Well, now I've seen everything. I was finally able to see one of cult cinema's most notorious pictures, BELA LUGOSI MEETS A BROOKLYN GORILLA. I acquired it on a $1 (!) DVD from an outfit called Digiview, although I would bet that it's a bootleg of Alpha Video's DVD. Digiview might be a subsidiary of sorts, since the cover art seems to be the same, and you'd have to have balls to rip off someone's cover art as well as their DVD. That said, the audio and video presentation of Digiview's GORILLA is very good, especially for a film made in nine days for 50 grand back in 1952.

Not only does the plot involve mad scientist Bela changing a man into a gorilla (played by an actor in a suit), the film also features a pretty good trained chimp that walks on its hind legs, turns a key in its lock, opens doors, climbs into bed...it's actually impressive.

GORILLA's reputation mainly rests on two features:
* its ridiculous title
* its unusual stars: Duke Mitchell and Sammy Petrillo

Duke and Sammy were relatively noted at the time for being Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis impersonators. Duke didn't really look a lot like Dean, but he was a good-looking Italian guy who could sing a bit. Sammy's resemblance to Jerry, however, is uncanny. He isn't very funny, but he looks and sounds like Jerry, and is able to present a reasonable facsimile of Jerry's spastic screen persona. He and Duke could have used some better writers, though, because the gags in GORILLA are pretty weak.

In a nutshell, Duke and Jerry play Duke and Jerry, a pair of nightclub entertainers who accidentally fall out of an airplane (!) while luckily wearing parachutes (!!) and happen to drop onto a South Seas island populated by a native chief with a Brooklyn accent (!!!) and his smokin' hot daughter Nona (played by a yummy actress billed as Charlita). Also on the island is Dr. Zabor (Lugosi), who is in love with Nona, who also works as his assistant in the lab (the film establishes Nona as having an American college education, yet she has no idea what a clothing label is!!!...ah, I give up with the exclamation points). The story is as asinine as its setup; suffice to say that "hilarity" ensues, Duke does his signature tune, "'Deed I Do", Sammy screams and runs around, Bela gets to be Bela, and it's all pretty harmless, especially at 74 minutes.

Believe it or not, BELA LUGOSI MEETS A BROOKLYN GORILLA is not Duke Mitchell's most interesting film. More than 20 years later, he wrote, produced, composed, directed and starred in a mobster flick titled THE EXECUTIONER. In this violent GODFATHER-inspired Mob movie that was filmed as LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON, Mitchell, billed as Dominico Miceli, plays Mimi Miceli, the son of a notorious mobster who was exiled to Italy years earlier. Leaving his young son in the Don's care, Mimi heads to Hollywood to look up his childhood pal Jolly. With Jolly serving as his muscle, Mimi decides to get back in the Mob's good graces by kidnapping the local Mafioso, Chicky, holding him for $250,000 ransom, and sending his thumb back as proof ("Yeah, that's his thumb. I seen it on him a million times."). For some reason, the Organization doesn't seem as pissed off about that as you would think, as Chicky gladly agrees to let bygones be bygones, accepting Mimi into his inner circle. From there, Mimi attempts to increase his territory, branching into prostitution and gambling, threatening a black pimp he calls "Super Spook", and killing a helluva lot of people.

THE EXECUTIONER is as confusing and crazy as it is sincere. Mitchell is not a particularly skilled writer or director, but his performance is pretty good. He's in every scene, many of them eaten up by loopy monologues in which he tells the story of his father being bashed on the head every day by competing street-corner fish merchants (!) or how the Cosa Nostra has grown obsolete by hippies who "screw for free". In between Mitchell's nutty rants ("You're either in or you're in the way!") are plenty of nudity, sleaze, and gory killings, including a crucifixion above the Hollywood Bowl, a guy hanging from a meathook in his eye, and lots of squibbed gunshots.

Technically, THE EXECUTIONER is quite crude, suffering from a fragmented storyline and indifferent acting from the supporting cast (to no surprise, several actors are identified in the closing crawl as first-time performers). It takes place over a series of years, which is difficult to pick up on at first, due to the fact that the costumes, vehicles and hairstyles are clearly 1970's, and Mitchell, with his slight build and helmet-hard Neil Diamond hairdo, barely resembles a tough guy. However, one has to admire his devotion to getting his story, said to be partially autobiographical, on screen, and while his dialogue and filmmaking technique may be laughable, the sincerity with which he presents them is not.

After BELA LUGOSI MEETS A BROOKLYN GORILLA, Mitchell more or less fell out of show business until making THE EXECUTIONER in 1974, although it may not have been released theatrically until after his death. It was originally distributed by Matt Cimber (director of drive-in dreck like THE BLACK SIX) and retitled MASSACRE MAFIA STYLE. Joseph Juliano's Spartan Films later labeled it THE EXECUTIONER, the title under which it appeared on videotape by Video Gems. It's relatively difficult to see today, an alternately fascinating and hilarious peek behind the personality of Duke Mitchell. Maybe I should have Duke Mitchell Night at Crappy Movie Night sometime.

Wow! Fascinating info about Duke Mitchell, Marty. I only knew of him through his performance in BROOKLYN GORILLA. I might have to track down THE EXECUTIONER one of these days.

My interest in BROOKLYN GORILLA has (naturally) been tied in to my Herman Cohen site as one of his earliest films as producer. He talked about it at length in an interview with Tom Weaver (read it here). I have a bunch of screen shots from the Alpha DVD too (click on the title card if you want to go to the gallery) - yes this is a shameless plug, but it is on topic, so I hope Todd will forgive. :)

Duke Mitchell didn't drop out of showbiz after BROOKLYN GORILLA; he continued as a nightclub singer. In the late 60s (and I think early 70s) he was the regular headliner at, of all places, Dino's Lodge on the Sunset Strip. There was a large neon caricature of Dean Martin, and below it a marquee advertising Duke Mitchell. I think this is when Dino still owned the place, too.
Martin had no problem with Mitchell and Petrillo; he tried to convince Jerry to let the guys just have their time in the spotlight, but Lewis was furious. Even though he knew Petrillo--who had played Jerry as a boy on one of their Colgate Comedy Hours.

I believe Grindhouse is doing a DVD of THE EXECUTIONER at some point. The amazing trailer is on the I DRINK YOUR BLOOD disc. I also heard they unearthed Mitchell's lost film about the kidnapping of the Pope that was never edited together. Hopefully they will do something with that too.

Actually that is now in a major legal despute right now. There was a major thread on another messegeboard (dvdmaniacs) involving Duke's son, but because of legal reasons, was taken down.

And, of course, Sammy Petrillo starred in Doris Wishman's KEYHOLES ARE FOR PEEPING.

I have an unusual fondness for KEYHOLES because I saw it just a week or so after receiving a well-deserved drubbing from my grad school exam committee. As if decreed by some nurturing Goddess of Cinema, my local video store received over 100 sexploitation titles from Something Weird that week. I spent most of a miserably cold Wisconsin January in my living room watching Doris Wishman, Harry Novak, and David Friedman movies (and, inexplicably, Franju's EYES WITHOUT A FACE over and over again) through a thick cloud of marijuana smoke.

To see Jerry Lewis clone Petrillo, stoned out of his gourd with shoulder length hair playing a voyeuristic apartment janitor (and his castrating, nagging mother in drag!) interacting with strippers and decade-old stock footage while ostensibly taking a correspondence school course on how to be a sex therapist was one of the most mind-bending movie experience of my life.