The Ape Man (1943)

The Ape Man (1943)

Directed by: William Beaudine

Starring: Bela Lugosi, Louise Currie, Wallace Ford

My last Bela Lugosi movie for a while. You know, if there’s only one thing I’ve learned in life, it’s that just because you see a DVD that says “5 Bela Lugosi Movies for $5,” it doesn’t mean that you should buy it. Aw, who am I kidding, I’d probably do it again. I’ve bought stupider things.

In Ape Man, Bela Lugosi plays a scientist who has turned himself into some sort of… ape man. After some unspecified treatment for some unspecified reason, he grew a full head beard, limps around, and can talk to his pet gorilla. He’s still mostly in control of his senses, though, and he’s searching for a way to get better. The solution he comes up with is to inject himself with the spinal fluid of a normal person. Unfortunately, this kills them and his associate doctor has no desire to go around killing people and planting a spigot on their spine, and thus the murder spree begins.

Hot on Lugosi’s trail (well, ACCIDENTALLY on Lugosi’s trail), are a reporter and his photographer who kinda bumble around and eventually find Lugosi’s lair where he’s finally killed by his pet gorilla. Which is pretty much the reason they don’t allow people to keep mountain gorillas in their homes anymore, because they’ll kill people for you to steal the spinal fluid from. That was a big problem in the 40’s.

Sounds like a pretty standard monster movie, and it is. Normally I’d give it two stars just because I like those goofy old things, but there’s one outstanding feature of Ape Man I haven’t mentioned yet. Throughout the film, a man keeps popping up wherever the characters are and pointing them in the right direction or helping them out, or even just being there looking through a window at what the characters are doing. At the end, our heroes find him in their car and ask, “Who are you, anyway?” Here is his response:

“I’m the author of this picture. Crazy little idea, wasn’t it?”

Yeah, I’m not sure if he was actually the writer, but it doesn’t matter. The fact is that the writer wrote himself in as a VITAL PLOT DEVICE. In fact, SEVERAL VITAL PLOT DEVICES. There could not possibly be a worse way to drive your story than to have the writer actually go around telling the characters what to do. I actually watched this movie a couple days ago, but I didn’t want to think about this idiotic story. That’s it, I gotta move on. I hate you, Barney A. Sarecky, writer of Ape Man.