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.