The White Gorilla

THE WHITE GORILLA-1945-They don’t make them like this anymore! Thank God!!! This movie was so cheaply thrown together that much of it uses portions of a 1927 silent movie (PERILS OF THE JUNGLE) as a flashback!

Stuntman and sometimes actor Crash Corrigan stars as Steve Collins, a jungle guide who returns alone from an expedition and relates “the chilling tale” of his encounter with a mysterious and legendary White Gorilla (also played by Crash), a simian outcast intent on killing anyone in his path.The silent movie flashback is incorporated when Collins tells of his expedition’s fate and his run-in with The Hairy White One. Collins watches mostly from a tree or behind bushes as two white guys in the jungle battle Tiger Men, lions and marauding elephants. There’s also a young white kid who rides on the trunk of an elephant and his mother who pretends she’s crazy to fool the locals into leaving her alone.



This footage in it’s original form may have been entertaining but here it’s pretty laughable especially with Crash’s inane narration.He is relating all this to a jungle trader name Morgan and two other guys. Half way through his tale Morgan’s daughter Ruth (Lorraine Miller) shows up and we get the skinny on The White Gorilla who also battles a regular black gorilla (though both are the usual phony man in an ape suit types). Eventually Collins kills his hairy nemesis when it kidnaps Ruth and we are told the cast of the other film is all dead.



I once saw an episode of the TV show VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA that re-used a black and white scene from the first season in a later color episode but using a silent movie from 1927 in a film 18 years later is something Jerry Warren wouldn’t even have the audacity to do!

It’s a pretty funny concept but I wonder if any of the audience in 1945 knew or cared? The other hysterical thing is the credits. After the title Corrigan & Miller’s names are show and the words “ and an all star cast”! That’s what it says in the opening credits!

Stuntman Ray “Crash” Corrigan began his film career in 1934 as Johnny Weismuller’s double in TARZAN AND HIS MATE. In 1936 he starred in the serial UNDERSEA KINGDOM (Lon Chaney Jr. is one of the bad guys) and a series of “Tucson Smith” westerns but mostly he played apes and other creatures. He was in the similarly themed WHITE PONGO the same year as TWG. His last appearance was as the space monster in IT! THE TERROR FROM BEYOND SPACE. He died in 1976.

Lorraine Miller was later in William Castle’s rarely screened IT’S A SMALL WORLD. Director Harry L. Fraser wrote I ACCUSE MY PARENTS and the Batman and Captain America serials among other stuff! He was also second unit director on some films including Bert I. Gordon’s THE CYCLOPS and THE BRIDE AND THE BEAST (which involves gorillas, reincarnation, was written by Ed Wood Jr. and interestingly enough was directed by Adrian Weiss who edited TWG). His directing career, which started in 1925, was mostly undistinguished but his last was CHAINED FOR LIFE (starring real life Siamese twins The Hilton Sisters). Calling him THE WHITE GORILLA’s director is being kind. He should be the “put to together-er”.


One last note: TWG’s musical score is credited to Lee Zahler who is also credited with the music to PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE.

One last final note: An actor in the silent footage named Frank Merrill also played Tarzan in late ‘20’s pre-sound era.THE WHITE GORILLA is crazy stuff.

"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one"-Albert Einstein

Thanks for reading!