Jungle Woman

No need to waste time on this sequel mess. Apparently, Universal needed to meet product demand for wartime audiences. So they took a hunk of 1943's Captive Wild Woman and cobbled together some surrounding footage to make something of a story. The result comes across like Val Lewton on a really bad day. The supposedly scary scenes are done in Lewtonesque shadow, but come across as more clumsily cost-cutting than artful. Too bad so many distinguished players (Hinds, Dumbrille, Naish) are wasted in what must have been an embarrassment. I just hope Ankers & Carradine got compensated for the reuse of their earlier footage. But I doubt it given studio dominance of the period. No need to go on. Suffice that this is about the nadir of human-into-animals that were so popular at the time. As Lewton knew, horror needs more than shadow; it needs concept, dread, and mood, elements in short supply here.

Considering this is from Universal Studios in the 1940's, I expected a bit more from this film. Not much going for it, even if it was one of those campy monster films. I admit that I liked the interiors of the hospital--what a hallway--that thing was a wide as highway!! And I liked the staircase also--lol. This film is not scary or anything, so I can't figure out why they even made it in the first place.

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.

Now I do have a funny story about this film. I was searching for a way to watch this, not realizing that I own the Universal Blu-ray box set that held this. I almost bought a DVD until seeing this was part of that set and saved myself money. It did take longer than it should have. I've been curious about this film as it is a sequel to Captive Wild Woman and it brings back the character taking on that role, Acquanetta.

Synopsis: Paula (Acquanetta), the ape woman, is alive and well. She is running around a creepy old sanitarium run by the kindly Dr. Fletcher (J. Carrol Naish). Deaths continue to follow her as she might be reverting back to her original state.

We start this with seeing a woman walking outside. She is attacked by someone, but we see this from shadows, hiding identities. What we do see is that the attacker used a hypodermic needle. That's when it shifts to an inquest. A woman was killed and the prime suspect is Dr. Fletcher. He won't talk, which makes the district attorney assume his guilt. Dr. Fletcher breaks to tell his tale.

What is interesting here is that a good part of this is recapping the events of the original film. They even bring back Beth (Evelyn Ankers), who is now married to Fred Mason (Milburn Stone). This shows what happened and introduces us to Paula. We then saw Dr. Fletcher takes the dying ape home and nurse it back to health. Willie (Edward M. Hyans Jr.) is a simple minded helper who makes a discovery. The animal is gone. They go looking and find Paula hiding in the bushes.

Things take a turn when Paula falls in love with Bob (Richard Davis) who is seeing Dr. Fletcher's daughter, Joan (Lois Collier). Bob is nice to Paula and this grows to make Joan jealous. The problem is that Paula is protective, becoming upset with Joan. Willie tries his hardest to do nice things for Paula, which upsets her. Violent deaths occur around this sanitarium, but Dr. Fletcher has a difficult time believing it is done by a human, let alone a woman. This puts everyone at risk.

That is where I'll leave my recap and introduction to the characters. Where I want to start with this is that it uses a couple narrative choices that I'm not always a fan of. The first is that we're seeing the end of events first. They then go into the past to explain them. What we know is that there was a murder of a woman, which Dr. Fletcher is saying it was accidentally. This alleviates tension for me since we know all these characters are safe. There is a way this could be managed where we don't know what woman was murdered.

Then the other is also going to bring up a filmmaking issue. This is a clip show for about 15 to 20 minutes. There are layers here as well. Captive Wild Woman used footage from The Big Cage for scenes where Fred is really Clyde Beatty who trained the animals. The footage is incorporated here to explain the back-story of Paula. This was edited well. I do like showing, rather than telling. This just feels like a cash grab where we are only filming 40 to 45 minutes of new footage to tell this story. It is just reworking the same idea though and using a framing idea we've seen before. That does knock this film down for me. I will credit that they at least had new shots as opposed to others that try this same trick.

To end my thoughts on the story, it doesn't add much there. This is more than just adding on to what they did earlier. It is hard to call this a character study since we aren't developing more. I'll shift over to acting here. Naish is good at taking over as the scientist. I wouldn't even call him mad or insane. He is more benevolent than John Carradine's character as Dr. Fletcher saw the compassion in the apes and wanted to save them. Collier was fine as his daughter who is pitted against Paula. Acquanetta doesn't have much to work with, but that is in its favor. She's supposed to be an ape that was changed into a woman so she lacks that social aspect that we learn. Davis works as the new male that Paula is obsessed with. Hyans works as the worker who just wants to be friends with Paula. I did like bringing back Ankers and Stone. Samuel S. Hinds, Douglass Dumbrille and the rest of the cast worked as needed.

I'll then just finish out with discussing the rest of the filmmaking. The cinematography is fine. It doesn't do anything to stand out. I did like using the same sanitorium. The outside shots work. It does open things. I even like the inquest aspects of the story. This has limited effects. I did like the look of the gorilla. That fits this movie as being an 'ape film'. Other than that, the soundtrack fit what was needed without standing out.

I've also now given this a second watch with the commentary track by William Mank. He gave interesting insights into this film as well as the actors. What I didn't remember was that one of our stars, Acquanetta, was black. She hid it well, pretending to be Native American. There was backlash here having a Black woman playing an ape woman and the racial connotations there. It sounds like Universal mostly just ignored this and the censors didn't necessarily agree. This also was heavily inspired by Cat People from RKO/Val Lewton's team. Director Reginald Le Borg tried to do what he could, but it fell short of capturing that feeling. Just interesting things, I heard that I wanted to include here.

In conclusion, this feels like an unnecessary sequel and more of a cash grab. The story they used to bring back Paula was fine. I can buy it as it doesn't feel like a cheat. My issue is that this feels like a clip show and then just mostly retelling the same story. I did like getting back Ankers, Stone and Acquanetta. The people brought in here were fine. This is also made well enough. No glaring issues, but none of what they did stood out either. I'd recommend it if you're just interested in the classic Universal run as this is an oddity.

My Rating: 5 out of 10.

Jungle Woman (1944)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Dr. Carl Fletcher (J. Carrol Naish) is on trial for the murder of Paula (Acquanetta) when several people are brought into testify including Beth Mason (Evelyn Ankers). Soon we are told how Paula ended up coming to the home of Dr. Fletcher and why things spun out of control.

JUNGLE WOMAN is a sequel to CAPTIVE WILD WOMAN and is the second of the three film series. For the most part you can't help but call this one of Universal's worst films right down there with SHE WOLF OF London. Even if you don't consider it one of the worst it's hard to defend me calling it one of their laziest films.

I say lazy because a lot of this film is just flashbacks to the first movie and this just adds a very cheap feel to the picture. One has to wonder why they needed to use the flashbacks since I'm sure most people would have already seen that movie. Or, if they were going to use flashbacks, they could have used less of them to get people caught up on the story. I would also argue that the entire courtroom scenes were boring and didn't add anything to the picture.

The most shocking thing about JUNGLE WOMAN is the fact that there's not too much footage of the ape woman. Did CAPTIVE WILD WOMAN not meet the studio's box office expectations so they went cheap here? I'm really not sure but even capable actors like Naish and Ankers just come across as boring here. Milburn Stone also returns and of course there's Acquanetta who is completely wasted here.