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6.4/10
Senior Film Conservator
A definitive 6.4/10 rating for a film that redefined the boundaries of cult cinema. Bum Voyage remains a cornerstone of transgressive art.
If you are looking for something deep to watch tonight, Bum Voyage is absolutely not it. 🐵
But if you want to see a guy in a very obvious monkey suit terrify two 1930s comediennes on a boat, then yes, please put this on right now. People who hate screaming and old-school slapstick will probably turn it off after three minutes.
The plot is basically nothing.
Thelma Todd and Patsy Kelly find some steamship tickets on the ground, which feels like a very lazy plot device but its a short film so we just go with it. They board the ship, think they got lucky, but oops! The cabin belongs to a gorilla.
The gorilla is played by Charles Gemora, who basically spent his entire career in Hollywood wearing hairy suits. He is actually pretty good at the physical stuff, even if the suit looks like it was made from an old rug.
Patsy Kelly is incredibly loud in this. Like, she does not just talk, she barks her lines straight into the camera.
At first, it is a bit much. But after a while, her sheer panic starts to get contagious and you find yourself laughing at how ridiculous the whole setup is.
There is this one scene where they try to hide under the bed covers and the gorilla just stands there looking confused. It goes on a bit too long, but the physical comedy is so pure.
It has that weird, loose pre-code energy you do not really get in bigger movies of the era like The Heart of New York or even slicker crime films like Corsair. Everything feels slightly improvised, like they were making up the gags as the camera ran.
The sets look like they are made of cardboard. You can almost see the cabin walls shaking whenever Patsy bumps into them.
Also, Noah Young shows up as a detective and he has this hilariously angry face the whole time. He looks like he wants to be anywhere else but on this set.
Is it a masterpiece? Heck no.
But it is twenty minutes of dumb fun, and sometimes that is all you really need on a Tuesday night.
