#love of universal style classic horrors (this isn't a universal film but features a lot of the same cast and crew that were working for | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

mariocki · 6 months ago

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The Ape Man (1943)

"Six months ago, we made an astounding discovery. It was so far in advance of anything that's been done to date, but... Jim decided to be the guinea pig for this experiment himself. I tried to talk him out of it, but you know how stubborn he is when he gets an idea in his head. We made the experiment and... unfortunately it was a great success. So great, in fact, that we've been unable to counteract the results."

#the ape man #1943 #american cinema #horror film #william beaudine #karl brown #barney a. sarecky #bela lugosi #louise currie #wallace ford #henry hall #minerva urecal #emil van horn #j. farrell macdonald #wheeler oakman #ralph littlefield #jack mulhall #charles jordan #ernest morrison #sam katzman #sought this out as my diet of video nasties and modern splatter films was starting to make my soul sickly and i wanted to rekindle my #love of universal style classic horrors (this isn't a universal film but features a lot of the same cast and crew that were working for #them). alas... it just isn't very good. the sight of Lugosi with a furry face and a bad case of 'kind of ape like' was presumably meant to #inspire terror in an audience but it just made me feel a little sorry for him (a decade earlier he'd been a legitimate sex symbol)#he's still giving his all‚ stooped over and muttering menacingly‚ but it's all a little too shabby and a little too silly to have any real #kind of impact. a truly bizarre element of the film is the inclusion of a sort of all knowing audience cypher who routinely pops up to #point the heroes in the right direction (and whose identity is a nutso twist i won't spoil) but that aside there's little fresh or #original going on here. there's also a gorilla‚ played by a man in a bad gorilla suit‚ but that's all so charmingly badly done that #i honestly don't mark the film down for it; it's a weirdly endearing bit of cinematic incompetence that actually adds to the film's #(very limited) appeal

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