THE BEAST OF BORNEO (1934)
Article #765 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 4-19-2003
Posting Date: 9-16-2003
Directed by Harry Garson
Featuring John Preston, Mae Stuart, Eugene Sigaloff

A scientist experimenting with orangutans hires a guide to lead him to Borneo and capture a full-grown orang.

The ad that comes on the cover of this movie talks about horrible rejuvenation experiments involving gorilla glands; if the ad is indeed for this movie (there is apparently a 1944 movie of the same name), then it is an incredibly inaccurate ad. First of all, the movie deals with orangs rather than gorillas; second, the concept of rejuvenation was never mentioned. In fact, this movie skirts both science fiction and horror without ever really becoming either one of them; it is a marginal jungle movie, and not a particularly good one, either, as it never really works up much in the way of energy or suspense. It does have a few points of interest; the bad guy is named Boris Borodoff and has a Bela Lugosi accent; the baby orang Joe is apparently the greatest escape artist since Houdini, and if the sound that the orang makes is really what they sound like, then the jungle needs an emergency shipment of Ex-Lax pronto.