Most undeservingly overhyped movie of all time??

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

1958's "The Bride and the Beast" was a three-time loser on Pittsburgh's Chiller Theater, long before the cult of Edward D. Wood Jr. took shape following his death in 1978. You can tell it's a Wood script, with its angora sweaters and bestiality theme, but any camp value is totally drained off by the interminable stock footage once the picture shifts to Africa 34 minutes in. Before that it's a riot, with a captive gorilla making advances toward Charlotte Austin's newlywed bride, passively taking it regardless of the 'stares' that other commentators have deemed sexy (more indicative of a bored actress given nothing to work with). The stakes get raised when a psychiatrist taps into her inner 'Bridey Murphy,' and deduces by regression that the girl was a hairy gorilla in a past life! Once the action enters safari country, we get endless big game hunting, none of which feature animals in scenes shot with the actual performers, nothing but stock footage of a leopard (referred to as a 'cheetah'), a black leopard, and at least TWO tigers (who find themselves on the wrong continent!) all getting dropped abruptly after 35 minutes for the dreaded climax, when the 'gorilla her dreams' pops up out of the blue to kidnap Miss Austin and take her back to his place for a rendezvous with three of his pals (I kid you not). Admittedly, Lance Fuller (previously victimized by another Bridey Murphy ripoff, "The She-Creature") was never the sturdiest of actors, but knowing how difficult it would be to keep a straight face while walking through a studio jungle, his bemused performance seems understandable (his character certainly did nothing to deserve his fate, even stripping off his shirt at one point). The worst thing an Ed Wood movie can be is boring, and this one pays the price for 78 minutes (even "Orgy of the Dead" is more exciting). Charlotte Austin looked like a decent actress in "Frankenstein-1970," but since that was her final film, she probably picked a good time to throw in the towel (think Virginia Leith in "The Brain That Wouldn't Die"). The three films that were paired with "The Bride and the Beast" on Chiller Theater were "Caltiki the Immortal Monster," "Phantom from Space," and "Doctor of Doom."

Just one of a slew of "girl and gorilla" films from the 1950s, The Bride And The Beast is from Ed Wood's script originally called "Queen Of The Gorillas". Bankrolled by Allied Artists and directed by a "professional" Adrian Weiss, it means a much slicker film, with important things like continuity and production values, but there's no mistaking the demented voice of Ed-baby and the weird undertow of aberrant sexuality all the way through the film.The Bride And The Beast opens with Laura and Dan, just married and already planning a honeymoon safari to Africa. Dan, the quintessential Great White Hunter, has decked out his pad with hundreds of trophies, has a native servant Taro (played by an American actor in black-face) who calls his master "Bawana", and keeps a huge gorilla named "Spanky" (that's actually Ray "Crash" Corrigan under all that fur) in a cage in his basement. Laura, who admits she's had a strange psychic connection with man's hairy cousins her entire life, presses up against Spanky's cage – and the sexual tension is electric! Later on their honeymoon evening while the couple are sleeping in separate beds – and there's a clear signpost – Spanky escapes from his cage, and starts to get overly amorous with Laura. Dan shoots the monkey dead, and they return to their separate beds. Happy Honeymoon.Laura is clearly shaken by her hairy ordeal, and the family doctor, who just happens to be an expert in hypnotism, is intrigued by her fetish for angoras and dreams in which she's covered in "kitten's fur". Regressing further under hypnosis, she discovers she was a gorilla in a previous life, and re-experiences her death at the hands of native hunters. Here's two of Ed's peccadilloes springing to life from the script's page: his transvestitism, and his keen interest in reincarnation and hypnotism. The doctor's character was directly inspired by his chiropractor Tom Mason, Bela Lugosi's body double in Plan 9, who's credited here as "script consultant".Things get bogged down when the Great White Hunter takes his bride to Africa. Ah, Africa… stock footage capital of the world! I suspect the two never leave the studio – none of the shots of wild animals match the action, and when driving a truck, they drive past the same clump of trees seven or eight times – in the middle of the savanna! The last half is essentially a lame chase between Bawana and a couple of renegade tigers – that is, until Laura cracks her skull and regresses even further. She's now in "Gorilla country" – hmm, I wonder how things will end? It's Beauty And The Beast if Walt Disney wore fur bikinis, and imagined being fondled by gorillas named Spanky. It's time to unleash the Beast in all of us – happy honeymoon as we marry up The Bride And The Beast.

Laura Carson (Charlotte Austin) has just married big game hunter Dan Fuller (Lance Fuller.) On her wedding night she finds herself strangely attracted to Spanky, a gorilla gone bad that Dan keeps locked up in a basement cage. Before you can say "Ed Wood wrote this," there are gun shots, nightmares, hypnotism, and Dan's unhappy discover that bride Laura may be the reincarnation of a gorilla queen! Can you dig it? Now and then a bad movie becomes unintentionally hilarious, but most of the time bad movies are simply bad. BRIDE AND THE BEAST actually teeters between the two, and this is largely due to the two leads: even in the face of producer-director Adrian Weiss' obvious lack of talent, Austin and Fuller prove unexpectedly competent, and they actually manage to hold the worst of the dialogue at bay. What this means, however, is that BRIDE never self-destructs in the ludicrous way of such films as PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE--and in consequence it isn't so much unintentionally hilarious as it is unintentionally amusing in a mild sort of way.The film is full of absurdities. Dan Fuller's basement, where the ill-fated gorilla Spanky is caged, has a refrigerator, but illumination is provided by torch. Servant Taro (Johnny Roth, in what seems to be his only film role) is very obviously a white man in bad "native" make-up; he runs around saying "Bwana" a lot. There is a lot of canned wild animal footage, shots of Africa that look suspiciously like shots of South America, and men in bad gorilla costumes. And Ed Wood being Ed Wood, he just can't resist writing references to angora sweaters into the script.The print is mediocre, but it is worth pointing out that it was probably never very good to begin with, and the DVD release comes with several bonuses of no interest. Fans of cult films, and especially die hard fans of Ed Wood, will enjoy it--and for their sake I give it three stars. But just about every one else should give it a miss.GFT, Amazon Reviewer

i was pleasently surprised at the first half an hour of this film. i was expected the usual hand held cameras, dodgy acting, minimum scene listing etc. i came to the conclusion that this film must have been made later into Ed Woods career until i looked at the box and saw it predates Plan 9. granted the stock safari footage later in the film and the impression we get that Ed Wood forgot his own plot during the indian tiger's sequence, this film i would rate higher than the rest of his other works. underneath all that is bad you can genuinely see that he had a vision.