It's hard not to feel a little bad for Bela Lugosi in The Ape Man. And not bad for the character (a scientist who is turned into a man-ape), but for Lugosi the actor. He's responsible for some of (if not the) most iconic performances in horror film history, and here he is in The Ape Man - walking around slightly hunched over with a bad teen-wolf-meets-Abe-Lincoln beard, and tussling with a guy in a gorilla suit. Although looking over his credits, you've got to wonder how close to the bottom The Ape Man actually is.
Lugosi plays Dr. James Brewster, whose experiments have "unfortunately been successful" according to his partner Dr. Randall. Why you would want to create a procedure which would turn a man into a half-ape is questionable - why you would then try it out on yourself is beyond me. But that's 40's movie science, I guess. Anyways, Brewster has been reported missing (it's front page news), when in fact he is just hiding in his secret laboratory thanks to his new ape deformity. Brewster's sister Agatha, who also happens to be a ghost hunter (?), comes from overseas and the urging of Randall to learn the horrible truth about Dr. Brewster... He looks like this!
We learn that the only thing that can help Dr. Brewster is injections of human spinal fluid, "the taking of which causes instant death" to the donor. So Dr. Randall isn't too keen on it. But there are no lengths that Dr. Brewster won't go to get back to his normal state, including... MURDER!
Meanwhile, the Brewster home (and secret laboratory) is under surveillance from not only the press, but also the police... and some random guy just peeping in the window. (For some reason, the hidden secret lab happens to have a window that you can just peer into from the lawn. Poor secret laboratory design!) Will Dr. Brewster have to resign himself to being slightly hunched over and hairy for the rest of his days? Tune in to find out!
The Ape Man is another film from the 50 Tales of Terror box set, and true to form, the quality is pretty terrible. The dialogue is extremely difficult to make out... half the time, you just have to kind of guess what they are talking about based on body language and tone. So that's obviously an issue. The picture isn't terrible, but even with the volume turned up, I didn't even know that Brewster's sister was a ghost hunter until she played the reporters a recording of a spirit.
Outside of obvious presentation problems... it's still not very good. The Ape Man actually does something kind of amazing - it manages to make Bela Lugosi one of the least interesting characters in the film. His character is just flat. You never have any empathy for him, and the "tragic" angle I think they are going for just doesn't work. (Like I said, it's hard to feel bad for him when his experiment worked - this is the outcome he was hoping for!) Lugosi seems pretty game (he plays along with the physical demands of the role well), but he's just not playing a very compelling character.
I actually kind of liked the supporting cast & subplot. In particular, I was into the story of the newsman and his new partner, a photographer who happens to be a woman, which was probably a big deal back then. The Ape Man flirts with being progressive for a little while. It was actually fun to see these two go back and forth - he's got this noirish newsie lingo - talking about "crazy dames" and whatnot - and she more than holds her own. Some of their banter revolves around him going to war. She gibes him, saying he's not physically fit/enough of a man to go to the front - he fires back that he's headed out in a month and is pretty excited about it. And at the end of the film is an advertisement to buy war bonds (from this theater!) So The Ape Man is nothing if not patriotic.
I had mentioned a little while ago about Wes Craven's New Nightmare being kind of early to the meta-horror game... The Ape Man has got that beat by a good 50 years. There's this strange guy that just sort of wanders around throughout the film, peeping in windows, doling out little hints to the characters just keep the story moving. At the end (SPOILER?) they ask him just who exactly he is. "I'm the author of this... it's a doozy, isn't it!"
But, despite some fun/interesting parts, there isn't too much to really enjoy about The Ape Man. If you are a Lugosi completist or love guys in gorilla costumes, there's probably something for you here. Otherwise?
I would not recommend this film.
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