Greetings!


Greetings, and welcome to VIEWING THE CLASSICS. Here you'll find capsule reviews of vintage movies from the early days of cinema through the 1970s, with a special emphasis on sci-fi, horror, and mystery movies. Be sure to check out the Pages links, where you can find a Film Index of all my reviews, links to the reviews organized by cast members, directors, and other contributors, and links to my reviews of the films of talented young director Joshua Kennedy.

Thanks for visiting!


Thursday, February 22, 2018

White Pongo (1945)

Starring Richard Fraser, Maris Wrixon, Lionel Royce, Al Eben, Gordon Richards
Directed by Sam Newfield
(actor & director credits courtesy IMDB.com)

When a giant white gorilla is sighted in the African jungle, perhaps the missing link between apes and men, an expedition is launched to bring the beast back to civilization.

Low-budget "Poverty Row" studio PRC delivers a jungle adventure, and despite its shortcomings, there's items of interest, including some surprising parallels to Creature From The Black Lagoon, released almost a decade later.  I appreciated how Raymond Schrock's screenplay allowed Wrixon's character to pursue Fraser's, rather than the other way around, as well as Ray Corrigan's performance in ape suit as the titular gorilla, underplaying the part instead of engaging in overly savage theatrics.  The film is rather slow-moving, stock jungle footage isn't integrated well, and the romantic triangle doesn't offer anything we haven't seen before.  However, Newfield delivers a fairly good-looking product with some entertainment value on a low budget.

No comments:

Post a Comment