User Reviews

A disfigured fellow in a gorilla suit commits murders in London while Scotland Yard investigates a charitable organization as well as a girl's home for young ladies. This widescreen, color adaptation of Edgar Wallace's "Dark Eyes of London" differs from most, primarily owing to its nudity. There is an underground club where people amuse themselves by photographing naked women and muscular men and indulge in other fantasies off the premises. When the dead bodies of murdered millionaires start turning up in the river Thames, Scotland Yard Inspector David Perkins (Horst Tapper of "The Monster of Blackwood Castle") and Sergeant Jim Pepper (Uwe Friedrichsen of "Faust") are on the case. What is singular about these corpses is the small dolls that turn up with the bodies with strange writing on them. Perkins hires Susan (Uschi Glas of "The Sinister Monk"), to masquerade as a social worker and poke around St. Mary's. It seems that a deaf & dumb African woman is scrawling messages on dolls that serve as clues to the mystery. As it happens, Susan can translate these obtuse messages.

Veteran writer & director Alfred Vohrer and "Angels of Terror" co-scenarist Horst Wendlandt concentrate more on humor and nudity than murder most foul. Perkins and the hilariously named Sergeant Pepper answer to their immediate Scotland Yard superior, the pompous Sir Arthur (Hubert von Meyerinck of "The Zombie Walks"), an older gentleman whose sexual appetite for sexy, mini-skirt clad twentysomething babes stereotypes him as a satyr. Sir Arthur prefers to attribute these murders as suicides. Inspector Perkins crosses paths with the lecherous Sir Arthur at the underground club. Apparently, some millionaires who have signed away their fortunes to the Love and Peace Foundation, a philanthropist organization which sponsors the dubiously nun-run St. Mary's home for wayward girls, are mysteriously being killed. Furthermore, within this organization is another murderous villain, Henry Parker (Albert Lieven of "The Guns of Navarone") who is also killing people.

The sinister plot thickens when one of the millionaires decides to alter his will after a long-forgotten daughter emerges. If you have issues with improper dubbing as in lack of synchronization and inappropriate voices for characters, you may shrug off this West German crime thriller as a horrible hoot and a holler. Scene stealing Hubert von Meyerinck is hilarious as Sir Arthur, a role that he reprised from an earlier Edgar Wallace opus "The Zombie Walks"), and his helium voiced girlfriend who appears at the most inappropriate times to embarrass him in front of his colleagues aids and abets him. Earlier, Alfred Vohrer helmed the first version of this Wallace yarn with "Dead Eyes of London" (1961) as well as other Wallace inspired thrillers.

"Der Gorilla von Soho" or "Gorilla Gang" or "Ape Creature" is a German color movie from 1968, so this one will soon have its 50th anniversary. It is another entry from the Edgar Wallace series that was made back then, especially by Alfred Vohrer and he is the director here once again. The film is one of these rare movies from the franchise that make it actually until the 90-minute mark. The lead actor here is Horst Tappert ("Derrick") and I must say he was one of the main reason why I did not like this film here. Another one would be the antagonists. The gorilla is pretty ridiculous and not in a good way. They did better with the animal characters in other films. And the real main antagonist (who we do not find out until the very end) is truly forgettable and bland. This film needed improvement in many areas I think and even the usual themes from these Edgar Wallace like the comedy and the several plot twists could not save this film. Still I must say I was a bit shocked about the very ending. Was that really a joke on male genitals? I am not sure. But it does not matter anyway as everything before that is certainly not worth sitting through. Watch something else instead.

Also known as The Gorilla of Soho, this is one of Rialto Film's many krimi adaptions of the works of Edgar Wallace. Now, you may get confused - I do - as to whether these are giallo or not, what with Wallace also being one of the main inspirations for those Italian psychosexual movies. I guess the rule I always use is that in krimi, the cops seem to have a better idea of what they're doing and the bad guys often have the wildest ways to kill people. You know, like a gorilla.

A gorilla is murdering rich men who have nothing in common other than the fact that they have money, all of which goes to the Love and Peace Foundation after their deaths and helps to support St. Mary's Home for Wayward Girls.

After finding an African doll on one of the bodies, Scotland Yard Inspector Perkins (Horst Tappert) hires Susan (Uschi Glas), an interpreter who can do more than just tell him what the African doll had to say. She can also go undercover at St. Mary's.

Maybe cops putting innocent people into danger like this is just an Edgar Wallace thing,

She learns that there's a gang called the Gorillas that has ties to St. Mary's, which seems to be the dumbest group of crooks ever as they can barely hide their tracks. There's also a muta African girl named Dorothy (Catana Cayetano) and she's part of the scheme, forced to help the evil Sister Elizabeth (Hilde Sessak) kill the millionaires. She's the one who left the doll on the body to try and get help.

As if that's not enough, the head of the Love and Peace Foundation, Henry Parker (Albert Lieven, is blackmailed by Sugar (Herbert Fux) and his brother's widow Cora (Beate Hasenau). She's fallen on hard times and becomes a sex worker. And oh yeah - Susan inherits a ton of money from the father she never knew, so now the nuns want to toss her in the Thames.

It turns out that Mother Superior (Inge Langen) and Parker are running this scam. They want to take the money from the rich and give it to the poor and by that, I mean themselves. They even have a henchman named Pepper (Uwe Friedrichsen) who wears the gorilla suit, which seems to be a bit of icing on the cake that already has icing on it.

If you say, "Have I seen this before?" the answer may be yes, provided that you have seen either the 1939 or 1961 versions of Dead Eyes of London. It has a very similar plot except, you guessed it, this one has a gorilla in it. And sleaze.

If Alfred Vohrer was going to direct the same movie again, it seems like he was going to add lots of topless women, exotic dance clubs and houses of ill repute. It's so filled with sex that the head of Scotland Yard, Sir Arthur (Hubert von Meyerinck) has a girl in his closet who keeps emerging at the exact wrong time as if he were the krimi Commandant Lassard.

"The Gorilla Gang" is the second krimi film I have seen, after "The Dead One in the Thames River". About the best I can say for it is that it's not as bad as that one was.

It is similarly boring and confusing, though. The bad guy (or guys?) have a comparable modus operandi: they send messages to meet their victims and then off them. The death scenes are even less realistically handled in this movie: In "Dead One", the victims were taken out with the least convincing headshot-by-sniper-rifle ever captured on film. In "Gorilla Gang", the bad guy (or guys?) dresses up as a gorilla and strangles the person to death.

Apparently the costume grants its wearer a gorilla's strength as well, since the victims can't seem to fight back at all.

The whole "bad guy dresses up as a gorilla" thing, coupled with the movie being called "gorilla GANG" when we only ever see one gorilla on screen at a time, would seem to be an indication that we are in for a classic so-bad-it's-good movie. This is not the case. Unfortunately, after watching these two krimis I'm getting the impression that such absurdity was just a reaction to an oppressively formulaic plot outline the filmmakers were working with. They couldn't amuse you, so they may as well amuse themselves at your expense.