Hairy Horrorthon Halloween Countdown!...# 2...The Ape Man !!

Here it is kids, the second to the last Hairy Halloween classic !
This is perfect film for the holiday that cellebrates the weird, the creepy, and the spooky !
Is it a werewolf ? No, even worse !

This time it's.......

The Ape Man....A true classic of Simian Cinema ! The Ape Man....A masterpiece of Monkey Movie Madness ! The Ape Man.... A powerful...er..amazing....well...awww crap !...It's got a gorilla in it ! If your the hard boiled gorilla man fans I know you are, then you've hopefully seen it ! If not...What are you waiting for ?!! Be forewarned, my mad monkey minions, there are spoilers ahead ! So if you haven't seen the Ape Man yet, skip now to the bottom of the post and watch it...Go ahead..we'll wait. After you've watched it, read on , and well have a good laugh at it. The plot; apparently for some reason, Dr. Jonathan Brewster (Lugosi) felt the need to inject himself in the spine with the spinal fluid of a gorilla. Why you ask? Who the hell knows ! It's a damn well weird thing to do to yourself ! I would assume the fluid was taken from the gorilla Brewster keeps lock away in his basement laboratory. (Emil VanHorn ) The results of this bizarre experiment, are a bad case of poor posture, an Amish beard and a hairline that starts at his eyebrows. Dr. Brewster is so horrified by his ape-like appearance, that he hides out, making the world think he's dead. Enter, Agatha Brewster ( Minerva Urecal), the nutty Doctors even nuttier sister. The old battle axe's arrival is tipped to a reporter by a loony halfwit tipster named Zippo,(Ralph Littlefield) that keeps popping in and out of the story periodically. The reporters the goofball Zippo tips off , are none other than Jefferson B. Carter (Wallace Ford) and his cutie side kick photographer, Billie Mason.(Louise Currie) In a quest to interview the loony old Brewster sister, they wind up at Dr. Brewster's creepy mansion. Before their arrival, old Agatha had gotten the shock of her life to find her brother she thought dead, to be very much alive...though more than a little messed up ! When the reporters arrive outside the old house, they hear the Docs gorilla raising hell, and decided to investigate. Agatha, (not wanting to disclose her Brothers secret, covers for the noise by claiming it was a recording of ghost sounds from some old castle she was at. ( she's a medium, you see.) As luck would have it , Billie Mason snaps a photo of the old bag for the article they are writing, just as the ape faced Bela pears through a window behind her. He sneaks off, not being noticed, and the reporters leave...Very suspicious of the goings on in the old house. Meanwhile Bela, decides the only chance he has to get cured is to inject human spinal fluid into his back. The fact that it needs to taken from a live host, and it will kill them to extract it, is inconsequential. So old Bela and his trained Hench gorilla set out to go on a murderous rampage in a macabre scavenger hunt to collect the fluid. Bela's friend and fellow physician,Dr. George Randall, (Henry Hall) is approached to do the injections. Horrified at how he intends to acquire the stuff, George refuses at first, but relents after Brewster has his gorilla kill his butler. The shot does the trick and they all live happily ever after...NOT. The cure only works for a short while, so off the hairy duo go to procure more of the secret sauce. After several more killings, Bela figures he has enough to reverse the curse permanently. Now all these hairy murders haven't gone unnoticed by the dynamic newspaper duo ,and after yet another tip from the Idiot Zippo, they follow the clues back to the Brewster mansion. Can you guess what they discovered on the photo of the old hag Agatha, that Miss Mason took...You guessed it, old monkey face Bela himself! The cops have determined that the killing were done by an ape, because of the crushed bones in the victims, and here they find an ape staring at them in the photo. So after a few more words of wisdom from the moronic Zippo, off to the Brewster place the intrepid duo fly. Meanwhile old George is brought out to the old house to do the honors with the injections. In a fit of morality, George refuses his friends request and breaks the vial of the good stuff. Bela doesn't take this lightly and kills him out of spite. Before long, the girl reporter winds up captured by Brewster and sis, and Carter winds up face down on the floor with a vase busted over his head. ( a classic still, beautifully colorized by artist Mark Thompsen) Meanwhile, back in the lab, old Brewster's pet gorilla takes a liking to the pretty Miss Mason. Brewster menaces the poor girl, whilst Jeff Carter, having regained consciousness, is frantically trying to get into the lab with the cops. Bela is closing in on the dame when she accidentally releases Magilla from his cage. Not wanting to see his little girlfriend sullied by the Dr.'s grimy paws, the gorilla attacks old Bela, and proceeds to kill the crap out of him. With Brewster pushing daisies, Magilla turns his affections toward Billie Mason who ain't to happy about that. Just then Jeff Carter and the cops burst in with guns blazing and turn the poor monkey into hairy Swiss cheese. As if on cue, the to reporters fall in love and all is happy....Even the idiot Zippo, who wrote the crazy thing. Is The Ape Man a great movie ? I'd be a damned liar if I said yes. But it is a fun movie...Wallace ford is likable as the wise cracking reporter, and Louise Currie ain't too hatefull to look at. Bela is as over the top as I've ever seen him in any movie ! There is some nice atmosphere in a lot of the shots, and the story moves along at a pretty good pace. A British lobby card, with it's English title, Lock Your Doors...The Ape Man made more sense I think.                                                          Probably not the best idea Bela ! told ya ! So on behalf of Emil VanHorn, enjoy the movie...and have a good laugh at the expense of... The Ape Man !