*version I watched was re-issue with "The Boys from Brooklyn" in the title* 1st watched 7/12/2020 - (Dir-William Beaudine): Pretty lame comedy/scary movie with a Lewis/Martin imitation played by Duke Mitchell and Sammy Petrillo (which is also their character names in the movie), and a bad guy played by Bela Lugosi(hence the title). The movie starts with the duo waking up on a lonely inhabited island supposedly due to walking out the wrong door during a gig near the island ?
Forgive me but I get a kick out of watching "Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla". It's a strange, one-of-a-kind movie.
If you choose to have a try at this movie for Bela Lugosi's sake, or for it being promoted as a 'horribly funny comedy' - let me warn you: it's ONLY worth the sacrifice of sitting through this idiotic 'spoof' for a TRUE fan of Bela Lugosi who (like me) can share his pain of being degraded from a horror icon and immensely variable character actor to a 'decoy' for luring audiences into the theaters to watch silly little teenager 'comedies'...From beginning to end, the movie is incredibly badly directed and acted (especially that little nerd Sammy Petrillo, a kind of Jerry Lewis for the VERY poor, doesn't stop getting on our nerves even for a moment), the 'special effects', namely the 'transformation scenes', make those in the silent version of "Dr.
BELA LUGOSI MEETS A BROOKLYN GORILLA barely qualifies as a proper film, although it is a madcap rip-off of a popular comedy series pairing up Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. This one stars the exceptionally irritating Sammy Petrillo (who looks just like Jim Carrey in DUMB AND DUMBER, except this time it's for real) and his buddy Duke Mitchell who travel to a remote Pacific island to live it up with the natives.
It's easy enough to take pot-shots at a movie like this, especially if you try stacking it up against other stuff. It's a long way from the best or worst I've ever seen.
Written by Tim Ryan and directed by Beaudine, this is a charmless old-fashioned lowbrow comedy, where a princess who went to college gives a necklace to a lousy singer; but for the two cretins (Petrillo slightly less annoying than the singer), the movie might of worked better, but not much better, as there's not much to laugh or at least smile at, with the main idea being not to rip off, but to spoof a rising duo, implying those were a couple of monkeys, the kind of 5th rate comedy which belonged to the lousiest TV slot; instead, remember Tim Ryan, Lugosi and Beaudine for their better work elsewhere.
This is actually a much better movie than its reputation. The shorthand is that it's a cheap movie with a couple of Martin and Lewis imitators.
The logo at the beginning of 1952's "Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla" reveals that this is a "Realart Picture," and while I would certainly hesitate to call this film an instance of "real art," I can now attest that it IS real fun. In it, the poor man's Martin & Lewis, Duke Mitchell and Sammy Petrillo, playing themselves, accidentally fall out of an airplane and land on the Pacific island of Cola-Cola, where they are rescued by friendly natives.
It is hard not to like this amusing little comedy chiller. Lugosi is in great form, given his age and health problems.
