Karloff is my main man. Here's his only horror movie for Monogram Pictures.
THE APE-Mongram-1940-Here’s Boris Karloff in his only Monogram horror flick. He plays Dr. Adrian, a seemingly kindly but hated doctor in the town of Red Creek. The town doesn’t like him because they believe he used patients as guinea pigs during “the epidemic”. They also believe his latest “experiment” to be a young crippled girl named Francis (Maris Wrixon) who Adrian calls his “make believe” daughter. His real daughter and her mother died during the aforementioned epidemic because Adrian lacked “the weapons to fight the disease that killed them”. However, now with a new gained knowledge he will make Francis walk! She also a real dweeb of a grease monkey boyfriend named Danny (Gene O’Donnell) who makes it clear he doesn’t trust the doctor. “I don’t like things I can’t understand”, he says. Anyway, the trouble starts when the circus comes to town. An ape handler is annoying his hairy charge. He says it killed his old man two years before. When the handler turns his back the ape strikes. His cigar falls in the hay, a fire erupts and the ape escapes. A posse is formed by the sheriff (Henry Hall) and the wounded handler is taken to Doc Adrian’s for treatment. In his mania to find a cure, he extracts some spinal fluid from the dying man. His gamble proves to be a boon. The new serum helps Francis. Unfortunately, in his exuberance the vial containing the vital serum is smashed. Bummer!
However as luck (and Monogram movies) would have it the escaped ape bursts into the doc’s lab and amazingly the old man kills the attacking simian! This interval provides Adrian with the perfect front. He doesn’t tell anyone about the killings. Instead he puts on an ape suit (which he just happened to have?) and goes looking for victims. Actually Adrian as an ape only kills one guy, the town land owner, Mason (Philo McCullough) and he’s a creep no one in town likes (running right behind Adrian in The Red Creek dislike poll). He has a floozy girlfriend and spits hateful dialogue at his long-suffering wife.
WIFE: I’ve got no place to go! MASON: You got the river!
Meanwhile Francis is getting feeling back in her legs but is in a lot of pain. Danny the dope starts threatening the doc. Adding to Adrian’s distress is another doctor who comes to investigate suspicious needle marks on corpses Adrian wrote death certificates for. This guy (Selmer Jackson) looks like a victim to be but lo and behold he winds up congratulating the doctor on his success with the girl and invites him back to the foundation that threw him out years before! However, the visiting Doc isn’t told what the secret ingredient is. “I can’t go”, laments Adrian, who suffers another indignity while dressed as the killer ape. A rifle toting local brat shoots him!
The enterprising hick sheriff deduces that the real ape might hang around Adrian’s house because of the handler dying there so he has his posse staked out all over the place. Even so, Adrian needs just one more victim to complete his work so he dons the ersatz monkey suit again. But before he does, he must sense that the movie’s climax is near for he gives his notebook to his mute housekeeper Jane (Gertrude Hoffman) just in case anything goes wrong. Then in a fit of utter incomprehensible behavior he attacks a member of the posse guarding his house! Naturally he’s caught in the act and shot. However before he dies, he manages to crawl to his own doorstep where a crowd gathers and he is unmasked. Francis, seeing her savior exposed boldly rises from her wheelchair while the dying doctor looks on and with a moan utters his final words: “There you see?”. A strange final scene has boy and girl embracing as Francis reveals she and mother have burned the wheelchair. Doc Adrian and his hairy exploits seem forgotten. The End.
THE APE has all the elements of a standard Monogram movie. It’s cheap, ridiculous and entertaining. What makes it rise above their usual production is of course the presence of Karloff in the lead role. His portrayal of Adrian is a role he would essay many times over the rest of his career (notably in his so called “Mad Scientist Series” at Columbia). A good man is driven to extremes by unfortunate circumstances. His character only does bad things when he is forced to. He is never actually evil, although the film is set up so that the only person he does kill outright is no good anyway. For more on Karloff’s “non-evil” roles see Scott Allen Nollen’s excellent and highly recommended book Boris Karloff: A Critical Account of His Screen, Stage, Radio, Television, and Recording Work (Published by McFarland).
THE APE closed out Karloff’s contract with “the poverty row” film company. It began in 1938 when they acquired the rights to a then popular Charlie Chan inspired magazine detective, Mr. Wong. Karloff signed on to the series but for his last movie with them, they switched to horror instead of mystery. This is probably due to the fact that horror films were “on the rise” once more and Karloff had already made a couple of his “mad scientist” movies for Columbia. THE APE is certainly the silliest “monster” Karloff was to play. While burying his body in tons of make-up for such classic productions as THE MUMMY or FRANKENSTEIN, here all he needs do is don a ratty, old, fake monkey suit and the effect is often hilarious (even though all the ape stunts are done by Crash Corrigan).
Screenwriting goes to Curt (here billed a Kurt} Siodmak and Richard Carroll (who would later write the screen story for FROM HERE TO ETERNITY). Perhaps it wasn't exactly collaboration though. At times, the characters’ dialogue contradicts their actions and vice-versa. Throughout most of the film the town folk want to virtually tar and feather Doc Adrian but show great concern for his safety when they think the ape is on his premise.
Director William Nigh was a veteran of low budget cinema as his career went back to 1914! He directed all 5 of the Mr. Wong series with Karloff and later directed Lugosi in BLACK DRAGONS (1942). His work here is neither good nor bad. It’s just competent and fast. There are only two other performers in THE APE who have anything more to do than stand around, although one Maris Wrixon as Francis does nearly all her acting sitting down. She had small roles in DARK VICTORY (1939), THE PRIVATE LIVES OF ELIZABETH AND ESSEX (1939), BRITISH INTELLIGENCE (also with Karloff) (1940), HIGH SIERRA and MEET JOHN DOE (both 1941) among others. She died in 1999.The only other role to standout is that of the sheriff played by Monogram vet Henry Hall. He was in THE MAD MONSTER (1942) as well as three with Lugosi: MURDER BY TELEVISION (1935), THE APE MAN (1943) and VOODOO MAN (1944). Several character actors appear in THE APE uncredited: George Cleveland (later Gramps on TV’s Lassie), Mary Field, I. Stanford Jolley, Jessie Arnold and of course the already mentioned Crash Corrigan who would go on to play the title monster in IT! THE TERROR FROM BEYOND SPACE.
Producer Scott Dunlap directed 45 movies from 1919 through 1929. In the ‘30’s he became a producer and production executive at Monogram. He produced all of the Karloff/Wong films. Another mention should go to cinematographer Harry Neumann, who shot hundreds of low budget films including the Bowery Boys & Jungle Jim series, the 3-D lensed THE MAZE (1953) and Roger Corman’s THE WASP WOMAN (1960), his last. I’ve read that some considered this one of Karloff’s worst movies but don’t believe it. This is an entertaining little no brainer that hasn’t been viewed or reviewed as much as some other ‘trash” classics.
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