Night of the Bloody Apes (1972)

Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

After all these years and I find I never did get to see this 'video nasty' before. Now I have, I rather wish I hadn't! First, the title and hardly any of this takes place at night, indeed the sharp colourful cinematography is probably the highlight. Also, there are no apes. Well, there is one at the zoo but what we are really talking here is 'ape man', ish! Have to confess, though, there is blood. Many inserts of extreme gory action and a little nudity but all so badly added that they have little affect. having said that, I dread to think how you could endure the flat dullness of this movie without those startling gory bits every now and again. Oh yes, and, this being Mexican there is some wrestling, fairly colourful and its girls wrestling too but what with the all over costumes and mask they might as well be guys. So to summarise, if you like disjointed sequences of fake operations and various limbs being detached with the odd sprinkling of nudity and lots and lots of silly dubbed dialogue, this is for you.

Don't wish too much from this cheap Mexploitation flick except to have a damn good time, and with a title like Night of the Bloody Apes (although there is only one ape) what would you really expect! The film is ineptly made on all accounts, some of the more hilarious aspects include the random subplot involving a female wrestler feeling sorry for another female wrestler she injured, the poor dubbing and translations and general laziness in concealing goofs (a good example being the grass moving underneath someone's body revealing the stage).The story centres on a doctor who plans to cure his son's illness by performing a heart transplant with an ape. Unfortunately this turns the son into a dirty man-ape who wanders aimlessly and maims various people.There isn't much to see in this review really, I'm not gonna do some page-long dissection of all the different filmmaking aspects when really, the bottom-line is if you enjoy Grindhouse theatre then this movie was made for you, with all its inept special effects, uneven pacing and overall oddness.2½/5

After buying a few months ago a copy of the Crypt of Terror DVD release, containing the Mexican films "Infernal Dolls" and "La horripilante bestia humana" (The Horrifying Human Beast), and after only watching the first title, last night I finally decided to give the second a try. Most of the reviews I have read do not refer to the original, but to the atrocious American version called "Night of the Bloody Apes". The original turned out to be another bad example of horror films with wrestling matches, lacking the doses of humor and camp that turned similar products into enjoyable crap as the cult film "Santo Against the Vampire Women". It was also very sad to see in the cast the names of Carlos López Moctezuma, José Elías Moreno and Armando Silvestre, admired actors from classics like "El peñón de las ánimas", "Black Wind" and "The Net". Although all three had been in other horror films (López Moctezuma in "The Weeping Woman", Moreno in "She-Wolf", Silvestre in "Santo Against the Zombies"), here they have ungrateful roles: Moreno, sillier than ever as a weeping mad scientist; López Moctezuma, pathetic as his cripple assistant, and Silvestre as an ineffective secret service agent. "The Horrifying Human Beast" is vulgar and inelegant, with a pedestrian script by exploitation specialists René Cardona and his son René Cardona Jr., and directed with usual laziness by papa Cardona. For the international market Norma Lazareno did a couple of nude scenes, while two other women were stripped by the horny monster. But I do not think that adding these shots would have improved the product. For the American version sex-obsessed Jerald Intrator added (with very bad taste) shots of a real heart-transplant operation, filmed gory shots of mutilation with different actors and props, retitled his mess "Night of the Bloody Apes", made the already obnoxious production look even worse, and helped it gain a bad reputation for "sins" the monster did not commit. It is not, by any means, "the pinnacle of Mexican schlock" (I do not know which is), because all that "schlock" is not included in the original Mexican version. It is not even funny as some pretend. Moronic lines are found every day in any A product made by Hollywood with a lot of cash. "Night of the Bloody Apes" is simply worst than the already bad "Horripilante bestia humana".

An incredibly successful combo of the Mexican 'Lucha Libre' genre with 70's style horror. And a dash of 'Mad Scientist' cliché's tossed in for spice.The original Mexican title was 'Horror y Sexo.' Tell me it doesn't fit perfectly.Great chase scenes.The gorillaman's make-up was horrible in both senses of the word. It ended at the neck. But it WAS ugly. And like a lot of classic horror films, it did make you nervous during the night scenes.The Mondo style heart surgery footage was a tinge gross. It didn't hurt the film, it didn't help either.Graphic (and I do mean GRAPHIC) violence will put some of you off. But I still liked it.