The Bride and the Beast (Rifftrax)

Film Year:  1958
Genre:  Fantasy, Horror
Director:  Adrian Weiss
Starring:  Charlotte Austin, Lance Fuller, a gorilla suit Three Stooges fans have seen many times before
Rifftrax Year:  2014
Riffers:  Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy, Bill Corbett

The Movie

Brack from This Island Earth stars in a movie scripted by the great Edward Wood Jr.  But since Ed Wood saves all the best scripts for himself, don't expect this one to nearly meet the quality of his auteur work.  The Bride and the Beast tells the tale of a newly wed couple Laura and Dan who keep a pet gorilla named Spanky in the basement.  No, I'm not making this up.  But wait, it gets weirder.  Laura and Spanky seem sexually aroused by each other, so much so that Spanky breaks out of his cage and tears off Laura's nightgown before being gunned down by Dan.  The next day Laura sees a hypnotist who delves into her past life where she was a gorilla herself.  In the wake of that, Laura and Dan honeymoon in the jungle where they are terrorized by tigers, alligators, and gorillas.

I don't say this often about any film, since for the most part I can usually deduce what a filmmaker is trying to do, but this film utterly baffled me.  I can actually find traces of other films in it, as the storyline of a woman with a repressed spirit inside her reminded me of films like The Mummy's Ghost and The Cat People, and I even see a dash of The Undead in the film as well.  Its how the cogs are put together that perplexes me so.  This movie is just weird.  Almost endearingly so.  The bestiality undertones of the film are...interesting to say the least.  I can't say the movie was engaging me intellectually, but it wasn't losing my attention.  There was just too much crazy stuff going on.

For about half its runtime the film is never the same from one moment to the next.  Going from a bizarre movie about an ape in the basement to an exploration of spirit, and it finally ends up in a jungle where they run away from stock footage of animals.  It's when it reaches this final portion is where the film finally stays anchored on something, and it couldn't have made a worse decision.  The final forty minutes are so padded and bloated that any points on bizarreness get worn down.  It doesn't matter how amusingly fake the movie looks anymore.  It doesn't even matter how oddly sensual it is.  At this point the movie becomes a bore.

If the film had tightened up that third act or had committed to being all-out bonkers from beginning to end then the film might have been...I have to be careful with my words here.  "Good" is not the word I'm looking for, nor "memorable" because even if it trips I doubt I'll ever forget this movie.  Let's just say it could have been "more of its promise."  The movie is something to behold, that's a fact.  There's a missed opportunity to push it that extra mile into "WTF" territory.

The Trax

Mike, Kevin, and Bill do pick up how bizarrely sexual the story is being played as, but oddly enough they seem to be staying safe with it.  Making jokes like "Hold on.  This is better than Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally." bring laughs, but there does seem to be a missed opportunity to go a bit more extreme.  Maybe I should be thankful they hold themselves back though, considering what could be said about this movie.

For the most part they approach it like a typical B-picture, which is fine.  I was laughing pretty consistently throughout.  They were the primary reason my attention didn't drift in the lengthy second half of the film, as they have some fun commentary of the constant stream of animal footage.  Even still, I express a bit of disappointment that there's a quota of fallback riffs being used here, implying wedding night unfulfillment and mocking the lead actor as bland.  Some of these riffs can be funny, but they also feel as padded as this movie's third act.

Do I recommend this riff?  Yeah.  It's funny, and this movie feels like it needs to be seen at least once in the riffing field.  There's just a nagging feeling of a missed opportunity here.  There is room for improvement, but I can't deny that I enjoyed myself.

Good