribe's leader will decide the fate of all of Africa," according to the DVD sleeve's synopsis.

Ray "Crash" Corrigan (as Steve Collins) extensively recalls seeing the 1927 serial "Perils of the Jungle", which had noting to do with "The White Gorilla" in his present form (as Ray Corrigan). To wit, Mr. Corrigan witnesses his "friend" Frank Merrill (as Ed Bradford) in the old silent serial. Mr. Merrill, who also played "Tarzan", must have got a kick out of seeing himself co-starring in a new movie, after almost 20 years of retirement from film. The opening credits promise an "All-Star Cast", but neither Bing Crosby nor Greer Garson appear in this movie. The 1927 footage is better than the newer parts.

* The White Gorilla (1945) Harry L. Fraser ~ Ray Corrigan, Lorraine Miller, Frank Merrill

If you're looking for one of those "So bad it's good" movies, this definitely fits into that category. I've seen nearly every movie Ed Wood ever made, as well as numerous other stinkers in my day, but I never recall having the experience I had last night watching this film. After watching "Plan 9 From Outer Space", I suspected I had just seen the worst film ever made. But at the end of "The White Gorilla" I was firmly convinced that I had just watched the worst movie ever made. Acting, directing, story, dialog, editing,... you name it, they all are bottom of the barrel and come together to make this train-wreck of a jungle/adventure film. The film seemed to be 70% recycled footage from the silent serial "Perils of the Jungle", 20% stock footage of jungle animals, and 10% new footage which consists mainly of Ray "Crash" Corrigan slumped in a chair, recovering from an encounter with the albino ape of the title, narrating an incomprehensible story about the white gorilla and a safari that ultimately is eaten by tigers. If you have this film on tape or DVD, I'd suggest watching this film with the whole family, and then when the kids are misbehaving, threaten to make them watch it again.

This film begins in a very weird jungle. It is probably the loudest one in the history of film, as many, many different animals constantly scream in the background--sounding like a group of people are running around the zoo throwing rocks at the animals simultaneously!! You also may notice that the animals you see in stock footage are from the US, Africa AND Asia. Additionally, most of the clips are clearly from a silent movie series (PERILS OF THE JUNGLE) as these segments run way too fast (silent films run at 16-22 frames per second and sound at 24--so silent films always look a bit too fast when played on modern projectors). What a totally bizarre jungle and it's amazing that the film makers took so little care in these scenes.

As for our "hero", Ray Corrigan, he narrates most of the film in a very flat tone. Additionally, when he recounts to his friends his exploits, he mostly just stands around as all the others in his party are killed or abducted. Some hero! Overall, there really isn't a film--just lots of old clips, a little irrelevant new material and some guy running about in a white gorilla suit! Frankly, it's boring and pointless--and not even entertaining--even for bad film buffs. A total bomb from start to finish.

This movie has a beautiful Outpost Trading mercantile establishment where a well stocked blanket and pots and pans section seems to be the gathering place for this great story. A cast of 3 or maybe 4 men and a woman or maybe two and a little boy take turns emoting with their sometimes unconscious faces as they fight for more stuff.

The boy does do some wonderful but apparently dangerous scenes riding on an elephant's trunk. Really. Then an elephant saves a woman from some other elephants. The white gorilla with the black zipper meets a bigger gorilla. And there's a monkey and some tigers and a few lions. The hippo scene works better than most hippo scenes.

The plot is based I think on Titanic, but instead of the ship sinking after it hits an iceberg, this movie starts to go under after it bumps up against the opening credits. A hole is ripped in the plot and there are not enough lifeboats to get the cast back to Central Casting.

The good news is Ben Affleck will not be doing a remake. He wants to, of course. He pitched it to Spielberg but Steve said he would not be able to budget something this big.

Three guys have nice mustaches and there's an old Victrola.

I liked it and recommend it for Bad Movie Night.

Tom Willett

The White Gorilla is a jungle movie shot in 1945 but it looks like it was made in the early thirties and often reminded me of the much older silent pictures. The reason for this is that this movie used stock footage that was available from films going back to the silent picture days. The main problem with this is that it just doesn't fit it well. Some of the old footage is put in at the wrong times. There are many times that the speed isn't even right. When watching this movie, it is very obvious that something is amiss here. This stock footage that was used just plain looks too old and out of place. It is a great detraction from what little plot there is to the movie. The stock footage that was used makes this look almost like a comedy. There just isn't too much going for this film. Being a low budget film is one thing but there just wasn't enough effort made in making this movie.

This film seems to leave you with more questions than it answers, such as what the heck were they thinking. Take the old country store setting add 4 guys sitting around spinning yarns, set it in the jungle and you have the start. Next add silent era footage for the action and put our hero on the outside looking in angle and you have this film. It's actually humorous to watch the hero coming up on the action time and again and always having a good excuse for not getting involved. The term slacker might come to mind but hey, since he has no time machine well all he can do is watch. The gorillas fighting each other is highly laughable. I almost half expected a right cross or left hook to be thrown. Another funny spot is our silent era hero saving the damsel in distress from the attack hippo. That extremely rare menace of the jungle. And of course who can leave out the end where the black gorilla comes upon the dead white gorilla, his sworn enemy and feels remorse. I mean jeez, give me a break. I almost expected to hear the black gorilla (in his best Zachary smith impression) to start with. "oh the pain, oh the agony of it all." In the end Ray Corrigan sums up the moral of the tale which wasn't the same one I came up with, but hey it's his gig. If you can find this movie cheap it is worth a look.. Other than that don't waste your time.

Anybody who thinks Bela Lugosi's poverty row horrors represent the absolute pits of 40s film-making has yet to see The White Gorilla, a piece of stinking crud of the cut-and-paste school of exploitation that even makes Jerry Warren's Creature of the Walking Dead start to look good. You may even begin to regret unkind words you've had for cut-and-paste 80s ninja pap peddler Godfrey Ho.

Any giggles at how bad this movie is will soon subside into yawns and groans as the sixty soul-scarring minutes of animal stock footage and recycled silent movie scenes take their toll on the viewer's dignity. The only reason it gets a rating of 3 from me, as opposed to a 1 or 2, is the occasional appearance of the guy in the white gorilla suit with the unusually large posterior.

"With every bone in my body aching, I limped away," the protagonist says at one point. You will likely feel much the same after sitting through all of The White Gorilla, a barnstorming candidate for IMDb's Bottom 100 list if ever there was one.

From what I've read, this film was made largely by splicing stock footage together with footage shot 20 years later. It's not particularly noteworthy or well-made by any stretch of the imagination, but it's surprisingly effective for being this poorly produced.

Much of the film's ample stock footage time is narrated rather poorly by a man who spends most of the movie off camera (his scenes were apparently shot years after the original footage). Some of the stock footage is used multiple times, in completely different scenarios. Moreover, the non-stock footage tends to be relatively bland. Still, the movie fits together surprisingly well and is reasonably entertaining, and this is quite an accomplishment. I give it 4-to-5 stars because I'm impressed at what the crew could do with such a terrible and corny idea.

It's no masterpiece, but the movie is entertaining in a campy-'40s-newsreel kind of way.

They must have had some leftover film and an old silent movie. Some Saturday afternoon, everyone got together and put together the bulk of this. Then a couple monkey suits left over from an old Lugosi film, a little narration, a scene in a trading post set, and voilà, you have a dumb movie. It apparently takes place in Africa but there are animals from all over the world. The elephants are mostly Indian elephants and there are tigers and lions. The story is about as lame as you can get in that there is no closure anywhere. Issues are never tied up. The narrator, Crash Corrigan, spends almost the whole movie thrashing around in the weeds, spying on people. He doesn't do anything to help. There is also a silly looking little boy who has dominion over animals and black natives. It goes around and around and never gets anywhere. This is a real bomb.

OK, you know how Star Wars re-released the original 3 movies with new cg effects, sound, color, etc? They were presenting a 20 year old movie to a fresh audience. That is exactly what The White Gorilla is; everyone on here has commented on how they used footage from this old silent film... COME ON!! They didn't just *use* the silent film, it *is* that old silent film! (with a few minor additions, the gorilla scenes and the narration). I haven't sat down and timed it out, but it's gotta be 75% old movie at the very least... probably more like 80-90%. I can't imagine what they DIDN'T show from Perils of the Jungle in this film. As far as the terrible commentary goes.. did anyone notice when he just stops narrating in mid-sentence? It's at the start of the scene where he (or someone) rescues the jungle-boy from the lions by lowering a vine, he says something like, "I started wondering again about the little jungle boy I'd seen earlier; little did I know-"...presumably little-did-he-know he was walking right up on him, but it just cuts off mid-sentence and he doesn't say a word until the next scene. Believe me, it's not intentional, like to add suspense or something. It's very unnatural, you can tell he kept talking. I've managed my way through about half this movie so far, can't wait to see how it ends! :P

Yesterday I had no idea that there were movies that were made from other movies, now I have seen two of them.This flick starts with what looks to be old silent film of African animals.The narrator rambles about a bunch of nothing while the animals act very unnaturally.Probably because they are actually captive.Then it cuts to an injured guy falling down and some other men find him and act very concerned.The man says he saw a white gorilla and then they all make fun of him and forget he was near death a minute ago.Then the guy starts to tell a story and the flashback is an old silent film.It's a long,drawn out story about how all the lions in the jungle are going crazy and are trying to kill all the people, who are all white of course.There's a little kid who rides on an elephants trunk and some Arabs and none of it makes much sense.There is literally no plot.The entire white gorilla thing is just extra stuff that has nothing to do with the story.Don't get me wrong, this movie is not boring.It just doesn't have a story.There's lots of action but it's all meaningless.Of course I'm giving a second star just because it wasn't boring.Watch at your own risk.

The White Gorilla (1945)

BOMB (out of 4)

Ray Corrigan plays Steve Collins, a jungle adventurer who is sitting with another group of people as he tells them about his dangerous encounter with the mythical white gorilla. It turns out that the white gorilla was thrown out from his group due to his color and before long he is battling with the normal looking gorillas. Oh yeah, we've also got a guy trying to save a girl in the jungle.

THE WHITE GORILLA is an extremely embarrassing and cheap exploitation movie that tries to pass itself off as something new when in fact it runs 62-minutes and I'd argue that maybe six of those minutes are new scenes. The majority of the footage comes from the 1927 serial PERILS OF THE JUNGLE. That serial is nearly impossible to see yet this trash movie is available on countless formats. Go figure.

The biggest issue with this movie is that it's extremely cheap, laughable and there really wasn't any attempt to blend the new scenes with the old ones. What really makes the older scenes stick out is the fact that they're silent so obviously it's like you're watching two different movies. When the "new" footage does try to interact with the old, it too is rather embarrassing and especially since you can't get the current cast into the old footage and the poor editing job is just obvious.

The footage from the 1927 film looks terrific. I will say that my interest in watching that film is certainly high thanks to this picture as there were all sorts of animals and it was great footage of them. With that said, it's hard to give THE WHITE GORILLA any credit for those scenes so the BOMB rating is certainly deserved here.

I hadn't read anything about The White Gorilla before I started watching it so it took me a while to realize most of it was an old silent film.

Ah but what a silent film it was, ginormous flocks, nay herds of male lions tearing up the landscape and chimps and orangutans and tigers all mixed and stirred to give you a world view of raw nature of the 1920s. I thought the narration was pleasant although I did notice the one point where he just stopped speaking for no reason at all.

Was it a bad movie? Maybe but it made me smile and kept me wanting to know what would happen next. And I found the sight of those droves of terrifically excited male lions trying to eat everybody in sight considerably more chilling than similar scenes in many "better" films.

Finally I LOVED the fact that due to the impossibility of actually merging the two films at the end the fate of the silent film cast was left up in the air as 'missing but there were a lot of bones laying around where they were last seen' -- outstanding!

Yep I'll watch this one again.

This was the weirdest film. It was made in 1945 but the main part of the film was from a 1927 silent serial "Perils of the Jungle". There is wonderful wild animal footage from it. The "modern" part of the film starred Ray "Crash" Corrigan, who comes to the Outpost Trading store after being attacked by a rare white gorilla (also played by Corrigan. He made a career out of playing gorillas and apes). He has a strange story to tell.

This part of the film is from the silent serial and is by far the most interesting part of the film. Bennett and his partner are captured by natives and about to be killed when they are rescued by a little jungle boy. He is very cute and seems to be quite skilled at handling the animals - he only looks about 6!!! The story is told by Corrigan who was part of the group but seemed to spend the entire film peering through bushes, up trees or running from the action!!!!

After being rescued they find a girl living in a hut with her blind father. She is able to get her hands on all the latest cosmetics somewhere in the jungle (may be from the "Outpost Trading Store"!!!) Every few minutes about 20 lions roar into the village - how anyone has managed to live a week in this jungle is amazing!!! How the old blind father has survived is very surprising - the lions trample their little hut minutes after Bennett gets there.

There is also a strange man that rescues the little jungle boy but doesn't come back into the film. Also the jungle boy's mother has convinced the natives that she is a high priestess - the little boy has found a way to move the hands of the idol without being seen so the natives are afraid.

Every so often the white gorilla appears (just to remind you he is the star) - it fights Corrigan, an ordinary gorilla and tries to carry off a girl who has fainted.

It is pretty entertaining. It makes you want to see the silent serial in it's entirety.

Man, even as a Ray "Crash' Corrigan fan, this film is very hard to get through. I couldn't figure out why this film starts with so many obvious stock footage cuts not having to do with the principle characters and then moves into black & white story line with our real star 'Crash'. But then, there is a see-saw story scene jumping involving some clearly silent footage from an ancient jungle film with a miniature Tarzan kid. What does this have to do with a "White Gorilla"? Nothing. Then, we get some silly narration plot story about the battle between a black and white gorilla in a racsist jungle? Crazy! This is getting far to crazy for me to follow. As a Crash Corrigan fan, I guess I was supposed to swoon over my hero playing the lead big game hunter and BOTH of the battling gorilla parts in this film. I wasn't swooning and saw little charm in this film because it seemed a total rip-off of someone's previous film and the plot went nowhere. I was grossly disappointed in this film especially when you compare it to other Corrigan western serials and his scifi monster films. This was a dud. BTW: there is a great steak restaurant in 100o Oaks, Calif named "Corrigans" that was opened and is owned by the present Corrigan family. The food is grand and the place has all of Crash's film memorabilia from his time in the movies. A great visit for fans of Crash or his western theme park in nearby Santa Susanna, Corriganville.