Cheap Ape Man (Video) (William Beaudine) Price

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Customer Reviews of Ape Man

"I warn you. It's frightening."
That's the warning Dr. James Brewster's medical colleague gives Brewster's sister - - a ghost-hunting psychic - - before she sees Brewster changed into the Ape Man. It's also a warning for us. This is not one of Lugosi's better films. It's barely a step up from what he did with Ed Wood. But in one scene Lugosi evokes more pity than anything in Dracula.

Brewster (the filmmakers should have changed the character's name when they got Lugosi to play the part) injects himself with serum from living victims' spinal columns. (I saw the movie two days ago and I've already forgotten why he needs it.)

We watch Bela Lugosi, by this time fighting drug addiction in real life, shoot up. Then, even through bad monkey makeup, we see the shame and horror on his face as he realizes what he has become.

"I can't fight it," he says.

There's one other interesting thing in the movie. Low-budget pictures made during World War II dealt more explicitly with the fact of men going off to fight than ostensibly better movies with bigger stars. In Holiday Inn (1942) everyone wears dinner clothes and dances and drinks champagne on the Broadway Homefront, while in The Ape Man (1943) the cliché girl photog razzes the cliché cynical reporter about being 4-F (in one month he'll be Seaman Cyncial Reporter and kick Tojo's butt).

The last scene makes it clear the producers had no respect for themselves or their audience. Most of the movie is unspeakably bad. But if you get a chance, watch the first half hour to see one truthful moment with Bela Lugosi.

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Uniquely silly Forties horror.
The only thing that saves this effort from a one-star rating is its enjoyable silliness, which is pretty extreme even for poverty row Forties horror flicks. This time, Bela Lugosi is "Dr. Brewster" (yet another Anglo-Saxon name for the exotic Hungarian!), whose unholy experiments with apes have given him a face-encircling beard, a slouching gait, and a tendency to sleep in a cage with his pet gorilla. He needs fresh spinal fluid (human only, please) to restore him to normal, so many complications ensue. His only ally is his sympathetic sister (Minerva Urecal), who addresses him as "you poor boy!" (Lugosi was about 60 at the time.) The film was aparently not even intended to be taken seriously, which is its one small saving grace. Even Lugosi is not as charismatic as usual.

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A classic by Beaudine & Katzman.
A Monogram/Banner classic co-produced by Sam Katzman and directed by the one and only William Beaudine. Bela Lugosi is Dr. Brewster who has experimented with spinal fluids from a gorilla on himself. He is now slowly transforming to an ape himself and starts to regret what he has done. So Dr. Brewster and his pet gorilla (!) goes out killing people to get human spinal fluid so he can be cured. This is just as stupid as it sounds, and the film has a total lack of logic. But it's a fun and entertaining movie if you are into the genre of old horrors from the 40's. Well worth a look.