Good concept, poorly executed.

A brilliant film that helped define a genre

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

All that we are seeing on the screen is happening with real people, real action sequences in the background, forcing the eye to watch as if we were there.

Not copyright by Jack Broder Productions, Inc. U.S. release through Realart Pictures: 8 October 1952. New York opening: 4 September 1952. Never theatrically released in Australia. 74 minutes. SYNOPSIS: A good-natured spoof of jungle pictures and horror movies, starring Bela Lugosi as a mad scientist turning men into monkeys on a remote Pacific Island.NOTES: Negative cost: $50,000. Movie debut of Sammy Petrillo. His partner, Duke Mitchell had a small part in the Martin and Lewis movie, Sailor Beware (1952).COMMENT: Here's a movie, scripted and played with all tongues firmly in their cheeks by a cast headed by Bela Lugosi, the lovely Charlita (love her sarongs!) and a couple of not-so-talented Martin and Lewis imitators. Despite the short shooting schedule (two weeks) and the minimal negative cost ($50,000, the movie's production values actually look quite lush, thanks to William Beaudine's surprisingly skillful direction and Charles Van Enger's attractive and really stand-out cinematography. AVAILABLE on DVD through Alpha. Quality rating: Ten out of ten.

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. As it is, it offers an occasion to remember and think about Tim Ryan, a B comedies scriptwriter, about Lugosi, who resembles Plummer, about Beaudine, who has done so many movies ….Lugosi gets the opportunity to explain the growth force in the evolutionary differentiation; his aim is to kick beings into evolving or devolving. He's an insane scientist (here, a biologist) who owns a castle on the island and loves the princess. He looked like Plummer, and has a nice scene when, at his castle, he sits, in the evening, drinking to quench his jealousy; perhaps surprisingly, in this comedy Lugosi takes a more chilly approach (in fact, the script offers him but one moment of raving, that of the scientific explanation of pushing evolution upstairs or downstairs), he seems more earthly. (Otherwise, Karloff, Chaney, Lee have been themselves in movies this dire.) A certain Charlita plays the princess, and she was better than her pair, the cretin entertainer, on screen.The featured duo was disgraceful and trite (with the joke being that they are the ascending comedians' monkeys, but also that, in the original duo, the 1st was a gorilla, and the 2nd a chimpanzee, which is unfair to those actors).

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

William Beaudine, one of the most prolific directors of all time with well over 400 film and TV credits to his name, was at the helm of this notorious little cheapie that reunited him with horror legend Bela Lugosi, who'd previously played mad doctors in the Beaudine films THE APE MAN (1943) and VOODOO MAN (1944) and plays same here. Called "White Woman of the Lost Jungle" in the early stages, this was filmed in a little over a week for no more than 50,000 dollars (some sources claim as little as 12,000). Besides the presence of Lugosi, it's also notable for attempting to cash in on the Martin & Lewis craze going on at the time by drafting nightclub crooner / Dean Martin clone Duke Mitchell and the inhumanly irritating Jerry Lewis wannabe "comedian" Sammy Petrillo for the lead roles. This was actually going to be the first of many vehicles for its stars (a horrifying thought) until Paramount producer Hal B. Wallis (who had Martin & Lewis under contract at the time) threatened to sue. According to Herman Cohen, after the film was completed Wallis attempted to buy the film in hopes of destroying it, but that obviously never happened. Perhaps it should have!On their way to Guam to entertain the troops (as if war isn't bad enough already without having to be subjected to these two!), Duke and Sammy crash land their plane on a tropical island called Cola-Cola and are taken back to a village by a peaceful native tribe ruled over by Chief Rakos (Al Kikume). There, they are treated to a luau, dancing and all the bananas they can eat, and also find a little time for romance. In Duke's case that's a good thing, as the chief's pretty daughter Nona (Charlita), who conveniently speaks English because she was educated in America, shows interest in him after he swoons her with a wretched song called "Deed I Do." In Sammy's case that may not be such a good thing as he's paired up with Nona's aggressive kid sister Saloma (Muriel Landers) - whom he christens "two-legged blimp" and "baby elephant" for obvious reasons - and she won't take no for an answer.Since the above isn't enough monkey business to sustain a feature film, Lugosi shows up to help provide some in the literal sense. His character - Dr. Zabor - is the only white man living on the island and he's there doing some kind of research involving evolution that he sums up in just a few lines of incomprehensible dialogue. Nona works in the doctor's lab and when she and Duke begin seeing one another, Zabor (who's in love with his young assistant and thus extremely jealous) decides to use a special serum he's devised that can devolve animals to an earlier developmental stage to transform Duke into a gorilla. The resolution to the story is actually pretty clever and amusing; it's just the tedious journey there that's the problem.What really sinks this silly but potentially amusing movie is Petrillo, who speaks most of his dialogue in a forced / high-pitched / squeaky / whiny voice, screams, mugs and makes Lewis' annoying shtick look restrained by comparison. He's not the least bit funny and all I kept thinking was how much better this film would've been had HE had been transformed into a gorilla instead of his partner simply because we'd no longer have to listen to his grating voice. The highlights for me personally were some cute scenes centering around "Ramona" the monkey, who's supposedly played by the same chimp who played "Cheeta" in the TARZAN movies.As far as Lugosi is concerned, he plays his role straight (despite being given lines like "I'm Dr. Zabor. Welcome to my creepy joint!") and is fine. If anything, this film proves that it does indeed get worse than starring in Ed Wood movies as the films Lugosi made for the supposed "worst director of all time" are infinitely more interesting and entertaining that this one.