Perhaps due to my recent trip to Texas, where I actually watched *gasp* films instead of anime (or anime films), I actually broke down and watched one of the zillions of Blu Rays/DVDs I keep buying.
In this case, it was Kino Lorber’s Blu Ray of The Ape. I should note that although the list price is $25, Amazon is selling it for $15—a far more reasonable price—and chances are good you will eventually be able to get it even a bit cheaper during one of the Kino Lorber website’s regular sales.
1940’s The Ape wrapped up Karloff’s multipicture deal with the poverty row studio Monogram. Oddly, from our perspective, this was Karloff’s first and last horror film for Monogram. The first six pictures in the deal saw him playing Chinese detective Mr. Wong. The previous year’s Son of Frankenstein over at Universal had shown that horror was profitable again, perhaps explaining why Karloff was assigned this picture while Key Luke, the first actually Asian actor to play an Asian detective lead, took over the final Mr. Wong movie.
Aside from Karloff, the only significant name attached to the film is Kurt Siodmak (at that point still spelling his name with the Germanic ‘K’) who came up with the scenario and co-wrote the script. Both commentaries, from veteran monster kid historians Tom Weaver and Richard Harland Smith, guess that cowriter Richard Carroll handled dialogue. Both note that there are several funny if not hilarious lines in the picture, not something Siodmak was overly known for. Oh, actually, Ray ‘Crash’ Corrigan did the ape suite duties here, so I guess that’s another name too.
The Ape is pretty famous for being the dumbest mad scientist movie Karloff made. (Many of those for the more upscale Columbia Pictures, so no surprise there.) Unfortunately, while this is true, it does lack the ongoing screwball wackiness of many of Lugosi’s poverty row films like The Invisible Ghost and Return of the Ape Man. Basically the central premise is quite dumb, but past that doesn’t stray overmuch into unintentional comedy. However, the film is saved by its brief running time of 62 minutes and Karloff’s predictably able performance as mad medico Dr. Bernard Adrian.
Even so, and despite being one of Monogram’s comparatively upscale productions—despite which, it was shot in a week, and romantic lead Gene O’Donnell reported to Weaver that he made a scant $125 on the film—it still if quite aggressively, er, economical. The beginning of the film features a goodly stretch of circus stock footage from a previous Monogram movie. Indeed, as Weaver points out, they apparently named Karloff’s character Dr. Bernard Adrian because they had a prop shingle with that moniker again from a previous film.
Speaking of the early circus footage, jaunty circus music plays over the opening credits, playing over circus posters. This is all very weird, even jarring, and seems to promise a much different film than the one we get.
Taking place in a small rural community of the sort often employed in poverty row pictures, Adrian is a generally despised figure. Bitter at the long-ago deaths of his wife and young daughter during a “paralysis epidemic”—clearly polio, a word never spoken here—he performed shady human testing to find a cure and earned the stink eye of the yokel townsfolk.
The one person in town Adrian cares for is the pretty, paralyzed Frances, who has become his surrogate daughter. Adrian has pursued his experiments on stolen pet dogs (more likely to make him unsympathetic to modern viewers than the murder he commits), and is on the verge of a breakthrough. When a dying animal trainer, mauled by the circus’ now escaped gorilla after tormenting it, is brought to Adrian, he uses the opportunity to steal spinal fluid from the fellow. This, naturally, provides exactly what he needs to create a cure.
The gorilla later breaks into Adrian’s house—this is actually motivated, which is nice—and Adrian kills it in a comically easy fashion. Needing more spinal fluid after breaking the previous vial of the stuff, Adrian does the most logical thing. He skins the gorilla and wears it like an ape suit—in fact, exactly like an ape suit—to murder a character previously set up as a giant prick and glean his spinal fluid. Why the ancient, frail-looking Adrian is able to overpower younger fitter men while wearing a presumably clumsy ape skin is left to our imaginations.
As noted, the film is quite short. In the end, perhaps to make his more sympathetic, Adrian only successfully manages to kill the one douchebag. Even so, he tries to kill another guy as well, and only fails after the fellow successfully fends him off. Adrian predictably dies for his depravations, but only after seeing Frances stand up out of her wheelchair before casting off his mortal coil. As was often the case for one of Karloff’s mad scientists, his goals are presented as worthy while never quite excusing his methods.
Overall the film is an easy 60 minutes. The pacing is a problem, but there’s no bad acting in the film, and Karloff is great as you’d expect. He plays Adrian completely straight, in a way Lugosi was nearly never allowed to do (or wanted to do?), and gives a nicely sensitive performance considering the time constraints of the production. It’s all very silly, and again isn’t as entertaining as some of the goofier poverty row pictures, but fans will want to give it another look if they haven’t checked it out in a while.
With the film being so short, Kino Lorber went the extra mile by, as noted above, hiring two veterans of this sort of thing to provide discrete commentaries for it. Both men know their business, and display affection for the film while not overlooking its shortcomings. Both commentaries are breezy, but Weaver’s is probably the more entertaining of the two.
Even so, Smith’s provided the biggest laugh. His commentary mostly involves going over the cast and crew and explaining what else they worked on. When Karloff’s makes the scene, he begins, “Born William Henry Pratt in…nah, I’m messing with you. You know who Boris Karloff is. Dear God, you paid good money for a Blu Ray of The Ape!” That’s funny.
Weaver, meanwhile, covers some of the main players, but draws from the extensive interviews he’s conducted with anyone and everyone who worked on a golden age horror or science fiction picture for decades now. Sadly, neither really examines much of the film’s goofier elements, although Weaver amusingly explores at some length what would have been involved in skinning the gorilla to make a wearable outfit, a process which the film unsurprisingly hand waves.
Given the generally excellent (if not remastered) presentation of the film, along with the commentaries, I’d say the disc is a worthwhile buy if you like this sort of thing and have the cash. Not essential by any means, but a nice pick up. If you have Amazon Prime, there’s a pretty decent print of the film available for free viewing. And, of course, there’s YouTube, although I doubt it will look anywhere near as good as Amazon’s copy, or the KL Blu Ray.
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