Jungle Woman

This is the second in a series of three ape woman movies Universal made; at the moment I've only seen the first two. This film does follow the events of the first, but it could probably be seen by people who hadn't seen the first, since it does recap things.

It starts with a man walking towards a house, and he is attacked. We see him in silhouette struggle with his attacker, a woman. He sticks her with something, and she collapses. After a newspaper headline explaining a Doctor is faced with a Coroner's inquest, we meet Dr. Fletcher, the man on trial for the death of a woman named Paula. The inquest is a somewhat awkward framing device for the movie. Dr. Fletcher, Fred Mason and Beth Colman (these latter two character returning from the first movie) recall certain events surrounding Paula. Their recollections are, at least to start with, mostly clips from Captive Wild Woman (1943), although Dr. Fletcher's character has been edited into that footage. It grows somewhat awkward when Fred Mason testifies about a conversation he had with Dr. Fletcher about past events: we're watching a recollection of a recollection.

It turns out Dr. Fletcher discovered that the ape Cheela, who had seemingly died from a gunshot wound near the end of the first film, still had some vital signs. Dr. Fletcher nursed Cheela back to health, and upon hearing something about Dr. Walter's experiments, also buys Dr. Walter's estate, including the sanitarium from the first film. The recollections about Cheela and Paula are complicated by something Fred Mason tells Dr. Fletcher, information that was not in the first film that I recall. Mason says that before he brought Cheela to the US from Africa, he'd heard stories of a Doctor in Africa who turned humans into animals. It was rumored that Cheela was one of those animals. If that was true, then it would mean that Paula was a woman who'd been turned into an ape, and then turned into a woman who sometimes reverted to being an ape.

Cheela escapes, and Dr. Fletcher and his incredibly annoying (and poorly acted) helpmate Willie go searching. They find Paula instead. In the first film, once Paula had reverted to being an ape, she could only turn back after Dr. Walters gave her a series of treatments. In this film, she can turn back and forth; whether she can do so at will is not clear. Also unclear is whether she turns completely into an ape, or into an ape-woman: a halfway stage we'd seen her in in the first film. There is something much later in the film that definitely suggests the latter possibility is the correct one.

Paula is uncommunicative until she meets Bob, the sweetheart of Dr. Fletcher's daughter. She is instantly smitten. While this copies an element from the first film (Paula is obsessed with a man, and her jealousy makes her dangerous and animalistic), in the first film her obsession was at least somewhat justified. Mason had been kind to her while she was an ape in Africa, and on the ship all the way to America. Her obsession with Bob seems to be only that he is the first reasonably attractive young man she's met since becoming human again.

There's a scene in which Dr. Fletcher has someone compare Paula's fingerprints to those found on a lock which had been violently broken. He discovers that the patterns of the fingerprints are identical, except in size - one is at least twice the size of the other - and a somewhat "anthropoid" character of the larger one (or both?). Do apes have fingerprints? I don't know; I do think that scene could have been fleshed out a little more, and could have been interesting.

There were a couple strange things about the inquest. Dr. Fletcher had accidentally killed Paula by giving her an overdose of a sedative; the overdose was because he injected her while they were struggling. It would seem that would have been a defense in itself. Thus, Dr. Fletcher, Fred and Beth would not have had to bring up the story of Paula being an ape- woman. However, the court is willing to believe the story of Paula being an ape-woman if it can be proved, which seems a bit incredible. What is strange in connection with that, is that the coroner says if Paula was not human, then the court would have no jurisdiction for murder charges. Certainly she was human enough! Again, the defense would logically be that the death was accidental (and arguably self-defense as well).

Sequel to CAPTIVE WILD WOMAN is often said to be one of Universal's worst horror films, and with some good reason. For one thing the first 15 or 20 minutes agonizingly drone on and on with flashback sequences from the first movie, and has to be seen to be believed (it actually feels like you're watching 3 different films at times). Acquanetta returns as Paula the Ape Woman and it's hilarious to watch her terrible acting performance, especially the robotic way in which she delivers her lines! At least the original had her mute throughout; this one gives her a lot of dialogue she can't handle. Along with the unintended laughs to make things survivable, at least this one features the competent J. Carrol Naish as the latest scientist trying to experiment with Paula, and to its very slight credit director Reginald LeBorg directs a couple of scenes in a Val Lewtonesque manner (such as Paula's creepy attack on a row boat and her eerily stalking her victim through the woods). I've never understood why these films didn't take more advantage of using more of their Ape Woman woman in full makeup to keep things more lively. ** out of ****

Jungle Woman is one of several ape woman movies made by Universal in the 1940's.

In this one, the ape woman, Paula is living in a sanatorium but the people there don't realise she is going out at night to kill people in her ape form. Her victims include a resident of the sanatorium, who first gets the blame for her previous victim.

This movie is creepy in parts and despite this, it is not the best of Universal's horrors made at this time.

The cast includes J Carrol Naish (The Monster Maker), Evelyn Ankers (The Ghost of Frankenstein), Acquanetta (The Lost Continant) and Milburn Stone (Invaders From Mars).

Though not brilliant, Jungle Woman is worth a look at.

Rating: 3 stars out of 5.

"Jungle Woman" is a B-movie from Universal. And, with so many of Universal's monster films, this one often completely contradicts the previous film, "Captive Wild Woman"...so much so that it's hard to say that "Jungle Woman" is a sequel exactly...though the half-ape woman, Paula Dupree (Acquanetta) is in each. But instead of being the product of the evil Dr. Walters (John Carradine), she's the result of more benign experiments by Dr. Fletcher (J. Carrol Naish).

The film begins with Dr. Fletcher killing Paula in silhouette (a cheap technique in order to not have to use make-up to make Acquanetta look like an ape). At the inquest, he's hesitant to explain why he did this but eventually he tells...and you see a lengthy flashback which last the rest of the film.

Dr. Fletcher rescued a dying ape...healing it and somehow using glands to make the ape look like a hot woman with an inexplicable accent*. She is beautiful and intelligent but one thing she still lacks is a conscience. Because of this, when she inexplicably falls for Paul, she's determined to kill his girlfriend. And, she also kills the hospital's attendant, Willie, because he was so annoying! Then, she kills chickens and a German Shepherd...but in all these cases you see none of this...again all apparently to save money or, perhaps, because Acquanetta wasn't exactly a great thespian and she was used very sparingly throughout the movie.

So is this any good? Well, the mood is good but the film really could have used some ape/human make-up...something other the tiny scene at the end where she appears to be sporting wolfman make-up! I think they were trying for the Val Lewton experience where you never see the creature...but it just didn't work as well here. Not a terrible film, however, just one that could have been a lot better. For fans of B-horror films, it's worth seeing...most others will find it all a bit silly.

A sad portion appeared to have been taken from "Captive Wild Woman" that bothered me. You see a tiger and lion fighting each other...ostensible for the audience's amusement. Pretty sick and cruel stuff.



*Despite her exotic name and Universal marketing her as 'The Venezuelan Volcano', Acquanetta was from Wyoming....and her exotic accent a phony.

A sequel can sometimes be either a virtual remake of the original film, it can devote some of the running-time to re-telling the first film's plot in compressed form (via scenes lifted directly from that one) and, other times, the second entry could cheat by borrowing action scenes from the preceding effort and pass them off as its own. However, this is the only case I know of where a film is all three at once (though, technically, the animal footage here is part of the flashback framework, they were still ripped off from an earlier non-related picture)! Universal's three-movie "Ape Woman" franchise is surely among the most maligned to emerge during the vintage horror era (even by hardened buffs) but, maybe because I was in a receptive frame-of-mind, I recall enjoying CAPTIVE WILD WOMAN (1943; directed by, of all people, Edward Dmytryk!) back when I had watched it and certainly did not mind catching up with the two sequels now i.e. the film under review and THE JUNGLE CAPTIVE (1945), which followed on the very next day!

To get to the matter at hand: this, then, follows the pattern of THE MUMMY'S TOMB (1942), Universal's third movie in the Egyptology stakes but actually the second 'episode' in their "Kharis" saga. Anyway, the film has a complex structure in that we begin with the titular figure's demise, of whose murder the 'mad doctor' (who is not really) of this one, J. Carroll Naish, is accused, then we go into a flashback to learn how we got there but, corroborating his evidence, as it were, are the hero and heroine of the first film who relate their own experiences by recounting the events of CAPTIVE WILD WOMAN! Amusingly, Universal 'scream queen' Evelyn Ankers receives top billing here but she only appears during these basically expository scenes and, of course, the 'stock footage' though not in JUNGLE WOMAN's narrative proper (that is to say, Naish's recollections)! Incidentally, I wonder what John Carradine, star of CAPTIVE WILD WOMAN (1943), made of the fact that, unofficially, he also had this on his resume'!

When I said that this was more a remake than a sequel was due to its having the 'monster' (once again played by Acquanetta but, unwisely taking a leaf from BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN {1935}, she is made to speak – except that we are never told in this instance just who taught her – and, boy, is she wooden!) once more instantly fall for the doctor's daughter's fiancé and grows insanely jealous of the girl. By the way, in a reversal of "Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde", here the monster turns human without the use of drugs, so that the girl is found prowling the grounds of Naish's sanatorium by a simple-minded patient (who, subsequently doting excessively on Acquanetta, unsurprisingly becomes one of her victims). At one point, the Ape Woman swims underwater and capsizes the lovers' canoe, an act which is actually blamed on the oafish orderly who is currently missing – even if the former makes no secret of her impulsive affections for the impossibly bland leading man (unfortunately, a constant thorn in the side of the Golden Age of Horror!).

Curiously, the film naively (since the original film had already established the transformation as a fact!) attempts to follow the psychological Val Lewton route by never showing the monster (except once amidst the flashback footage and again in the very last shot – even her death is played out in the shadows, though the images of a female figure leaping on the doctor only to be injected with an overdose belies the animal noises on the soundtrack!) but, for all that, the film remains mildly enjoyable – certainly eminently watchable – along its trim 60-minute duration, largely owing to Naish's grey-haired presence (though he is not quite running on full cylinders here, as in the same year's THE MONSTER MAKER) and the unmistakable Universal Studios atmosphere.