Hammer Horror Blogathon: Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell

“In my early teens, I went with groups of friends to go and see certain films. If we saw the logo of Hammer films we knew it was going to be a very special picture…a surprising experience, usually – and shocking.” - Martin Scorsese.

For me, the Hammer Frankenstein series is one of Hammer’s finest overall achievements. If its Dracula series degenerated into silliness (as enjoyable as some of the later entries were), its Frankenstein movies remained first-rate all the way through. I think the entries got stronger as the series went on, and how many movie series can say that?

Whereas the Universal Frankenstein had the monster as the connective tissue, the Hammer Frankenstein’s focused on the Baron himself and his attempts to create life. There is a mood of ineffable sadness to these films.  Countless lives are ruined as the Baron continues on his quest; he doesn’t care who he hurts to achieve his goals – the ends justify the means.

“Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell” (1973) was a last Hammer hurrah on several fronts: their seventh and last Frankenstein film; after six films, the last time Peter Cushing portrayed Baron Victor Frankenstein; the last Hammer film directed by Terence Fisher; the final screenplay by John Elder (pen name for producer Anthony Hinds).

“Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell” may not be the best in the series, but it’s a most effective Gothic chiller. It has the brilliant idea to put Baron Frankenstein where he belongs after a lifetime of attempting to re-animate corpses – in an asylum.

Still as lucid and cool as ever, Baron Frankenstein (Peter Cushing) may be an inmate but he’s practically running the place, thanks to his blackmailing of the asylum’s director (John Stratton), who likes to take liberties with the more comely of his female patients. Said director looks the other way as the Baron, doubling as the asylum’s doctor, dispenses medicine during the day but uses the asylum’s recently deceased to continue his experiments at night. In a nod to Burke and Hare, the Baron is not above killing an inmate or two to satisfy his need for fresh corpses.

When young doctor Simon Helder (Shane Briant) is sentenced to the asylum for experiments similar to Frankenstein’s, the Baron coaxes him to be his assistant in the surgery. Because the Baron’s hands were horribly burned at the end of the series’ previous, and best entry, “Frankenstein Must be Destroyed” (1969), Frankenstein guides Simon’s hands to put the brain of an insane violinist into the body of a hideous monster (Darth Vader himself, David Prowse).

(Cushing played the Baron six times. In 1970, Hammer re-booted the series with a younger Baron, Ralph Bates, in the ill-advised “Horror of Frankenstein.” It was dismal failure and the re-booting ended with that one film.  Even though it came between Destroyed and Monster from Hell, I don’t consider it part of the series).

The monster, now graced with intelligence, is only the latest in a series of failed experiments for the Baron, who only sees he has created life, but not the hideous monster he has created.

Prowse delivers a very good performance as the creature repulsed by his own hideousness, yet flooded with memories of his former life, love of music and yearning towards the beautiful mute girl Sarah (future Bond girl Madeline Smith), who aids the doctors.

It is a performance for which Prowse is justly proud. “Terry (Fisher) was a wonderful person to work with – sort of the doyen of the horror film. He was really a wonderful guy and gave me a lot of help and direction – unlike many who give you nothing at all except to have you just get on with it. The film probably gave me more satisfaction than any other I’ve done – including “Star Wars” (1977).”

If the Baron possesses a trace of humanity in him in the first film “The Curse of Frankenstein” (1957), his insatiable thirst for creating life is all-encompassing by the last film. Even when the monster is destroyed at the end, he is ready to start all over again, giving no more thought to his creations than we have on swatting a fly.

But there would be no more sequels, thanks to diminishing box office returns. Critical response to “Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell” was mixed, but after six films there was really no place else for the Baron to go, and if the taste for Gothic horror had dissipated over the years, it was pretty much decimated by the release that year of “The Exorcist.”

Still, there’s some potent imagery here. In addition to the dank asylum setting, the scene of the monster digging up graves in the asylum graveyard using a crucifix during a raging thunderstorm is a splendid piece of Gothic excess.

Speaking of excess, the surgery and brain transplanting scenes are pretty graphic, and helped garner the movie an R rating. The griminess of the asylum setting makes the scenes even more uncomfortable. Still, director Fisher is smart enough to cut away from the most gruesome parts.

Cushing was 60 years old when he made his last appearance as the Baron, but he still jumps on tables with the aplomb of Van Helsing in “Horror of Dracula” (1958). It’s obviously no stunt double as Cushing leaps onto a table and then onto the monster, knocking him out with a handkerchief full of chloroform before they both fall to the ground. Prowse remember it well: “When we were finished, everyone on the set just stood up and applauded. It was the first time I’d even seen anything like that! It was just great!”

The Monster from Hell exhibits probably the most extreme make-up of a creature in the Hammer Frankenstein’s, a design that was pre-sold on advertising materials and forced on director Fisher. “I disagreed with them from the start and tried my best to limit the makeup,” Fisher later said. “However, they had sold Paramount on the idea that the monster would be this grotesque hairy beast, so I could not make him human, but I reduced him as far as I could without ruining what they had sold it on.”

The film rarely strays beyond its asylum setting, a strong metaphor for the Baron’s state of mind by this time. Cushing’s Baron Frankenstein may be his powerful characterization. While his Van Helsing is one of the great vampire terminators of all time, that role doesn’t give him the depth the Baron offers. The final film is a suitable coda to a series showing an impassioned medical doctor vainly trying to create life in the laboratory, but degenerating over the course of six films into a heartless doctor whose humanity, ironically, has been crushed by the need to create yet another life form.

Peter Cushing’s Baron Frankenstein is a remarkable characterization in a fascinating series of films, a series that holds up remarkably well today.   

All quotations taken from Hammer Films, An Exhaustive Filmography by Tom Johnson and Deborah Del Vecchio, (McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 1996.):

It’s Hammer Time! For many of us, Halloween is not complete without a dose of Hammer Horror. This post is happily part of the Hammer Halloween Blogathon hosted by the Classic Film &; TV Cafe. Go here for the complete Blogathon schedule for lots of bloodthirsty reading:

http://www.classicfilmtvcafe.com/2013/09/coming-this-october-hammer-halloween.html.

The Devil Rides Out

It’s Hammer Time!

This year’s Halloween viewing was Hammer’s sensational “The Devil Rides Out” (1968), one of the greatest achievements from the famous British studio. It moves like a bullet, and segues from one marvelous set piece to another without catching a breath. In that respect, it’s one of the most contemporary of their films, and a splendid introduction to someone unfamiliar with Hammer’s legacy of horror.

Helmed by Hammer’s best director, Terence Fisher, and with a screenplay by famed fantasy writer Richard Matheson, adapting Dennis Wheatley’s best-selling novel, and ominous scoring by James Bernard, it’s Hammer operating at full thrusters, fully confident they are the best in the business and no one is going to tell them otherwise. Along with the great “Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed” (1969), it’s probably the studio’s last classic film, though there were quite a few good titles to come. But everything comes together in “The Devil Rides Out.”

While it’s not particularly scary, it is creepy, and possesses an unworldly aura about it. It’s also as much an adventure film as it is a horror epic. And as an added bonus, it’s set in England in the 1920s, so there’s marvelous period décor to look at and an assortment of beautiful automobiles with running boards,. Running boards come in very handy when one is trying to rescue a beautiful girl from a nighttime Satanic orgy in the forest. (I love running boards on old automobiles).

 

The Duc de Richleau (Christopher Lee, playing the hero for a change and very well too) meets his friend Rex Van Ryn (Rod Taylor look-a-like Leon Greene) to inform him their old friend Simon Aron (Patrick Mower) did not show up for a planned reunion. They go to Simon’s new country house just as a party is going on, filled with odd-looking people of various ages and nationalities, including the mysterious Mocata (plumy-voiced Charles Gray, oozing malevolence out of ever pore in what is arguably his best performance) and a beautiful girl, Tanith (Nike Arrighi), who Rex is instantly attracted to. .

Richleau suspects something is amiss and discovers that Simon has fallen into the hands of Satanists, headed by Mocata, who plans to baptize Simon and Tanith into their cult.

 

For the rest of the movie, Richleau and Rex attempt to keep Simon and Tanith out of Mocata’s clutches. Mocata doesn’t just dabble into the occult, but has supernatural powers, including the ability to affect the actions of other with his mind from far away, and the ability to conjure up all sorts of deviltry (literally) to stop our heroes.

Richleau and company go to the country estate of Richleau’s niece Marie (Sarah Lawson), her husband Paul (Richard Eaton) and their daughter Peggy (Rosalyn Landor), but Mocata follows them there. Rosalyn Landor turned down a role in “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” (1968) to do this film. Way to go Rosalyn! You made the right choice.

Mocata hypnotizes Marie to tell him where Simon and Tanith are, but is interrupted by Peggy. Marie snaps out of her trance and she orders Mocata out of their house. He says, “I shall not come back. But something will. Tonight. Something will come for Simon and the girl.” Gray delivers these lines with great relish.

With this message in mind, Richleau gathers Simon, Marie and Richard into a magic circle to protect themselves against Mocata’s messenger.

 

I said earlier that everything comes together in “The Devil Rides Out.” Well, maybe not everything. The special effects are sorely lacking, a charge even the film’s staunchest defenders agree with. It’s especially galling as they occur in what should be the highlight of the film, the aforementioned sequence with our heroes standing in a magic circle while the forces of Hell pummel them. On one hand, it’s a lost opportunity but the rest of the film is so strong, the mood and direction so sure, that one can overlook the shoddiness of the special effects.

And they are shoddy. One of Hell’s visitors is a tarantula, which is normal-sized in one scene and giant-sized in the next scene, then back to normal-sized. Most egregious is the appearance of the Messenger of Death on horseback, very badly matted in and with the horse moving backward and forward in fast motion. When Death is revealed, it’s against a black screen with nothing in the background. It’s almost as if they filmed these sequences last and ran out of money.

 

Much more effective in this sequence, are very simple, practical effects, like them hearing a pounding on the door, and Rex’s anguished pleases to be let in and, when refused by Richleau, the voice fades away into the ghostly distance.

In a 1975 issue of Cinefantastique Terence Fisher was astute enough to identify the film’s other main fault: “The love angle was very superficial. I don’t know why, probably my fault. The relationship between Nike Arrighi and Leon Greene never develops as it should have. The film would have been much stronger if it had. You see, it’s easy to put characters into a situation. It doesn’t matter whether it’s black magic or cops and robbers. It doesn’t matter a damn…but unless those characters have emotion in their interrelation with the situation they are put into, no audience in the world is going to be interested. The important thing is the emotional relationship they have, apart from the situation itself. And the worse the situation you put them into, the more excited the audience will become because they understand their feelings apart from what they are faced with.”

Fisher is right. Also missing is a scene explaining what attracted Tanith and Simon to Mocata’s coven in the first place. Even a short scene explaining their actions would have gone a long way to making us care about them.

 

“The Devil Rides Out” was based on a novel by Dennis Wheatley, one of England’s most successful novelists of the 20^th century. While he wrote in a variety of genres, it was his stories on the occult and black magic that were most popular. When it was published in 1934, “Goodbye Mr. Chips” and “Random Harvest” author James Hilton called “The Devil Rides Out” the best novel of its kind since “Dracula.”

Wheatley was considered an expert on the occult and his books are full of peeks into hidden rites and ceremonies. Each of his black magic books comes with this preamble:

 I desire to state that I, personally, have never assisted at, or participated in, any ceremony connected with Magic – Black or White.

The literature of occultism is so immense that any conscientious writer can obtain from it abundant material for the background of a romance such as this.

In the present case I have spared no pains to secure accuracy of detail from existing accounts when describing magical rites or formulas for protection against evil, and these have been verified in conversation with certain persons, sought out for that purpose who are actual practitioners of the Art.

All the characters and situations in this book are entirely imaginary but, in the inquiry necessary to the writing of it, I found ample evidence that Black Magic is still practiced in London, and other cities, at the present day.

Should any of my readers incline to a serious study of the subject, and thus come into contact with a man or woman of Power, I find that it is only right to urge them, most strongly, to refrain from being drawn into practice of the Secret Art in any way. My own observations have led me to an absolute conviction that to do so would bring them into dangers of a very real and concrete nature – Dennis Wheatley

 

 

Christopher Lee had been friends with Wheatley and had tried to interest Hammer in his novels. “I had been at Hammer for quite a long time,” Lee  said. “There’s a writer I know very well and he sells all over the world in every language you’ve ever heard of – his books would be ideal. I thought Dennis’ black magic stories were incredibly exciting – not quite Gothic, but very close to it. Hammer were (sic) very worried for a long time because they thought the black magic elements would cause them problems with the Church. I couldn’t understand why, because Dennis’ stories were based on truth: evil against good, the power of darkness against the power of light. The power of light always won, and I couldn’t see how anybody in the Church could object to that. Obviously I would never have advocated showing anything which related to a black mass itself, which would have been an indescribably obscenity and blasphemy.” (Quote taken from the notes to the film’s soundtrack CD).

Lee later said that since the film came out, he has received many calls and letters, and been stopped in the street from representatives and leaders of every major religion, thanking him for making the movie, and showing the very real danger and consequences of getting involved in the occult.

(I remember an afternoon about 30 or 35 years ago at the Catholic church I attended growing up. In all those Sundays, we never heard any sermons about Hell or Satan, except one time, when the pastor related how a teenager in the parish had started experimenting with the occult, and how awful it’s been for him and his family. He asked for our prayers for the family, and admonished the young people in the parish to never, ever delve into the occult. He didn’t go into specifics, but I remember his voice trembling as he said that, and he had very real fear in his voice.)

Hammer filmed two more Wheatley books. His novel “Uncharted Seas” became the basis for the looney tunes, but hugely enjoyable “The Lost Continent” (1968) – think “Ship of Fools” with rubber suited monsters, big breasted women and the Spanish Inquisition. Really.

Hammer’s last horror film was another Wheatley adaptation, “To the Devil A Daughter” (1976) with Christopher Lee as a defrocked priest trying to lure Nastassia Kinski to become a Satanic bride. Richard Widmark was the hero this time, looking like he’d rather be anywhere but there. It’s one of Hammer’s weakest films.

While “The Devil Rides Out” did very well in England, where Wheatley was better known, it died in the States. It had the bad luck to open after George Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead” (1968) and no way could Hammer’s period horror compete with the new breed of zombies. 20^th Century Fox handled stateside distribution and didn’t like the title, thinking it sounded too much like a western. In the U.S. the title was changed to “The Devil’s Bride”, but it didn’t bring in the money Hammer thought it would.

 

 

There’s a new Blu Ray of the film from England, and supposedly Hammer cleaned up some of the effects and made them more effective. I can’t say I’m very happy about that, but if it must be done at least have the original version available. I find it interesting how technicians in years past overcame budgetary and technological obstacles, and don’t think that should be erased just because it can be done better today.

Regardless, “The Devil Rides Out” continues to enthrall. Its pace is very contemporary and it’s time trickery ending would not be out of place in today’s cinema scene.

It’s funny how superstitions work on us. I consider myself pretty enlightened, and don’t believe in ghosts, or communicating with the dead. Yet, I wouldn’t attend a séance or play with a Ouija board for all the money in the world. I know, I can’t explain it either. I have zero interest in dabbling in the occult. But I will watch movies on the subject as long as they are as enthralling as “The Devil Rides Out.”

The Mummy (1959)

It’s Hammer Time.

Hammer’s first mummy movie, titled simply “The Mummy” (1959), is a real treat, and one of the famed British studio’s best films.

I decided to re-visit this favorite after I got the new issue of Little Shoppe of Horrors, a magazine devoted to Hammer movies. The new issue looks at the making of all the Hammer mummy movies. I continue to be amazed, and delighted, that a magazine exists devoted to Hammer movies. Twenty years from now will there be a magazine devoted to Jerry Bruckheimer movies? I seriously doubt it and if there was, then I think it would be time for God to pull the plug on all of us. (The question if there will even be magazines in 20 years is a question for another day).

Hammer enjoyed worldwide success and broke box office records worldwide with their monster re-treads “The Curse of Frankenstein” (1957) and “Horror of Dracula” (1958). Both films starred Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee and were directed by Terence Fisher.

Universal, the great horror movie studio of the 1930s and 1940s, knew a good thing when they saw it and offered up their other past properties for remaking. The next property was “The Mummy” a semi-official remake of the 1932 Boris Karloff classic, and elements from the B movie Kharis series starring Lon Chaney Jr. as the slowest mummy in movie history. As Bill Cosby famously said about these movies, “If you can’t outrun the mummy, you deserve to die.”

For “The Mummy” Cushing and Lee were re-united, along with director Fisher, ace cinematographer Jack Asher and production designer Bernard Robinson, who always made the Hammer movies look more expensive than they were. Regular Hammer composer James Bernard did not return for “The Mummy”, instead replaced by Franz Reizenstein, and it’s one of the film’s happy accidents that Reizenstein’s score accompanies the film. Christopher Lee feels it’s the best score composed for a Hammer movie, and I agree.

Felix Aylmer and Peter Cushing play, respectively Stephen and John Banning, archaeologists looking for the tomb of the Princess Ananka. They discover the tomb, but John doesn’t enter, due to a bad leg. Stephen goes in and accidentally reads from the Scroll of Life, which brings to life the mummy Kharis (Christopher Lee). (A flashback to Ancient Egypt shows Kharis as a priest committing the blasphemous act of using the Scroll of Life to revive his beloved dead Princess Ananka. His punishment was having his tongue cut out, being buried alive in her tomb and serving as her protector for all eternity.)

Shipping the tomb’s contents back to England, the Bannings are followed by Mehment Bay (George Pastell, a terrific performance) who uses the revived mummy to stalk and kill the defilers of Ananka’s tomb. No lumbering Chaney Kharis here, but a fast moving, unstoppable instrument of death. In one of the film’s best scenes, Kharis breaks through the bars and screen of a sanitarium’s window to get at Stephen Banning, who pounds and screams furiously at the door trying to escape.

Eventually, Cushing’s John Banning is the last of the expedition’s members to still be alive, but he’s temporarily saved thanks to wife Isobel (Yvonne Furneaux) who eerily resembles Ananka. Is Isobel the reincarnation of Ananka?

This is a gorgeously shot film, one of Hammer’s most beautiful. The tomb scenes have an eerie green glow to them, and the swamp scenes look like there’s red glowing coals emanating from the marsh grounds. Not sure where the light is coming from but it doesn’t matter. In horror movies I’ll take atmosphere over logic any day of the week and “The Mummy” is drenched in atmosphere.

Lee gives a very good physical performance as Kharis. There’s terrific use of his body and eyes in his scenes when he’s staring at his reincarnated Princess. Cushing, of course, is marvelous, as he always is. Watching Cushing and Lee grapple together in a Hammer Gothic is like watching Fred and Ginger dance…all is happily right with the world.

For a horror film, one of the film’s best scenes is not one of terror but a long dialogue scene between Cushing and George Pastell. Both know what each other’s motives are when Cushing comes to call on the new Egyptian who moved down the road. They feel each other out and soon begin to spar about England’s legitimacy in looting Egypt of its archaeological treasures. Beautifully acted and filled with tension, it really shows off Terence Fisher’s strength as a director. (His other masterpiece, “The Devil Rides Out” (1967), has a similar scene).

But nothing can compare to Kharis’ first attack on the Banning mansion. Kharis smashes through the windows and is unstopped by Banning’s shotgun blasts and skewering by a harpoon. Reizenstein’s music is gloriously all out here, filled with pounding intensity and booming chords. Kharis disarms Banning and begins to strangle him, when Isobel enters the room and screams. Kharis looks at her and Reizenstein’s evocative main theme kicks in, redolent of all things Ancient Egypt. With this piece of music, we know Kharis is looking at the visage of his beloved Princess. The whole sequence is a wonderful textbook example of how effective good film music can be.

According to the Little Shoppe of Horrors, “The Mummy” played in the United States on a double feature with Universal’s odd vampire western “Curse of the Undead (1959). If I was a kid back then and knew that double feature was coming, I would have been unable to sleep for weeks. “Curse of the Undead” has a lot wrong with it, but not the poster. It’s one of my all time favorite posters. Isn’t this stunning?

Hammer followed with other mummy movies with middling success, but none to match the timeless appeal of their first one. It’s one of the best films from the studio and one of the great Gothic horror masterpieces of all time. A wonderful movie.

The Man Who Could Cheat Death; The Bride and the Beast

It’s Hammer Time!

From the famed British studio comes “The Man Who Could Cheat Death” (1959) a glossy horror flick about a man who has discovered the secret of eternal life. This being a horror flick, such a discovery comes with a price, in this case, killing young, beautiful women and then secreting their glands to keep him going. He looks to be in his mid-30s, but in reality he’s 104 years old.

It’s Paris in the 1880s, and Anton Diffring plays the eternal man, a sculptor who first sculpts busts of his female models before killing them. It’s a good performance from Diffring, who excelled at playing these cold, aristocratic types. His latest victim is played by the stunningly beautiful Hazel Court, whose red hair and alabaster skin made her one of the most beautiful actresses of that era. She’s a wonderful actress too; no ingénue type, but you can feel her growing love for her sculptor, not knowing what he really has in mind for her. Christopher Lee brings up the rear as a doctor who sees his sweetheart fall under the spell of the artist.

The film has a lot going for it. Good cast, great production design (Hammer always made their films look more expensive than they actually were), and evocative lighting. I particularly liked the scene where Diffring opens his safe to drink his mixture to keep from going old. A luminescent green spills over the cup and fills the screen. The mixture looks like Mountain Dew, which made me go to the refrigerator and get a Dew. See, movies can influence behavior.

On the debit side, the film is awfully talky and slow-going. Director Terence Fisher could be a marvelous director, but this is one of his weakest efforts. Horror moments are few and far between, and there’s probably one talk too many about the dangers of prolonging life. The score by the usually reliable Richard Rodney Bennett is pretty undistinguished. The film needed some good old James Bernard bombast to spice things up at the end.

“The Man Who Could Cheat Death” is based on a play by Barre Lyndon called “The Man in Half Moon Street.” (Lyndon wrote the screenplay for “The Lodger” (1944) and “Hangover Square” (1945), two of my all-time favorite Victorian melodramas.)

“The Man in Half Moon Street” was made into a movie by Paramount Pictures in 1944 with Nils Asther and Helen Walker. I haven’t seen that version in probably 30+ years and don’t remember a thing about it, but I would be interested in seeing it again and comparing it to the remake.

“The Man Who Could Cheat Death” is by no means a bad film. It’s beautiful to look at (the DVD transfer is stunning), and is very well acted. It’s just kinda dull and talky. I’m glad I saw it, but for me, its definitely one of the lesser Hammers from the period.

Rating for “The Man Who Could Cheat Death”: Two and a half stars.

Far worst, but in its own way, more watchable is “The Bride and the Beast” (1958). It’s a terrible movie, but it’s so goofy that I found myself being mildly entertained for most of its 78-minute running time.

If the following sounds like an Ed Wood movie, well, that’s because he wrote the script (but not the original story, called “The Queen of the Gorillas” from Adrian Weiss, who also directed and produced).

Laura Fuller (Charlotte Austin) and her husband Dan (Lance Fuller, there’s a male porn star name for you) spend their wedding night at Dan’s house. Dan goes into the jungle to collect specimens for zoos. In the basement is a caged gorilla named Spanky (I am so not going there).

Spanky gets the hots for Laura, breaks out of his cage and steals up to their bedroom. He rips off her nightgown before being shot by Dan. Strangely, Laura does not feel threatened by the monkey’s advances.

The next day, Laura is hypnotized by a doctor. Regressing to a past life, it is learned she was a gorilla in a previous existence; not just any gorilla, but The Queen of the Gorillas. The doctor explains to Dan this probably explains her penchant for wearing angora sweaters (yep, we’re definitely in Ed Wood territory here).

For their honeymoon Dan takes Laura into the African jungle for his next expedition. You guessed it, Laura’s presence attracts the presence of gorillas in the area, setting the stage for the nail-biting climax – will Laura stay with Dan, or will her past life take over, forcing her to stay in the jungle and reclaim her Queen of the Gorillas moniker?

Before this can be decided, we’re treated to lots and lots of stock footage of wildlife in the jungle, including ferocious scenes of tigers in action. What are tigers doing in Africa? I don’t know either, but its likely producer Weiss had the stock footage, so why let it go to waste? In the film’s defense, the tigers are explained away in a scene where Dan is told that a ship leaving Asia with a shipment of animals lost its bearings on the shoals of Africa, and all the animals got loose and were seen roaming around.

“The Bride and the Beast” is badly acted and poorly directed. Its central story idea is goofy beyond belief. It’s probably a one star movie, but because the movie has several good gorilla suits (always a big plus with me), I have to give it an extra half star. Hey, it was better than “Wanted” (2008).

Rating for “The Bride and the Beast”: One and a half stars.