AllMovie

Kidnapping Gorillas was the stupidly lurid title affixed to what was originally intended as a straightforward documentary of African tribal life. Explorer-filmmaker Major Frank Brown spent several months in Ubangi country, filming the natives as they set about to hunt down and kill marauding gorillas. To add spice to the program, Brown concocted a melodramatic storyline, wherein a Ubangi maiden is abducted by a gorilla and carried off into the jungle, obliging her tribesmen to go to her rescue. The sexual implications of this scenario, coupled with a few modest shots of exposed female breasts, led to a heap of censorship squabbles when Kidnapping Gorillas premiered in New York. The resulting brouhaha enabled this badly photographed and ineptly edited 7-reel feature to make a great deal of money during its very brief distribution cycle.