The Ape (William Nigh, 1940)

The silent film and early sound eras (and late 19th and early 20th century live theater) were primate-crazy. You couldn't throw a rock without hitting a film print containing an ape-runs-amok or a man-in-gorilla-suit-pretends-to-be-a-gorilla-to-commit-nefarious-deeds movie (or a theater putting on a primate-related play). I've reviewed at least six of the damn things just for this site. People went mad for monkey business back then.

The fad had mostly run its course by the mid-1930s, but it didn't die out completely. I reviewed 1939's The Gorilla (a tired vehicle for the Ritz Brothers directed by a too-good-for-the-material Allan Dwan) back in January, and I'm closing the year with The Ape. The Ape's director, William Nigh, also directed the 1934 ape-runs-amok movie The House of Mystery, reviewed on this site back in 2021. It's like the Hotel Ape-afornia up in this piece. You can watch other movies anytime you like, but you may never be entirely free of gorilla-suit flicks (guitar solo).

The Ape is not one of your cinema classics, but it has a couple things going for it: the story is a little more interesting than the typical primate fare and the movie is only an hour long. Your usual monkey-suit movie follows one of two plots: (A) a mad scientist has a gorilla or ape or chimpanzee or orangutan in a cage as either a pet or a subject of experimentation; the creature gets loose and creates pandemonium, havoc, and/or mayhem; or (B) a group of people are assembled in an old dark mansion in hopes of acquiring a fortune through inheritance, scavenger hunt, etc., but one of the party puts on an ape suit to scare the rest of them off or kill them and get all the loot.

The Ape gives the old primate formula a tweak by having the ape encounter a semi-mad scientist by chance due to previous circus mayhem, but I'll get back to that later. Dr. Bernard Adrian (Boris Karloff, in a mostly subdued performance) is a doctor and medical researcher in a small town. He moved to the town when a series of mysterious paralysis cases spread throughout the area. Dr. Adrian wasn't able to solve these cases, and he's been experimenting on animals ever since, with recent breakthroughs involving injections of spinal fluid curing two gerbils and a small dog. 

He's not popular in the town, with his only fans being the local pharmacist (a fellow man of science) and a patient who is about to be his first human guinea pig for the spinal fluid injections, Frances Clifford (Maris Wrixon). Frances is a young woman in a wheelchair hoping to walk again who admires and trusts Dr. Adrian, and her doting mother (Dorothy Vaughan) is also convinced the doc can help her daughter. Frances' mechanic boyfriend Gene (Danny Foster) is more skeptical, doesn't like that the treatment will be painful, and is not so sure about all this science stuff, but he's willing to take a chance because Frances is so committed.

Hey, guess what? The circus is in town. Gene takes Frances after getting some wheelchair assistance from Dr. Adrian, and the couple have a great time. Frances is inspired by the woman trapeze artist to dream of graceful movements in her own future. The circus employees are having a great old time of their own playing cards and chatting with some locals after the performance, except for one surly trainer (I. Stanford Jolley, who has a memorable character actor face) who is antagonizing the ape (a guy in a big-ass suit that looks more gorilla-ish than ape-like). He gets the business from the other trainer for mistreating the ape, but he says he will never stop being mean to the ape because the ape killed his father. The other trainer replies that the ape killed the man's father because the man was always mean to the ape. Like father, like son. You'll ape-reap what you ape-sow. This proves to be an almost immediate ape-prophecy because the asshole trainer gets too close to the cage and the ape chokes his ass out. He drops his cigar in some hay, and the circus equipment catches fire. The ape escapes and causes total pandemonium in the town.

The sheriff and several local businessmen who like to hang out at the drugstore talking nonsense form a posse to search for the ape after bringing the injured trainer to the doc's house for treatment. The trainer dies, but his clothing attracts the ape, who busts through a window and attacks Dr. Adrian. The doc gets the upper hand and kills the ape, but, instead of reporting it, he gets a great idea. He accidentally dropped and smashed the tube containing the last of Frances' injections, and his obsessive determination to cure the woman has made him go full-on bonkers. He decides to skin the dead ape and wear its fur and head at night, choking out locals and taking their spinal fluid to inject in Frances. It's a great plan, and I can't see any complications ensuing.

Will Dr. Adrian continue his altruistic reign of ape terror? Will the sheriff and his posse catch the doc? Will Frances walk again? Will Gene learn to stop worrying and trust science? Will a couple local jerks get their comeuppance? Why is Dr. Adrian's elderly housekeeper Jane (Gertrude Hoffman) so cool? These questions may be answered if you watch the second half hour of this hourlong ape epic.

The Ape is hardly a desert-island choice, but it's got some charm, a reasonable sense of humor, and some decent bits of supporting character detail usually absent from this kind of movie. It may also be the only primate-run-amok movie to feature as its titular antagonist an actual ape that then becomes a man in an ape suit. It's usually one or the other, but the doctor turns the ape into an ape suit, so you get both for the price of one. Wild, man. I don't really have anything else to say about The Ape. You know what you're getting into with ape fare. This one's for the ape-heads.

Mirror of Death aka Dead of Night (Deryn Warren, 1988)

One of the approximately 654 movies called Dead of Night but better known under its much more accurate U.S. home video and Canadian theatrical title Mirror of Death, this low-budget indie is no great shakes, but it has a lot of personality and DIY charm. You can tell it was made by people with not much technical experience (the film score drowns out the dialogue in the bar scenes, the volume and audibility of the actors' voices vary wildly, often within the same scene, and the lighting can be dimly or brightly lit within a single scene), but it's never boring, and I even got a few big laughs from it (some of which were probably not intentional).

The film opens with a bruised and battered young woman, Sara (Julie Merrill), running for her life down a Hollywood street at night. She calls her sister, actress April (Janet Graham, under the name Kuri Browne), collect from a phone booth. April and her boyfriend Richard (Richard Fast, under the name J.K. Dumont) are in the middle of a house party, but April tells Sara to come right over since she's only a few blocks away, despite Richard's exasperation at Sara's constant relationship drama. When he sees her battered face, he changes his tune and gets serious. April sends everyone home, but not before receiving a party gift from Mensa (George Carter, under the name Jordan Brown) (why were so many cast members acting under pseudonyms?), the only black man at the party. He hands her a book of voodoo rituals from his ancestral Haitian home and promptly disappears from the movie.

April, about to leave for San Francisco for two weeks for a film shoot, lets Sara stay with her until Sara gets back on her feet. She's a supportive sister, despite her annoying habit of condescendingly referring to Sara as Babygirl. While April's gone, Sara fends off another attack from her abusive ex Bobby (John Reno). Feeling ugly and low, she reads the voodoo book in the bath and decides to perform a ritual to make herself beautiful and powerful. The ritual, involving red candles, a mirror, and a circle of baby powder, works so well that it completely erases her bruises, but it also causes her to be possessed by the spirit of a vengeful empress named Sura, so don't try this at home, readers.

Sura gives Sara the confidence she's lacking, and she hits a local bar and picks up the bartender through some wildly unusual seductive tactics. These tactics include asking for a glass of water, accepting the bartender's offer of a free cognac instead, getting another man to give her a quarter for the pool table through a wily glance, making a great shot with the pool cue, and then busting some completely insane, unprompted, and unexpected dance moves for several minutes while making eye contact with the bartender. I could never do justice to Sura/Sara's dance moves (language is inadequate), but I'll try to ballpark it. Picture Elaine Benes attempting Kylie Minogue's moves in the "I Should Be So Lucky" and "Loco-Motion" videos, with just a sprinkling of Whitesnake-era Tawny Kitaen, but weirder. The bartender is absolutely grooving on it. The possessed Sara takes the bartender back to her sister's pad, but before they can get it on, the unlucky lad touches her red candles, and Sura goes ballistic on his ass.

This does not deter Sura, who hits the bar scene the next night. As soon as she walks in, a Hollywood hunk gets off his barstool and sizes her up and down with a leering smirk. Sura and the himbo immediately bust into some more insane dancing for a few minutes, this time with a Latin American flair. My wife and I were wheezing with laughter during these dance scenes. She takes the pretty boy back to Sis's house, where he gets much further (and farther) than the bartender. They have some hot but nudity-free shower sex where the camera spends an inordinately long time focusing on Sura soaping the man's navel. Guy had the cleanest navel in Hollywood that day. He spends the night and even makes a horrible-looking cup of coffee in the morning, but he touches the mirror and gets the same ballistic-on-ass voodoo chokehold.

Shithead Bobby decides to make another unwelcome return the following night, and the abusive jerk finally gets his comeuppance, mirror-spirit-style. April returns from the film shoot (which was supposedly two weeks, but maybe she's just returning for the weekend?) to find her sister digging graves in the backyard with a shovel. April asks Sara what we're all thinking, "What are you doing, burying cat tails and monkey nuts?" Sara responds to this predictable and conventional question by hitting her sister with the shovel.

Waking from her shovel drubbing, April gets Richard to come over. Sara explains that she has been possessed by an ancient empress, probably killed three dudes and buried them in the backyard, and doesn't even remember going full metal shovel on her sibling. April and Richard have a hard time with this news until they see physical proof. (Richard: "Shit! What the hell was that?") The trio decides to call a spirit whisperer to get rid of Sura by flipping through the yellow pages. They choose to go with John Smith (Bob Kipp, under the name Bob Kip, which I'm guessing was a typo and not a pseudonym) because, as Sara says, "his name sounds normal." John Smith bicycles over with a backpack full of spiritual items, and the showdown begins.

We're far from good movie territory here, but, as I hope my description above makes abundantly clear, this thing is far more entertaining than it should be. The performances are more consistent and natural than is usual for this kind of DIY project even if the behavior of the characters is sometimes inexplicable (the dancing). Technical limitations of sound and lighting aside, Warren's visual style is neither distractingly show-offy nor ineptly amateurish, and the movie hums along without getting bogged down or turning into a snooze. I wouldn't recommend this one to the average moviegoer, but if you have a soft spot in your heart for the low-budget b-movie (and if you read this blog regularly, I hope you do), I think you're going to have at least a little bit of a good time.

Deryn Warren had a short career as a filmmaker, but she's had a long and successful one as an acting teacher in Los Angeles and as a theater actor and director. Her other films include two other horror movies, The Boy from Hell and Black Magic Woman (starring Apollonia Kotero and Mark Hamill), and the comedy short Sweet Tessie and Bags.