Wonderful character development!

An action-packed slog

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

Duke and Sammy are very much like Dino (Dean Martin) and Jerry Lewis. They end up stranded on an island with some friendly natives and the strange Dr. Zabor (Lugosi). Once Duke and Sammy meet Dr. Zarbor things end up wacky.This is a very cute and fairly funny film. I quite liked this one. This is a tongue-in-cheek, campy comedy-horror film. It's an entertaining movie if you like the old school type of comedy. There is a little bit of singing and dancing in the film as well for those who like musicals.This is NOT one of Bela Lugosi best films by any means BUT it is a good kind of cheesy film that tickled my fancy.8/10

Yes, this film was made on a shoestring budget. Yes, the plot is ridiculous. And yes, one of the best performances in the film is by a chimpanzee. But this is still a cute little film that can provide more than a few chuckles to any viewer who stumbles upon it.The wafer-thin plot involves two lounge performers named Duke Mitchell and Sammy Petrillo who wash up on a tropical island. They quickly make friends with the native tribe, but when they turn to a mysterious scientist to help them get off the island, they become involved in his evil plot to reverse the process of evolution in primates. Legendary horror film star Bela Lugosi plays this evil Dr. Zabor who intends to turn the two Boys From Brooklyn into gorillas. Can they escape the island before he unleashes his evil plan? Obviously this is a plot that could only have been played for laughs, and it pretty much is. There is nothing remotely scary about any of this. The acting is often atrocious, but not completely so. Lugosi brings as much bravado as he did to any of his films, and his screen presence is as strong as ever. Even though this was one of his last films, he still seems to have some energy left. Sammy Petrillo's Jerry Lewis impersonation is in fact hilarious. So much so that Lewis himself sued his former protégé. On the DVD there is a brief interview with Petrillo who is still pretty bitter about his treatment by Lewis who had apparently once promised to take him under his wing in the business. Mitchell's singing voice isn't bad, but his acting sure is. Charlita, who plays the island chief's daughter is nice to look at, but doesn't act that terribly well either. And the gentleman who plays Lugosi's henchman gives perhaps the worst performance in film history. I mean it is bad! Cheeta the Chimp plays Ramona the Chimp, and he steals virtually every scene he's in. Can you believe that little monkey is still alive?? If you have 74 minutes to kill, and need a few chuckles, give it a try. In spite of Martin Landau's comments, this film is still better than anything Edward D. Wood Jr. ever made! I'll give it 5 of 10 stars.The Hound.

No movie seems too awful for someone to claim SoBIG status for it. I suppose we must each draw our own lines in our own way. I think I must draw one here. Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla has all the ingredients for a fun D-grade movie – bad script, bad sets, bad acting, a gorilla, etc. However, it is so devoid of any spark of creativity that it offended even my meager aesthetic sense. In the pantheon of soft drinks, if such an erection were ever raised, this film would be decaffeinated, vanilla, diet Crown Cola: a cheap, shameless, tasteless rip-off. It plagiarizes the "Abbott and Costello Meet..." movies and those by that other comedy duo (Lewis and Clark, was it?), and just about anything else it can exploit.I only watched Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla because it had that Dracula guy in it. I forget his name. But the waning Count is only dribbled out for his notoriety and is completely wasted here (although having the seventy-year old Bela pawing Nona, the island maiden, does produce the only moment in the movie that is creepy...but not in the spooky way). Even given all of this, I may have let BLmaBG slide with three stars -- well, it does have Bela Lugosi AND a gorilla, two actually, and a chimp -- until the ending pushed it under the bottom: They couldn't be bothered to come up with one! I hope none of this is off putting. I'm sure many people will find this movie SoBig, maybe flat out 'ig,' and de gustibus non est disputandum.

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. The chief's daughter, Nona (played by a pretty actress called only Charlita), falls for the charms of good-looking crooner Duke, while her 200-lb. sister, Saloma (amusingly portrayed by Muriel Landers), takes a hot-blooded fancy for Sammy. Dr. Zabor, the only other "white man" on the island, and played by you know who, soon decides that Duke is the perfect test subject for his recent devolution experiments.... Anyway, I must admit how easily this silly confection went down with me. The goofball humor is so very stoopid that it strangely becomes quite funny, and it really is remarkable how much Petrillo looks and sounds like the 1950s' Jerry Lewis. (No wonder Jerry felt compelled to slap a cease-and-desist order on him!) Bela, a graduate of the Budapest Academy of Theatrical Arts, plays his role absolutely straight here and maintains his dignity; he may have been addicted to painkillers at the time, but this particular film is surprisingly painless! A twist ending at the tail end of the picture does much to mitigate some of the silliness and illogic that had come before, and even becomes very P.C. in its treatment of the overweight Saloma. Throw in a couple of nice songs, some cute antics from Ramona the Chimp (aka Cheetah), and a cool man-into-ape transformation and you've got yourself a perfectly acceptable entertainment, finely presented on this crisp-looking Image DVD. To my delighted surprise, I DO recommend this zany picture to both young and old.