Okay, I've been mean to you guys. I can't say I'm gonna look at some old-school gorilla movies and then exclusively show you the ones that don't actually have gorillas in them. Of the gorilla movies I watched last year, The Monster and the Girl is probably the best of them in terms of sheer entertainment--it's a double feature all in itself, being punchy noir in its first half, and a sci-fi horror thriller in the second. That makes it pretty bizarre and thus a good fit for the A-List. After this, we'll get back to some of the more usual stuff we do around here, but not before I draw attention to what is surely the most valuable derivation of this exercise in gorilla films: of the four we've looked over, three of them all use the same "hairy" font that this movie does. Interesting...
Young Scot Webster is on trial for the murder of a man named Wade Stanton. We learn from Scot's testimony that he was framed--he was trying to track down a man named Larry Reed, and the trail brought him to an apartment where someone shot Stanton and forced the gun into Scot's hands. Scot's sister Susan gives the full story. She came to the city to "be somebody" and met Larry Reed, whom she quickly fell in love with and married. Except it turns out her beau wasn't planning on footing the bill for their wedding, and indeed there are now several men in Susan's life trying to convince her Reed never existed, who similarly want to be paid for their wedding accommodations. These men are gangsters under the employ of W.S. Bruhl, and it's apparently a recurring scheme of theirs to have "Larry" marry women, rack up high bills in their names, and then vanish, leaving them with a sizable debt, which can only be worked off in one way... (This being a Paramount movie from 1941 they never call it prostitution but you figure out how to read these things at some point.) Scot of course wanted revenge, but the case against him is too stacked, and he's sentenced to death. In jail he's approached by the mysterious Dr. Parry (George Zucco) who wants to extract Scot's brain after his execution. Scot consents to the strange request, having nothing to lose. But then, at exactly the halfway mark, we are in Parry's operating room. A sheet is pulled back. There is a gorilla underneath. Zucco looks down at his brain-in-a-jar and gets ready for the operation...
Ahh. It's sweet, isn't it? This one of those movies that Gets Me. There are quite a few ways in which I use that phrase, when I do use it: sometimes it means a horror film actually scared me, or a shock film actually shocked me. Other times I mean it in a less traumatic sense--it Gets my funny bone, is what I mean. This movie is halfway between. The sudden revelation of the gorilla, and the implicit future which lies in wait for Scot, which swiftly becomes explicit over the next half-hour, is one of the great movie moments of all time for me. After all, it makes sense for the noir film that this movie is to be called The Monster and the Girl for the first half-hour. There is obviously a girl surrounded by several individuals who could easily be called monsters, with either Larry or Bruhl being the biggest contenders for carrying the title's definite article. George Zucco's appearance early on in Scot's trial could potentially help foreshadow the movie's next direction, but one has to think about context. Zucco's primary appearances as a mad scientist--The Mad Monster, Dr. Renault's Secret, The Mad Ghoul, and The Flying Serpent--all postdate The Monster and the Girl. The only prior role which would have contextualized Zucco's appearance for audiences would have been as Andoheb in The Mummy's Hand a year prior. So this would have been a nowhere-twist for its native audience just as it is for those who watch it today.
I realized, while rewatching the film for this review, that the reason why I like these movies is that they are actually extremely pure jokes. Humor arises from a mental gap in expectation, with the expectations in question often relating to learned logic or social norms. That's why comedy is so fucking hard--if you abuse those gaps, it just pisses people off, and you have to avoid abusing those gaps over and over. But in trash movies, people manipulate expectation by accident, and it reveals what I think is a sympathetic sort of worldview. We all have our eccentricities, and in American society at least, we are told to restrain those eccentricities because taking the time to address them stands in the way of makin' money, y'see. (Also a continuously-embarrassed population is easier to manipulate but that's another story.) In trash, people expose those eccentricities--those weird, sideways beliefs about details of life (sometimes mundane, sometimes grandiose) that make them who they are. For better or worse. Trash speaks to a sensibility of individuality, and to a subversion of social norms that is as revolutionary and serious as it is funny. If nothing else, movies like these free up one's imagination. Someone got away with turning this into a gorilla movie halfway through--so why shouldn't your half-baked idea see the light of day? As long as it entertains people?
(I mean it's more complicated than that, but it always is.)
Anyway. I like this movie not only because it suddenly turns into a weirdo sci-fi horror movie (Death Wish with a gorilla is maybe a way of putting it), but because the noir elements on display throughout are actually really well done. It's hard not to love a movie where a gangster tells a lady about to fall out a window: "Watch that first step. It could spoil your makeup." The noir stuff keeps on until the end, including some psychological scenes with the gangsters as they slowly come undone when they realize a huge, strong guy is running around killing their gang in particular, but it's a little hard to take it seriously when there's a man in a gorilla suit lurking around.
The thing is, though, it's not a bad gorilla suit. A lot of other reviews noticed this too: the mask they have for it is strangely emotive, and it helps us hang onto the idea that this is a man in a gorilla's body. Plus the man in the suit is really good at acting like a real gorilla--isn't it nice when you can presume someone watched nature reels at some point to prep up for one of these? Because it's difficult for me to be serious about a man in a gorilla suit, however, I do have to say that watching a gorilla drop down on a man from a tree in a suburban neighborhood is a truly magical sight to behold. It's awesome that the gorilla of this movie is both "good" and hilarious. To have a funny-awful gorilla movie is one thing; to have one that's good but too serious is another; and now I just feel like a glutton.
The Monster and the Girl is a Janus of a movie but at least both faces are nice. I've seen some weird noir fusions now at this point and this is one of the weirdest and best of all of them. If you have a chance to give it a watch, don't miss it.
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