zetes Boris Karloff stars as a doctor attempting to cure paralysis. To continue his research, he needs to collect spinal fluid, but there just aren't enough corpses from which to harvest it. Thankfully, he has just killed an escaped circus gorilla, so he hollows out its corpse, puts on its skin and goes out at night to murder townspeople for their precious, precious spine juice. This movie is pretty retarded. Why exactly does Karloff need an ape costume to kill his victims? I mean, he knows that the sheriff has organized hunting parties that go out every night looking for the ape. It seems that an ape costume is probably the least safe thing to be wearing. And it's not like wearing a gorilla costume is going to give him super-strength or anything. It's more likely to make it much more difficult to murder your victims, as it's got to be hot as Hell in there and your maneuverability and vision have to be severely diminished. The film is also painfully slow, and the characters are as dumb as the plot. Not Karloff's finest hour, but at least it provided some good laughs.

Chad Halsman Another decent movie by the famous Boris Karloff. It starts off with a bit of semi-action. The story starts out with a father, who turns out to be a scientist seeks a way to cure his daughter who his dead from the waist down. The circus also happens to be in town, and an ape who is unusually large turns out to be one of the inhabitants. It then takes a turn for the worse when a fire breaks out and the ape escapes. The story is interesting and deals with a scientist seeking a miracle cure through incredible means. The plot is a little hard to follow towards the end, but as always Karloff plays an incredible role and pulls off his title as a great actor. If you like Old-School thriller movies such as this, then I recommend this for you. If your not a fan of Karloff or even a fan of decent Old-School thrillers such as this one, then its best to just avoid this film.

MARIO GAUCI Very minor and frankly dull Boris Karloff vehicle, one of the "mad scientist" roles he specialized in during this phase of his career. The plot takes pains to render the idea of how despised his character is, presumably because of his unorthodox experiments, but I cannot fathom why – surely what he was engaged in would prove exceedingly beneficial to mankind if successful (as readily acknowledged by an authority brought in from out of town to investigate him)! A measure of the film's ambivalence in this respect is that both views will be accounted for at the very end – as Karloff's miracle cure does work, but he has had to resort to the despicable act of murder in order to procure specimens!; incidentally, this latter business and the fact that one of the protagonists is wheelchair-bound would both resurface – to infinitely infinitely greater effect – in a later Karloff picture, the Val Lewton classic THE BODY SNATCHER (1945). The titular creature, then, is seen prowling about a number of times – even after having watched Karloff stab it: where we supposed to know that he was behind subsequent killings?; my brother actually arrived at this conclusion about three-quarters of the way in…but I just could not believe Karloff would go to such extremes for Science (after all, he failed to save the immediate members of his family and had kept up the fight for a good 10 years afterwards – why should he bother so much with the rest of the world, especially since they hated him for it?!) and, in any case, being a doctor does not automatically give one a propensity for taxidermy, does it?! All things considered, this is watchable but inessential – and not nearly as much fun (in a guilty pleasure kind of way) as when Bela Lugosi did something similar i.e. in THE APE MAN (1943).

Michael_Elliott The Ape (1940) ** (out of 4)Boris Karloff plays a kind-hearted doctor trying to cure a woman who is paralyzed from her waist down. When a giant ape escapes from a local circus the doctor sees a woman to continue his experiments but this leads to murder. THE APE comes from Monogram and I think it's the perfect example to use if one wanted to compare the "straight" Boris Karloff to the more "over-the-top" Bela Lugosi. Lugosi would appear in Monogram's THE APE MAN, which is a very silly film that has several silly moments but it's actually entertaining thanks to the campy stuff. This film here is just incredibly stiff, lacks any real entertainment and really comes across as boring. The film seems constantly worried that they're going to hurt Karloff's good guy image and no matter what happens through his character, the screenplay is always quick to give some sort of excuse to make him look good. The character is basically a murderer but instead of just being a bad guy, the screenplay is constantly making him look better and all the excuses just leads to a rather boring story. Karloff offers up a good performance but it's certainly not enough to liven up the film or make it more interesting. The supporting cast is mostly forgettable but I'm sure some of this is due to the screenplay simply not giving them much to work with. THE APE has a pretty forgettable story and there's just no life, energy or passion to be seen anywhere. The film is certainly better made than most Monogram movies but that doesn't lead to any sort of entertainment value.