JohnHowardReid Producer: Scott R. Dunlap. Copyright 24 September 1940 by Monogram. New York opening at the Rialto: 27 November 1940. U.S. release: 30 September 1940. U.K. release: 23 January 1941. Australian release through Associated-B.E.F.: 16 January 1941. 5,620 feet. 62 minutes. SYNOPSIS: A research doctor needs spinal fluid to affect a cure for paralysis. When an ape escapes from a circus, the doctor decides... NOTES: A re-make of Monogram's The House of Mystery (1934), starring Ed Lowry and Verna Hillie, and featuring Harry C. Bradley and George Cleveland in different roles than they were assigned in The Ape. Both versions were directed by William Nigh.COMMENT: The last of Karloff's six films for Monogram, this one is described, somewhat inaccurately, by the contemporary British trade paper Kinematograph Weekly as a "spectacular thriller." The Ape is neither. It's better described as a small-scale study of small town mores. True, some reasonably exciting stock footage of a circus fire has been incorporated into the Poverty Row action and one briefly exciting scene is presented in which Karloff is snarlingly confronted by a furniture-hurtling "Crash" Corrigan (who vigorously smashes his way into Boris' poorly equipped lab), but the creature is quickly disposed of, and the action resumes its predictably humdrum course.Karloff does what he can with his clichéd role, but the real acting honors must be shared among the lovely Maris Wrixon (quite convincing as the heroine), Henry Hall (a no-nonsense sheriff), and Philo McCullough (a wonderfully hard-nosed villain who has all the script's best lines). I. Stanford Jolley (whose long cinema career was spent almost exclusively along Poverty Row) also impresses in a brief part as the make-him-mad trainer. (Why the circus would employ such a person and why, having enraged the gorilla, he would then relax with a cigarette so temptingly close to the ape's cage, are just two of the script's numerous little inconsistencies). As in House of Mystery (whose plot bears little resemblance to this), Nigh mostly directs in a competent but thoroughly routine manner, only coming to life sporadically - especially in a bit of circus footage focusing on George Cleveland (of all people!) in an effective tracking shot as he walks through the grounds after the performance.

a_chinn Corny but fun low budget horror film about small town mad scientist Boris Karloff trying to cure a girl of polio, while at the same time a circus ape has escaped and is terrorizing the locals. When the ape breaks into Karloff's laboratory and destroys the spinal fluids he needs to cure the girl, he concocts a scheme to skin the ape and then wear it's flesh as a disguise to kill the townsfolk in order to harvest their spinal fluid and let the ape take the blame. The film was written by Curt Siodmak, who wrote "The Wolf Man," but who also wrote a lot of nonsense along the lines of "Bride of the Gorilla" and "Tarzan's Magic Fountain," but I did find the overall story of Karloff disgusting himself as an ape to steal spinal fluid a campy good time. Fun, but nothing brilliant.

utgard14 Boris Karloff once again plays a scientist. Whether this one is mad or not I'll leave for you to decide. A circus ape has recently escape and attacked a man. Karloff treats the man and uses his spinal fluid on a young crippled woman. When she reacts positively to the treatment, Karloff realizes he must have more spinal fluid. So he dresses as the killer ape and seeks victims for his experiments. Cheap Monogram effort with Karloff effortlessly playing the role of the kindly scientist doing the wrong things for the right reasons. What's there to say, really? It's a guy-in-an-ape-suit movie. There's a pretty low ceiling on how good it could be. Karloff fans will like it most.

MARIO GAUCI 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).