Son of the Gorilla Man

Ah the summers of my youth! Specifically, summer 1978. It was hot, dry drought of a season. I recall those days displaying my faux-football jerseys on my chubby physique with pride. My tube socks ended way up near the knees. My shorts with the cool white stripes on the side told everyone I was an athlete. And every day that summer, for six weeks, after a breakfast of Honeycombs I walked a couple of blocks down to the town high school for a couple of hours of Art School.

Art School was awesome. Each week was a different module, a different area of art we’d all explore (there’d by anywhere from twenty to fifty kids each year; I went for about five or six years). Drawing, painting, sculpture and pottery, tie-dye (it was the 70s), wood and metalworking, photography, and –

Filmmaking.

Hands down the most exciting part of the summer for me and my friends. First, the teachers would screen all the previous years’ movies for us kids. Then we’d be paired in groups of a half-dozen, and sent out on the football field or down the empty school corridors (empty except for the one class with the unfortunate summer-schoolers) or in a shaded tree grove to brainstorm ideas. After fine-tuning concepts with a teacher, we’d go with him to the prop room, get some quick instruction on how to run the super-8 camera, and were sent out on our way.

One movie that stuck in our mind after that screening was The Gorilla Man. A student somehow transformed into a gorilla and went on a killing rampage in the high school that previous year. Oh well. But … for some reason Jaws II was huge with us little kids that summer. So much so that a rival group started filming Paws, a nasty featurette about a psychopathic pair of disembodied gloves that go on a murder spree. But it was me who came up with the idea of a sequel to the abominable ape, beginning with the title, Son of the Gorilla Man.

We made it up as we went along. Two days’ of filming commenced on a Tuesday. There’s a thunderstorm, and our innocent protagonist is transformed between lightning flashes into the gorilla man’s son. How he’s related to the original, I don’t know or remember. But the bloodshedding begins!

I had one reluctant scene about halfway through the movie. And for some reason, it didn’t involve the son of the gorilla man. I was waiting for a bus, minding my own business, when suddenly and shockingly I’m attacked and brutally strangled by a fake spider. Through the magic of stop-motion photography the critter crawls up my arm and goes for my throat. It was a quick scene, a quick shoot, and I think my method acting holds up well.

By Thursday filming wrapped up (the movie probably ran ten minutes) and we began the audio phase. I remember being embarrassed having to fake scream during my cinematic demise. However, more importantly, none of us with our high-pitched pipes could get the ape’s grunting down. After much begging and cajoling our beloved art teacher gave in and put voice to the monster. Think of Mongo from Blazing Saddles going “Uh! Uh! Uh!” in a simian manner and you have the creature’s misunderstood wailings down.

Friday all the students screened their films, in a Cannes-like setting. I do not remember whether the applause for our motion picture was standing or sitting, or whether hats and programmes were tossed in the air to chants of “Bravo!” I can confirm that no vegetables were thrown at the screen.

Next summer my friend Ivor obtained a super-8 camera and, obviously aware of my art school film work, recruited me to help him out with a project. Ivor had set up a three-by-four foot mock model setup of a snowy World War II-era German countryside. My jaw dropped as I spied the entrenched fortifications, the little army men all in proper position, the tanks slowly tinkering their way up a cleared road, conflict awaiting the first firing of a weapon. We spent hours moving each and every piece minutely, microscopically, even, hitting the camera for a couple of clicks, and repeating the process over and over. For the climax we had the last remaining tank blast the last holdout holed up in the central tower of the German fort. I remember stuffing wads of toilet paper inconspicuously in and around that poor plastic soldier’s hideout. A flick of a lighter, then – ACTION! It was the only live scene in our movie, and, sadly, I don’t think it came off as well as you’d think from my description.

We still had some film left over, so we took a couple of GI Joe dolls outside and filmed them stop-action climbing trees, tables, etc. Then, I had another idea. I spotted Ivor’s rabbit cage, and something just clicked. We stuffed grass inside the uniforms of the action figures and placed them up to the wire mesh and let the camera roll. I can only imagine the sheer terror, the screams of utter horror that escapes these brave fighting men as the giant rabbit maws came down upon them, chewing mercilessly and savaging their bodies apart.

And thus in a triumph of glory ends my career as a filmmaker.