The Ape (1940)

Great Film overall

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

The acting in this movie is really good.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

Boris Karloff stars as a doctor attempting to cure paralysis. To continue his research, he needs to collect spinal fluid, but there just aren't enough corpses from which to harvest it. Thankfully, he has just killed an escaped circus gorilla, so he hollows out its corpse, puts on its skin and goes out at night to murder townspeople for their precious, precious spine juice. This movie is pretty retarded. Why exactly does Karloff need an ape costume to kill his victims? I mean, he knows that the sheriff has organized hunting parties that go out every night looking for the ape. It seems that an ape costume is probably the least safe thing to be wearing. And it's not like wearing a gorilla costume is going to give him super-strength or anything. It's more likely to make it much more difficult to murder your victims, as it's got to be hot as Hell in there and your maneuverability and vision have to be severely diminished. The film is also painfully slow, and the characters are as dumb as the plot. Not Karloff's finest hour, but at least it provided some good laughs.

Very minor and frankly dull Boris Karloff vehicle, one of the "mad scientist" roles he specialized in during this phase of his career. The plot takes pains to render the idea of how despised his character is, presumably because of his unorthodox experiments, but I cannot fathom why – surely what he was engaged in would prove exceedingly beneficial to mankind if successful (as readily acknowledged by an authority brought in from out of town to investigate him)! A measure of the film's ambivalence in this respect is that both views will be accounted for at the very end – as Karloff's miracle cure does work, but he has had to resort to the despicable act of murder in order to procure specimens!; incidentally, this latter business and the fact that one of the protagonists is wheelchair-bound would both resurface – to infinitely infinitely greater effect – in a later Karloff picture, the Val Lewton classic THE BODY SNATCHER (1945). The titular creature, then, is seen prowling about a number of times – even after having watched Karloff stab it: where we supposed to know that he was behind subsequent killings?; my brother actually arrived at this conclusion about three-quarters of the way in…but I just could not believe Karloff would go to such extremes for Science (after all, he failed to save the immediate members of his family and had kept up the fight for a good 10 years afterwards – why should he bother so much with the rest of the world, especially since they hated him for it?!) and, in any case, being a doctor does not automatically give one a propensity for taxidermy, does it?! All things considered, this is watchable but inessential – and not nearly as much fun (in a guilty pleasure kind of way) as when Bela Lugosi did something similar i.e. in THE APE MAN (1943).

1st watched 5/1/2009 - 5 out of 10 (Dir- William Nigh): Interesting movie that just missed the mark for me due to a strange quick ending that I don't believe was prepped well, in my opinion. The movie is about a misunderstood doctor, played by horror great Boris Karloff, who is trying to cure the local town of a crippling disease but is using animals in his experiments and the townfolk don't like his methods. The Ape comes into the story after it escapes from a local circus, causes a fire and then is hiding somewhere in the town. While the authorities are hunting for him it is noticed that he spends a lot of time around the doctor's place but no-one knows why. When the doctor first encounters the creature he stabs it, but it's not apparent that he killed the beast. The ape still continues showing up killing others, but escaping from the authorities. A subplot revolves around a crippled woman that the doctor is slowly healing thru spinal fluid from victims of the ape and wherever else he gets it. It appears to be working but he needs more fluid. This is where the filmmakers lost me because they don't link these two pieces together very well. You can probably figure out what's going on, but I'll let you watch the movie and see if you felt the same way I did about the quick ending. The movie wasn't bad it just felt like the makers didn't have enough movie to really do what they wanted to do and tell the story better. So, this one just missed the mark for me despite the fact that I was glad that I saw it.

The Ape (1940) ** (out of 4)Boris Karloff plays a kind-hearted doctor trying to cure a woman who is paralyzed from her waist down. When a giant ape escapes from a local circus the doctor sees a woman to continue his experiments but this leads to murder. THE APE comes from Monogram and I think it's the perfect example to use if one wanted to compare the "straight" Boris Karloff to the more "over-the-top" Bela Lugosi. Lugosi would appear in Monogram's THE APE MAN, which is a very silly film that has several silly moments but it's actually entertaining thanks to the campy stuff. This film here is just incredibly stiff, lacks any real entertainment and really comes across as boring. The film seems constantly worried that they're going to hurt Karloff's good guy image and no matter what happens through his character, the screenplay is always quick to give some sort of excuse to make him look good. The character is basically a murderer but instead of just being a bad guy, the screenplay is constantly making him look better and all the excuses just leads to a rather boring story. Karloff offers up a good performance but it's certainly not enough to liven up the film or make it more interesting. The supporting cast is mostly forgettable but I'm sure some of this is due to the screenplay simply not giving them much to work with. THE APE has a pretty forgettable story and there's just no life, energy or passion to be seen anywhere. The film is certainly better made than most Monogram movies but that doesn't lead to any sort of entertainment value.