White Gorilla (1947)

Cast:

Ray Corrigan is Steve Collins / Konga, the White Gorilla / Narrator
Lorraine Miller is Ruth Stacey

What the box says:

Shunned by his darker clan memebers, a rare white gorilla wanders the jungle isolated and angry, growing more vicious by the day. As he terrorizes the natives and wreaks havoc in the forest, an epic battle is brewing between the black and the white gorillas. Who will emerge King of the Jungle?

Plot:

The Jungle stock footage ensues of creatures with the narrator, Steve Collins, explaining how he was guide. Cue the flashback to Morgan's Trading Post. As Morgan and couple of his buddies are enjoying themselves when Steve wanders in and claims he saw the White Gorilla.

C'mon, if you don't rat out Capone, you'll go down for everything... Morgan had heard of that tale before. Steve was the guide of Bradford who ignored him.

The natives captured Bradford when the little jungle boy has him and his party freed. Later, Bradford finds and chases the little jungle boy. However, he has to go up a tree to escape some lions. He spots a girl on a raft in the river. She's attacked by a hippo when Bradford Tarzan swings into action to rescue her.

The White Gorilla is outside the trading post. Of course, Steve is the only one who spots it which makes everyone think he's slightly more divorced from reality.

Voyeuristic White Gorillas on the next Springer... Back to the story, Collins explains the girl is the daughter of an explorer who got blinded. His party joins with Bradford's group. They're looking for the Cave of the Cyclops which is filled with treasures. Bradford is suspicious of Hanley, the explorer's guide, who wants the map. Hanley versus Bradford must ensue.

Attacking lions tend to unite the humans together. Hanley gets away from the group. Bradford is able to drive the lions away though the girl's father became lion chow first.

Bradford and the girl head back to his camp.

Carter, another of Bradford's crew, is on the trail unaware that the white gorilla is after him. Steve from a distance sees the white gorilla attack Carter. Rushing onwards, he is able to drag Carter away.

The white gorilla scares the elephants that chase after Hanley who hides where Bradford and the girl were. The elephants level the hut. However, the jungle boy manages to call the elephants off.

"I will love him, pet him, and call him, George...."

White gorilla runs into a regular gorilla. The fight is on.

Steve finds Carter and takes him to a nearby village.

Hanley lures lions to go after Bradford and the girl. The jungle boy gets Bradford and the girl away. Later, Steve finds Hanley's body.

Steve learns the natives avoid the jungle boy and his mother who live in the cave. The Tiger Men who worship the idol in the cave are partially controlled by the jungle boy's mom. She's planning on using Bradford and the girl to help them escape. The jungle boy has been controlling one of the idols to trick the Tiger Men. The Tiger Men want to sacrifice Bradford and the girl to the nearby tigers. Jungle boy tries to use the idol to calm the Tiger Men.

Steve goes for help but unaware the White Gorilla is following him until it attacks him. Things aren't looking good until the regular gorilla attacks the White Gorilla again.

Albino Dancing Gorilla on Fox's newest hit show. Steve limps off and reaches the trading post.

Morgan and his buddies rush to the cave, Ruth, Morgan's daughter, stays with Steve. Ruth hears about a missing village girl. She goes off to look for her.

I rekkin you better git off'n mah land afore'n I open fire on you The white gorilla follows her. Opening fire, the wounded Steve limps off to Ruth hearing the gunshot. He shoots the White Gorilla and takes Ruth back to the trading post.

Morgan and his buddies return. They didn't find anyone at the cave. Steve decides to finally leave the jungle. His narration is that the jungle is quieter without the White Gorilla. The regular gorilla finds its dead adversary and starts to hide its body.

What I say:

With the high dollar budgets for movies today, the idea of special effects just being some old stock footage of jungle creatures and a couple of gorilla costumes is a hard thing to grasp for today's CG-spoiled generation. I'm not too far ahead of them myself but at least remembering things like the puppet-motion Yoda in Empire Strikes Back rather than the CG Yoda hopping around on glitterstim-meth in the prequels.

Trying to keep track of the way the flashbacks keep popping up all the time does make any plot description a bit jumpy. How the main character can narrate scenes he couldn't possible have seen almost reaches to the warped Return to Horror High with "nightmare about a movie scene inside a flashback that was never told to the person telling the flashback" scene. Keeping track of how many times rampaging lions just try to attack our characters happens more in the movie than the phrase "White Gorilla" is used.

A good portion of Nabonga Gorilla's plot seems to be have used in this movie. Girl and her father explorer, expedition searching for a treasure, ...A 62 minute long movie comprised from pieces of footage shot in 3 days and with the stock footage of the jungle from a 1927 silent serial, Perils of the Jungle. Having our hero look at something in the old stock footage and act as if he can interact with it is the challenge. The narration explaining how the mother and her jungle boy needing the expedition to help them escape is another of those hard things to grasp. So many things are just thrown out you almost expect for the main character to wake up at the end and just realize the White Gorilla was a dream and then wonder if it was or not?

Putting different pieces of movies together isn't known for brilliance or coherence. It is typically the sign of directors having to do something cheap and editing stock footage into a movie cuts down on their budgets. We've seen what people can today which can work for a few minutes but not 90 minutes. Watch any of the dubbed trailers on youtube that play the narration from the GI Joe movie to the video footage from Team America: World Police and be amazed how well it meshes together. That sort of thing definitely doesn't work with White Gorilla.

Ray "Crash" Corrigan was the, hero, narrator, and the guy in the white gorilla costume. Mr. Crash was known for a starring in a large number of Westerns and for one other thing. He was known as one of the foremost guys when a movie needed a gorilla. According to IMDB, he was uncreditied as the gorilla in Ape, Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla , Nabonga Gorilla, White Pongo, Killer Ape, and several others.

Quotable Dialogue
"I saw the white gorilla."
"The hippo had seen the girl on the raft."
Morals of the Story
Plenty of owls live in the jungle.
Tree climbing can save your life.
Elephants are afraid of white gorillas.
Elephants are great rescue animals.
Gorillas are excellent stick fighters.
Gorillas cause fainting.