Category: Apemen/Neanderthals
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Monster on the Campus
The juices from a prehistoric fish turns a mild-mannered professor into a raging Neanderthal in Jack Arnold’s 1958 monster programmer. While a fairly entertaining low-budget romp, the film’s weak, contrived and repetitive script and sub-par special effects make it a low-point in Arnold’s career. 4/10
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El castillo de los monstruos
Comedian Clavillazo saves a damsel from the clutches of a mad doctor, battling Universal’s entire roster of monsters in a creaky castle. This mildly amusing Mexican 1958 horror comedy has some nice atmospheric moments and is a fairly breezy watch. 5/10
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The Body Snatcher
A mad scientists kills wrestlers and turns them into super-monsters. An up-and-coming wrestler agrees to act as bait for the killer, with disastrous results. The first Mexican luchador/monster mashup from 1957 may be the best. 6/10
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World Without End
The first US time machine film from 1956 is a fun but clunky Technicolor adventure. Astronauts accidentally travel 500 years into the future, where the meek, pacifist human survivors hide from barbaric mutants in an underground civilisation. 5/10
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The Neanderthal Man
A scientist transforms himself to a Neanderthal man and starts molesting women in this cheap and belated mad doctor entry from 1953. 3/10
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Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla
Often cited as one of the worst films ever made, this 1952 low-budget mad scientist/jungle comedy is better than its reputation – if you can get past Sammy Petrillo’s Jerry Lewis imitation. 3/10
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Jungle Jim in the Forbidden Land
In the 8th Jungle Jim installation, Johnny Weissmuller tries his best not to hunt down a “missing link” species of giant ape-men, while battling a plush panther and stock footage. It’s a clunky, but entertaining and well-acted juvenile potboiler. 4/10
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The Jungle Captive
The third and final instalment of Universal’s Ape Woman series was released in 1945 to an indifferent audience. The film piles one mad scientist trope on another as a nutty egghead conspires to raise the ape woman from the dead, using the leading lady’s vital fluids to do so. Nevertheless,…
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House of Frankenstein
Universal’s House of Frankenstein sees Boris Karloff as a mad scientist hiring Dracula as a hit man, attempting to cure the Wolf Man and restart the Frankenstein monster. All while J. Carrol Naish’s hunchback is trying to bonk a gypsy girl who’s in love with the werewolf. While the nutty…
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Return of the Ape Man
This 1944 faux-sequel to Monogram’s The Ape Man marked the end of Bela Lugosi’s stint at the Poverty Row studio. Here he is joined by a good cast and a seasoned director who nonetheless fail to bring life to this illogical “thawed-out-cave-man” yarn. It is better than its predecessor, though. …
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El hombre bestia
A magnificent train wreck. That’s perhaps the most fitting description of Argentina’s first horror, SF and monster film, The Beast Man from 1934. This no-budget monstrosity throws every conceivable Hollywood genre cliché in the mix, following the exploits of a beast man created by a mad scienist, who’s kidnapping women…
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Jungle Woman
Acquanetta the Ape Woman returns in a 1944 sequel to Universal’s Captive Wild Woman. The first 20 minutes go by in flashbacks from the original picture, before the wild woman is resurrected and goes ape, off-screen, in a mental asylum. An ill-conceived and clumsy effort, this is a monster movie…
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Captive Wild Woman
Director Edward Dmytryk cuts and pastes together a surprisingly coherent and enjoyable tale of a gorilla being turned into a woman by a nutty John Carradine in his first mad scientist role. The 1943 film made the mysterious Acquanetta an over-night star, and garnered two sequels, despite the fact that…
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The Ape
In 1940 Monogram wanted a gorilla horror film. Screenwriter Curt Siodmak wanted a film where Boris Karloff tries to cure polio by murdering people for spinal fluid. Somehow these to wishes met in the final product. The result is not pretty, but The Ape nonetheless has an enduring charm. 3/10
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Dr. Renault’s Secret
A little diamond in the rough, this 1942 ape-man melodrama from 20th Century Fox features Ersatz horror icons J. Carrol Naish and George Zucco. While suffering from scripting and pacing problems, the movie has a smidgen of depth, owing to its literary roots. 6/10
Scifist. 