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Mark of the Gorilla (1950)
Topic Started: Sep 21 2015, 04:54 AM (329 Views)
Laughing Gravy
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Mark of the Gorilla (1950) Dir. William Berke

I'd thought I'd never seen any of the Sam Katzman Jungle Jim features when I was a kid, but now that I've seen one, I'm fairly certain that I probably did, just blanked it out of my consciousness so that I could have some semblance of a normal life.

This thing is truly awful.

A gang of villains looking for hidden Nazi loot is using two guys dressed in gorilla suits to scare away natives so's they can look in peace, but Jungle Jim gets suspicious because the gorillas don't look or act like gorillas. When he investigates, they try to kill him, and he gets mad.

Now, that's an okay plot, as Columbia Pictures B-movies go, I s'pose. The problem here is of the film's 68 min. running time, about 42 min. of it is stock footage of animals (including tigers and lions fighting) or "cute" scenes with a chimp, a dog, and a raven. Johnny Weissmuller - old and flabby - takes her shirt off and swims, too, which does nothing for anybody.

Million-dollar Dialog:
Jungle Jim: "He turned the leopard loose on me. He's pretty smart for a gorilla."

I suppose there's some entertainment value to be wrung out of watching Weissmuller vigorously wrestle a stuffed leopard or a rubber snake, but not much; and his affinity and kinship with all the animals of the jungle strikes me as less like Tarzan and more like Snow White. An old, paunchy, male Snow White.

This thing is available from the Sony MOD program, along with a few other Jim pictures. Good luck.
"I'm glad that this question came up, because there are so many ways to answer it that one of them is bound to be right." - Robert Benchley
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panzer the great & terrible
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Mouth Breather
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William Berke' name in the credits was a major downer back in the day
Life is just a bowl of cherries, it's too mysterious, don't take it serious...
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