Bela Lugosi Ape Man / Boris Karloff Ape DVD Free S & H

Ape Man Bela Lugosi / The Ape Bpris Karloff 2 Great B-Horrors New Factory Sealed

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The Ape Man DVD    Bela Lugosi DVD                                              The Ape Boris Karloff 2 Great b-movies

Whatever poor Bela Lugosi may have done in a past life, the man did not deserve The Ape Man, arguably the worst of his Monogram horror clunkers. Viewed today, it seems that screenwriter Barney Sarecky and infamous director William Beaudine (whose nickname "One Shot" was earned helming movies like this) were out to humiliate the proud Hungarian actor at every opportunity. They had the man, who once turned down the Frankenstein monster because he found the role demeaning, walk about the entire film in a manner that was supposed to appear simian but ended up looking merely foolish. They gave him an Anglo-Saxon name, Dr. James Brewster, without bothering to explain that familiar Middle European accent. And they provided him with a spiritualist sister (Minerva Urecal), whose character name, Agatha, Lugosi of course was incapable of pronouncing. To compound matters, they wrote in a mysterious character named Zippo (Ralph Littlefield), who, in a silly porkpie hat, drifted in and out of the narrative being annoyingly mysterious, only to reveal himself in the end as "the author of the story." "Screwy idea, wasn't it?" he says blithely putting the final nail in Lugosi's coffin.

Lugosi's Dr. Brewster had experimented with a spinal serum derived from the fluids of a gorilla. The dedicated medico naturally tested the serum on himself and now appears incapable of walking upright, in dire need of a shave. Needless to say, the only antidote is human spinal fluid (which Lugosi pronounces "fluit"). Accompanied by screaming headlines such as "Ape man killer still on the loose!" Dr. Brewster and his gorilla henchman (Emil VanHorn, whose simian suit paid his rent for years) stalk the dark streets for human prey. A couple of wisecracking reporters (Wallace Ford and Louise Currie, both surprisingly tolerable) briefly wander into harm's way, knocking each other over the head with prop vases. Happily, for unexplained reasons, the gorilla suddenly turns on his master and breaks his neck, ending the nightmare for all concerned, including, one would imagine, Lugosi himself. Typical for cheap Monogram, Lugosi stayed in his ape-like makeup throughout, the expected transformation scene never materializing. The critics were understandably severe — "Monogram's writer didn't have to wipe the dust from Bela Lugosi's Ape Man, he had to take the mold off," chuckled the Daily News — but as horror-film historian Tom Weaver so succinctly put it: "Despite their ruinous effects on Lugosi's career, had these Monogram pictures been made without him, they would not merit discussion today." — Hans J. Wollstein

Cast

Bela Lugosi  - Dr. James Brewster
Wallace Ford  - Jeff Carter
Louise Currie  - Billie Mason
Minerva Urecal  - Agatha Brewster
Henry Hall  - Dr. George Randall
Ralph Littlefield  - Zippo
John Farrell MacDonald  - Police Captain O'Brien
George Kirby  - Townsend, Butler
Wheeler Oakman  - Brady
Emil VanHorn  - The Ape
Jack Mulhall  - Reporter
Charles Jordan  - O'Toole

Similar Movies
 The Ape  (1940, William Nigh)
 King Kong Lives  (1986, John Guillermin)
 King Kong Escapes  (1967, Ishiro Honda)
 King Kong  (1933, Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack)
 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde  (1941, Victor Fleming)
 Ape  (1976, Paul Leder)
 The Mad Monster  (1942, Sam Newfield)
 The Tingler  (1959, William Castle)
 Mighty Joe Young  (1949, Ernest B. Schoedsack)
 
Movies with the Same Personnel
 Voodoo Man  (1944, William Beaudine)
 The Corpse Vanishes  (1942, Wallace W. Fox)
 Ghosts on the Loose  (1943, William Beaudine)
 Shadow of a Doubt  (1943, Alfred Hitchcock)
 Murder by Television  (1935, Clifford Sanforth)
 Return of the Ape Man  (1944, Phil Rosen)
 The Living Ghost  (1942, William Beaudine)
 The Chinese Ring  (1947, William Beaudine)

The Ape DVD Boris Karloff DVD

This painfully-bad Monogram feature wastes the talents of two of horrordom's finest — star Boris Karloff and co-writer Curt Siodmak (who would write the horror classic The Wolf Man for Universal the same year). The goofy plot involves the efforts of one Dr. Adrian (Karloff) to procure human spinal fluid for his polio-vaccine research by donning the pelt of a slain circus ape and slaughtering innocent people. The fact that he's snapping spines in the interest of medicine doesn't really help to clear the moral waters (he never does find a cure, anyway). Filmed during a particularly grueling year for Karloff, this marks the end of his lengthy stir with Monogram (after a tedious string of Mr. Wong potboilers). Without Karloff to kick around, the studio concentrated their humiliating efforts on Bela Lugosi, who appeared in a virtual remake, The Ape Man, three years later. — Cavett Binion

Cast

Boris Karloff  - Dr. Bernard Adrian
Maris Wrixon  - Frances Clifford
Gertrude W. Hoffman  - Mrs. Clifford
Henry Hall  - Sheriff Jeff Holliday
Gene O'Donnell  - Danny Foster
Jack Kennedy  - Tomlin
Jessie Arnold  - Mrs. Brill
Dorothy Vaughan  - Jane
Henry Hull   
Selmar Jackson   
George Cleveland   
I. Stanford Jolley   

Similar Movies
 The Ape Man  (1943, William Beaudine)
 King Kong  (1933, Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack)
 The Island of Dr. Moreau  (1977, Don Taylor)
 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde  (1931, Rouben Mamoulian)
 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde  (1920, John S. Robertson)
 The Island of Dr. Moreau  (1996, John Frankenheimer)
 The Tingler  (1959, William Castle)
 Island of Lost Souls  (1932, Erle C. Kenton)
 
Movies with the Same Personnel
 The Black Room  (1935, Roy William Neill)
 The Fatal Hour  (1940, William Nigh)
 Mr. Wong, Detective  (1938, William Nigh)
 Doomed to Die  (1940, William Nigh)
 Isle of the Snake People  (1968, Juan Ibañez, Luis Enrique Vergara, Jack Hill)
 Mr. Wong in Chinatown  (1939, William Nigh)
 The Mystery of Mr. Wong  (1939, William Nigh)
 Son of Frankenstein  (1939, Rowland V. Lee)

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