CAMELOT THE LEGEND (1998)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*

Since I haven't reviewed any animated Arthurian stories except 1998's QUEST FOR CAMELOT, I decided to check out LEGEND, a low-budget quickie ground out the same year, allegedly to coast on QUEST's non-existent success. I don't doubt that this was the main motive for the movie's raison d'etre, but I will note that, even though LEGEND is a stupid story, it doesn't swipe anything from QUEST.

Quick setup: Arthur's son Modred has grown to manhood (and knighthood), and he plots against his kingly father, recently married to Queen Guinevere. Merlin can't do anything about Modred, since Arthur wants to believe his son loyal, but the wizard does imprison Modred's hoggish mother Morgan by magically sealing her in a cave for the past 20 years. The French knight Lancelot saves Arthur and Guinevere from a kidnap attempt masterminded by Modred, and though Lancelot doesn't say anything about wanting to serve Arthur, Arthur asks the Frenchman to join his retinue. But Lancelot's presence gives the evildoers a new angle to ruin Arthur's reign.

Despite the seriousness of the "Fall of Camelot" theme, this is a comedy, with dopey jokes, pratfalls (bo-oing!) and a couple of bad songs. The only halfway memorable "joke" is the image of Porky Morgan sitting around her cave watching the outside world via "sword-vision"-- that is, a magic sword that can broadcast images of current happenings on the wall of the cave. Morgan tries to expose both Lancelot and Guinevere to a love potion, but she messes up the scheme. By dumb luck Modred gets another chance to abduct the queen and brings her to Morgan's redoubt. Lancelot and Merlin dope things out and rescue Guinevere with a scheme that involves Merlin dressing up like a woman.

There are various low-energy "fights" that are clearly meant not to excite toddler-audiences. Lancelot duels a couple of ruffians in bloodless fashion, preferring to use his fists, and he even teaches Guinevere some elementary sword-tricks. Merlin and Morgan have a short "changing forms" fight a la THE SWORD IN THE STONE. Though Guinevere is liberated, Arthur gets the wrong idea seeing her in Lancelot's company. Modred tries to rouse other knights to deem Guinevere guilty of treason, as per the standard "Fall of Camelot" schema. But somehow Arthur and Guinevere "sing it out," and Camelot never falls at all.

I know that there are many worse cartoons than this one, but this one will do until a lousier one comes along.

THE MONSTER WALKS (1932)

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *psychological*

The main point of interest in this creaky “old dark house” mystery appears in the family dynamics underlying the mystery’s solution. Ergo, SPOILERS all around.

Rich Mr. Eartlton has passed away, and his family gathers at the family manse for a reading of the will. Family members in attendance are Earlton’s invalid brother Robert and the dead man’s daughter Ruth, who brings along her fiancée, Doctor Clayton. There are also two creepy retainers, Mrs. Krug and her grown son Hanns, played by Lugosi-esque élan by Mischa Auer. The will is read, and Ruth inherits most of the estate, though in the event of her death, Uncle Robert inherits. As for the servants, they both get a miniscule sinecure. But there’s one part of the estate not much discussed, for the late Earlton was some sort of scientist with an interest in evolution—which explains why there’s a big ape caged down in the mansion’s cellar. (This is the “monster” of the title, an anthropoid named Yogi, who looks too big to be a chimpanzee yet too small for a gorilla.)

After the will’s been read—at night, as is so often the case in old dark house movies—everyone—the family members, the servants, and Doctor Clayton’s comical Negro manservant Exodus—goes to bed at at the mansion. In Ruth’s room, she’s awakened from sleep by a hairy-looking hand, snaking out of a wall-panel to threaten her. Yogi the Ape appears to be still locked in his cage, though Hanns claims that the creature once displayed the ability to pick the lock and get out. Poor invalid Uncle Robert, who dotes on his niece in every scene they’re in together, believes that Ruth just had a bad dream. Then, to ease Ruth’s nerves, Mrs. Krug exchanges beds with the young woman—and the hairy hand comes forth onec more, strangling her.

Despite the title, though, the ape never “walks” out of his cage, so there are no uncanny “astounding animals” here. Rather, the owner of the ape-hand—simulated with the use of a furry glove—is, unsurprisingly, creepy Hanns. He’s actually the bastard son of Uncle Robert, who apparently had a fling with the late Mrs. Krug. The two men conspired to kill Ruth and blame Yogi for the crime, after which they would share the inheritance. However, Hanns is more than a little pissed that his father’s grand plan resulted in Hanns killing his own mother. So Hanns strangles Daddy Robert as well, and then decides to go for broke by dragging his cousin down to the cellar. He whips the ape several times, trying to make it mad enough that when he releases it, it’ll kill Ruth. But Hanns gets too close to the cage, and Yogi proves he’s smarter than the average caged ape. The other characters show up to rescue Ruth, and virtue is rewarded.

While the acting and direction is just fair at best, the rather lurid content distinguishes MONSTER from the run-of-the-mill old dark house flick. The film ends with the comic relief making a standard racist joke of the day, about how he had an uncle who resembled Yogi—but if anything, there's more likeness between Yogi and Hanns.

A number of the players had credits stretching back to the silents, as with director Frank Strayer, though these days his handful of horror films remain his claim to fame, particularly the Lionel Atwill film THE VAMPIRE BAT. Sheldon Lewis, a.k.a. Uncle Robert, had the distinction of playing not one but two of the masterminds defeated by serial queen Pearl White: the Clutching Hand and the Iron Claw. (Both silent serials were later remade in the sound era, and have been reviewed here and here.) Rex Lease (Clayton), Mischa Auer (Hanns) and Willie Best (Exodus) all made their respective marks a bit later, Lease scoring largely with westerns and Auer giving up “heavies” like Hanns in favor of goofy comical types following his success in the 1936 MY MAN GODFREY.

As for Willie Best—regrettably billed with the insulting epithet “Sleep ‘n’ Eat” at this point in his career—he spent most of his career playing frightened Negroes. His character Exodus is not the worst of the lot—at least he speaks relatively well and he briefly carries a gun to defend himself against the ape. I was tempted to believe that his name might be as much an insult as his billing, since the Biblical Exodus was all about the freeing of Jewish slaves. However, it’s probably more likely that the name was meant to signify the character’s constant desire to make an “exodus” away from any place of potential danger.

THE MOUNTAIN OF THE CANNIBAL GOD (1978)

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *cosmological, sociological*


Though I appreciate a number of ultraviolent movies, I've never had a warm spot in my heart-- or should that be stomach?-- for the "cannibal film." Still, like any other genre, it's theoretically possible for some of them to be exemplary for their kind. MOUNTAIN isn't such an exemplary work. It was directed by Sergio Martino, who had directed westerns and SF-adventures, but seemed to excel with giallo horror-mysteries.

The narrative for MOUNTAIN seems strongly indebted to assorted jungle-adventure films-- not least 1950's KING SOLOMON'S MINES-- in that it deals with a jungle-guide being hired by a woman to find her lost husband in some wilderness far from civilization. Here the woman is Susan, played by Ursula Andress, and her statuesque, blonde appearance may be just as responsible for the film's financial success as its ultraviolence. Certainly the majority of film-posters linger upon the sight of a bound Andress, being subjected to terrible torments by the titular cannibals.

Susan's looking for her anthropologist-husband, lost during an earlier expedition into the wilds of New Guinea. Susan's accompanied by her obnoxious brother, some bearers, and a mysterious man, Foster, who turns out to have some past history with the cannibals. Foster's origins are about the only thing that keeps the trek from devolving into complete tedium, as the less-than-great white hunters keep stumbling over various jungle perils-- though none of the animals, however menacing, are anything more than naturalistic types.

The cannibals, though, are very much a people whose exoticism verges on the demonic. They are a dwindling race, though it's not clear if they've almost been wiped out by white colonials or by rival tribes. Foster reveals that when he was taken prisoner by them, he was spared because he cared for the chief's son. However, for reasons unexplained, Foster has made it his personal crusade to stamp out the tribe if he can. Does he want to finish what other whites have started? There's no clue, for MOUNTAIN is not internally consistent enough to display strong sociological content.

Most of the film's gross-out moments occur when the travelers have fallen into the cannibals' hands, and one torment, in which Susan is painted with some gooey substance (honey?). was recycled in a later jungle-film, John Derek's 1981 TARZAN THE APE MAN, where Bo Derek gets the sloppy torture. By this point there's no evidence that the cannibals are in any way capable of sentiments like gratitude: they are entirely demonic creatures, represented by a nasty dwarf who torments one of Susan's allies.

Frankly, the most entertainment I got from this film was from an extra included on Blue Underground's DVD edition. Martino gives a standard interview about the filming of MOUNTAIN, except for one moment, in which he claims that he didn't put much sexual material in the film-- at which point the director of the featurette cuts to a half-dozen scenes showing men screwing animals and the like.

SGT. DEADHEAD (1965), DR. GOLDFOOT AND THE GIRL BOMBS (1966)

PHENOMENALITY: (1) naturalistic, (2) *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: (1) *psychological*, (2) *sociological*

I imagine that the genesis of SERGEANT DEADHEAD was some AIP producer's hope that Frankie Avalon might prove viable as an "adult" lead actor in light comedy, perhaps after the example of Tony Curtis.  I assume that this and Avalon's same-year outing in DR. GOLDFOOT AND THE BIKINI MACHINE must have put paid to that expectation.

With the exception of one joke about a bunch of towel-clad WACs forced to salute a superior officer, DEADHEAD is dead in the water as far as jokes.  Louis Hayward, one of the credited writers on BIKINI, doles out the usual service comedy yucks with no finesse, and director Norman Taurog, whom I beat on earlier for BIKINI, puts the jokes across with stolid indifference to timing or excitement.  The plot concerns the klutzy Deadhead accidentally going up in a space capsule.  After his return he becomes a celebrity and gets an ego so inflated that he becomes a problem for the military brass. They luck out and find an exact double to take Deadhead's place for public appearances, but Deadhead is also scheduled to be married.  Thus the final question becomes, will Deadhead be able to head off his double at the "pass" (so to speak)?  For some reason I liked Avalon's performance as the titular sergeant better than many of his other roles, but it certainly wasn't because of script or direction.  The main attraction is the appearance of several comedy veterans-- Gale Gordon, Fred Clark, and the inevitable-at-AIP Buster Keaton-- but none of them have much to do, though Eve Arden gets the best song out of an unmemorable lot.

DEADHEAD appears in some fantasy-film concordances simply because the title doofus ends up going into orbit in a space capsule.  I don't regard films about modern-day space-travel to be "science fiction," however.  The film does have include a chimp in the same capsule (who acquits himself better than Avalon's Deadhead), and Fred Clark has a slapstick bit where he gets electrically charged and lights Gale Gordon's cigar with his finger.  But none of these factors make DEADHEAD relevant to metaphenomenal cinema.

Once or twice, Mario Bava's DR. GOLDFOOT AND THE GIRL BOMBS has a nice Europop atmosphere that looks forward to the director's DIABOLIK in 1968.  Still, though GIRL BOMBS looks better directed than Taurog's BIKINI MACHINE, the script's about the same.  I've seen only the Americanized version of Bava's film, which pits Goldfoot (Vincent Price) against another bumbling secret agent (Fabian) and an even more bumbling duo, sort of an Italian "Mutt-and-Jeff" pair who get drafted into the spy games.  Lovely Laura Antonelli goes along for the ride but doesn't get much to do, other than having a catfight with Goldfoot's female accomplice.  It's indicative of the level of the humor that the assistant is named "Hardjob"(after Harold Sakata's "Oddjob" from the GOLDFINGER film), while Goldfoot's other assistant is a male Asian (George Wang) with a fair resemblance to Sakata.

There is a little more energy in the film than in the previous entry: Price seems to have a little fun dispensing flowery talk ("poem of the Pacific!") and he suddenly seems to think he's Chinese, which gets a strange reaction from his two Asian colleagues.  The "girl bombs" have less to do in the story, but they seem a little sexier this time-- maybe thanks to the absence of Susan Hart.  But it's still a pretty minimal improvement.

BIKINI BEACH (1964), HOW TO STUFF A WILD BIKINI (1965)

PHENOMENALITY: (1) *naturalistic* (2) marvelous
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*


The five "canonical" (so to speak) Beach Party films-- those that headlined those overaged high-schoolers Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello-- were all directed within about three years by William (BEWITCHED) Asher.  Since it appears that he was just trying to knock them out as quickly as possible before the "beach film" fad did the big fade, it's not exactly surprising that he didn't choose the sophisticated comedy of Noel Coward as his model.  It's also not surprising that what Asher's beach films most resemble content-wise is the more hyperkinetic comedies of the silent era; lots of visual gags centered around a very loose plot.  To be sure, none of Asher's beach films-- and possibly no beach film ever, by anyone-- ever comes up to the best of silent comedies a la Chaplin and Keaton.  Still, they're probably no worse than your average Keystone Kops flick.  Possibly the casting of Buster Keaton in the fifth and last film, HOW TO STUFF A WILD BIKINI, was a tip of the hat by Asher or one of his people to their comic model.

Of the two, BIKINI BEACH has a little more of that thing called "plot."  Since the first film centered on surfing and the second revolved around "muscle beach" activities, the third in the series moves toward a less beach-oriented sport: drag-racing.  A popular English singer, "the Potato Bug" (read: lame Beatles spoof), comes to the local beach to participate in a big drag-race.  When the Bug makes a play for DeeDee (Funicello), Frankie (Avalon) drops his surfboard and enters the race alongside his rival. 

On another front, rich elder statesman Harvey Honeywagon (Keenan Wynn) also arrives on the scene, determined to prove that members of the "bikini generation" all act like animals.  To prove this he takes a man-sized chimpanzee (Janos Prohaska)-- who goes by the name "Clyde" and so may be the spiritual ancestor to the orangutan from EVERY WHICH WAY BUT LOOSE-- and trains the chimp to do all the things surfers can do (well, at least with a surfboard; Clyde never gets to make whoopee with any of the beach-babes).  Honeywagon seems a bit of a rewrite of the snotty professor from 1963's BEACH PARTY, who came to study the beach-teens as if they were animals, but Honeywell has an ulterior motive for his contempt.  He wants to arouse public ire at the loose morals of the beach youth so that the beach will be closed and he can buy up the land to expand his neighboring "old folks' home."  This may be the closest Asher ever gets to portraying his own generation as inherently jealous of the vivacity and sex appeal of the younger generation, but the script lets Honeywagon off the hook.  The teens' teacher (Martha Hyer) shows up to protest Honeywell's mischaracterization of the flaming youths (who are, the film keeps telling us, fundamentally and boringly moral) and ends up converting the journalist to her side.

A lot of silly, causality-violating things take place, particularly during the de rigeur fight between the surfers and Erich Von Zipper's biker-goons.  A surfer slugs a biker so hard he hits the ceiling, and dancer "Candy" knocks people around with the shimmying vibrations of her butt-- but none of them are meant to violate the fundamentally naturalistic feel of the flick.  So all these bits of nonsense, as well as the chimp-who-can-ride-a-surfboard, fall into the naturalistic versions of their appropriate categories.

Boris Karloff makes a quick cameo here, filling in for the late Peter Lorre, who had appeared in the second beach film.  His dialogue references to Vincent Price, who perhaps never lived down his appearance in the first Asher beachfilm, and even makes a coy allusion to Price's real-life hobby of art-collection.

1965's STUFF plunges more than any previous beachfilm into the wackiest possible aspects of a marvelous comedy, and it's not a good transition.  The story's a mess, beginning with "naval reservist" Frankie stationed out in the Pacific Islands and getting cosy with a native girl (Irene Tsu, seen above with Keaton).  One presumes that he's only having G-rated sex with the sarong-wearing seducer, but even so he gets quite jealous when she suggests that DeeDee may be back on the beach having some applesauce for the gander. Frankie appeals to the local witchdoctor Bwana (Keaton) for help.  Bwana uses heap big magic to materialize hot babe Cassandra (Beverly Adams) on the beach, who in theory can mesmerize every beach-boy to keep them from moving in on DeeDee.  However, the spell doesn't work on one guy, Ricky (Dwayne Hickman), who continues to pursue DeeDee for the rest of the picture.

And just to keep the sports-theme going, Von Zipper ends up teaming up with Cassandra to win a motocycle race, but naturally Ricky and DeeDee win it.  However, gender inequities are forgotten and true love is validated in the end, when Frankie (who has remained stayed on that island for most of the picture) magically pops back to the beach to reaffirm his bond with DeeDee, for which the next steps are presumably marriage and the baby carriage.

Though the plot is all over the place, the songs are a little wittier than the usual romantic fluff, while the opening titles, executed in claymation by Art (GUMBY) Clokey, may be the funniest thing in the film.  Instead of a cameo by a horror-actor, for this last beach-blanket blitz Asher has his wife Elizabeth Montgomery appear for a second as a Samantha-esque witch-- a nice bit of pop-cultural dovetailing, since to this day BEWITCHED and the beach-films remain the two works for which Asher is best remembered.

LEOPARD MAN (1943)

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *high*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *psychological, sociological*

(SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS)

In my reviews of two other films in the repertoire of producer Val Lewton, SEVENTH VICTIM and GHOST SHIP, I've noted a motif I called the "Jane Eyre" myth, in which one character must supplant another in order to gain romantic happiness. I find the same myth present in Lewton's CAT PEOPLE, but not in the equally-feline subject of this review, LEOPARD MAN, though I do think there's a strong related motif, in which feelings of envy are passed from character to character like a supernatural curse. Since LEOPARD MAN is purportedly a reasonably faithful adaptation of the Cornell Woolrich novel BLACK ALIBI, it may be that the novel's close but not identical thematic focus were what interested Val Lewton in the property.

The opening scenes of LEOPARD MAN fairly drip with one kind of envy or another. In the fictional Mexican city of Ciudad Real (a "fake city" name for Mexico City), we first see two women backstage at a club, one a cigarette-girl, the other Kiki Walker (Jean Brooks), a singer-performer at the club. There's a moment of envy expressed by the cigarette-girl as to Kiki's superior position in the pecking-order, but the two ladies join in dissing a third woman; the Mexican castanet-shaker Clo-Clo (Margo), because she's popular with the club-patrons due to her exoticism. As the cigarette-girl leaves, in comes Jerry Manning, who's decided to take a rash action to help Kiki upstage Clo-Clo. Minutes later, while Clo-Clo is still performing on stage, Kiki, clad in black as the illo shows above, enters the club with a black leopard on a leash.

Unfortunately for Kiki and Jerry, Clo-Clo reacts badly to being upstaged: she clacks her castanets so loudly that she frightens the leopard. The animal breaks free of Kiki and vanishes into the city. Jerry, who has hired the leopard from a local animal trainer (the first person to be called a "leopard man"), is duly remorseful for having brought about a danger to the public, but he puts off paying the wrangler for his animal in the hope that the creature may be recaptured. However, the creature, confused by its freedom amid the lights and noise of the city, goes berserk and kills a lone girl, at which point the local cops start looking for it a lot more assiduously.

Lewton had gained some repute for "stalking scenes" of the type seen in CAT PEOPLE and SEVENTH VICTIM, and the one with the lone girl is the best here. Interestingly, shortly after the leopard gets loose, a fortune-teller draws the ace of spades for Clo-Clo, but after she greets the young girl in the street, it's as if she passes her fate on to the girl. Later yet another girl is killed while trying to hold an assignation with her lover. The fortune-teller's next prophecy involves Clo-Clo getting money from an older man, which does come true, but it doesn't do the performer any good, for her deferred fate finally catches up with her.

Given the film's title, I doubt that any viewer in 1943 expected the film to be purely about the depredations of a leopard on the loose, even before Jerry suspects that there's some human agency behind some of the killings. The animal trainer, having passed out once during the second killing, wonders if he's committed some horrible act, and asks the sheriff to lock him up-- which, as any good filmgoer should realize, is the filmmakers' way of exonerating him when the third murder takes place.

The script doesn't provide many other suspects, so there's no big surprise when the "leopard killer" turns out to be Jerry's confidante Dr. Galbraith, who was once a "zoologist" before he unaccountably ended up running a small museum in Ciudad Real. Galbraith happens to have seen the "broken" and "mangled" body of the leopard's first and only victim, which inspires him to become a serial killer, though one sane enough to attempt leaving clues to incriminate the leopard. In truth, Galbraith actually shoots the leopard in the country and leaves it there, making it possible for Jerry to destroy that alibi. It further comes out that Galbraith's thinks of the leopard as something of a totem of violence, invoking the Aztecs' similar thoughts on the jaguar. Jerry, accompanied by the bereaved boyfriend of the second victim, overtakes the killer, and the boyfriend saves the city the expense of a trial.

I found the moral compass of SEVENTH VICTIM fuzzy, but I admire the moral theme of LEOPARD MAN. Although Jerry and Kiki might be accused of having been rash in trying to play the publicity game, they're both clearly conscience-stricken by the damage they've (literally) unleashed. To some extent, Jerry's quest to unveil a human agent has the added effect of exonerating him from some of the fatalities, though it could be argue that he's still responsible for bringing Galbraith's insanity to the surface. Still, the two Americans don't dodge their responsibilities and do their utmost to correct the situation.

As I've detailed elsewhere, all of my ten tropes are capable of having either "naturalistic" or "uncanny" manifestations. If the leopard as presented in LEOPARD MAN had been the sole menace, this would have been a purely naturalistic manifestation of the "astounding animal" trope, for there's never any suggestion that the leopard is anything more than an animal. However, Galbraith participates in "uncanny" versions of both the "perilous psycho" and "bizarre crimes" tropes. However, with respect to the "phantasmal figuration" trope, this would be a "naturalistic" manifestation, because the criminal is covering his actions with the appearance of normality, rather than (say) pretending to be a ghost, smiling or otherwise.

NABONGA (1944) and THE SAVAGE GIRL (1932)

PHENOMENALITY: (1)*uncanny;* (2) *atypical*
MYTHICITY: (1)*fair*; (2) *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*

Going by the two illustrations from these jungle flicks, one might think they were pretty similar: your basic "girl, guy, and a gorilla" films. But though both of them are unassuming potboilers, there are some structural differences between the two that illustrate why my tenth and last trope, "astounding animals," can appear as "uncanny" in one framework but "atypical" in another.

One significant difference is that though SAVAGE GIRL does have a white girl palling around with a chimpanzee for no textually-explicable reason, there really isn't anything "astounding" about the chimp (aside from his looking much bigger in the art than he is in the film). The chimp hangs around with the leopardskin-clad "Savage Girl" (Rochelle Hudson) and then pretty much disappears as the film concentrates on its real theme: whether the girl gets tamed by leering reprobate Alex or "nice guy" Jim. There are a couple of references to the nameless girl as a "white goddess," but she does nothing to foster that impression: probably the writers tossed out this familiar trope to implicitly explain why the African natives left the girl alone. But this "white goddess" lacks the imposing qualities given a similar character in 1931's TRADER HORN. Thus, despite her being loosely patterned on other, more extraordinary jungle foundlings, Nameless Girl doesn't measure up as an uncanny heroine despite wearing an "outre outfit," and the natives in her bailiwick lack any exotic tropes, despite the script's hilarious allegation that they practice "voodoo."

NABONGA isn't written much better but it does take more advantage of the "girl and her gorilla" myth-theme. True, in contrast to the familiar TARZAN paradigm, in which rape-happy apes constantly grabbed young white girls as objects of lust, the viewer never quite knows why the gorilla (Samson, played by Ray Corrigan under the peculiar nom de gorilla "N'bongo") is attached to Doreen (Julie London), who lives in the jungle in the wreck of her father's plane and also wears a leopardskin onepiece. Samson's relationship to Doreen seems cribbed more from ANDROCLES AND THE LION, since the gorilla first meets the girl when he's been wounded by white hunters and she offers to help him. Thus their relationship seems more like that of siblings than mates. And although Samson does try to kill white hunter Ray whenever he gets close to Doreen, she has only to command Samson to stay away and the gorilla obeys: acting more like a surly brother than a jealous would-be-lover. Most of the film concerns the attempts of Ray to learn the truth about Doreen's embezzler father, while two villains, white hunter Carl and bargirl Marie, attempt to trap Samson for sale to a zoo. In the unsurprising end Ray gets away with Doreen and Samson tears apart both Carl and Marie, their death-agonies discreetly offscreen.
Discretion, however, suggested more than mere violence to author Alex Vernon, who in his book ON TARZAN alleged that Marie does get not just killed, but also raped, by the ape.

And yet, even though nothing in the script overtly suggests Samson as being warm for the human form, there's one mythically-intense moment early in NABONGA, in which a rogue gorilla intrudes on Doreen's home and Samson savagely drives the rival away. At this point alone, NABONGA does stray into the psychological terrain of Edgar Rice Burroughs' and his rape-happy apes. Thus Samson, because he is at once an ape and yet seems like something more as well, does qualify for the trope of "astounding animals," and shifts this otherwise routine film into the realm of the uncanny.