Le Singe justicier

OK, so it's about a human brain transplanted into an ape's body -- it's still a unique, original and stylish film. Director Stuart Heisler treats it all very seriously and the cast does a great job. It's beautifully shot and lit -- and there's even a sub-plot about white slavery and prostitution that's shocking for the time. A first-rate job by all concerned.

Monster and the Girl, The (1941)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Strange but effective film from Paramount mixes the noir and horror genres. Mobsters frame an innocent man for murder but before his execution he swears vengeance on them all. After his death a scientist (George Zucco) experiments by putting the dead man's brain into the body of a gorilla who goes out for revenge. The biggest problem with this film is its short running time of 65-minutes, which isn't enough time for the two stories to work. We get a fast paced and fun movie but it could and should have been a lot more. This is certainly a very weird film that noir and horror fans should check out.

..which seemed inspired by the Val Lewton productions at RKO. The story stars off as court room melodrama. Scott ( Philip Terry) is on trial for shooting a gangster- but in one of several flashbacks we can see that he was framed. He was defending the honor of his sister Susan (Ellen Drew) who had been tricked into becoming a prostitute. Scott is found guilty and sentenced to death and now the film becomes a mad scientist movie. Dr Perry (George Zucco )convinces Scott to let him transplant his brain into a gorilla (because this is somehow going to help humanity?!) Scott laughs at the thought but agrees anyway. The censors were not happy with the white slavery angle and it was cut but it's obvious what poor Susan is forced to do.

There is also a subtle gay angle between big city gangster Bruhl (Paul Lukas) and one of his henchmen who he refers to as " his favorite thorn" . The movie has one very effective Lewtonesque scene in which the ape stalks one of his victims with the aid of Skippy the dog. The film is out on an excellent blu ray the Universal Horror collection from Shout /Scream factory.

I learned about this movie from a sidebar to an article on "horror noir" in Films in Review, where it was highly recommended.

It does mix horror and film noir in its own peculiar fashion. It starts off more noir than horror. A woman addresses the camera, surrounded by smoke or fog, to tell us a tale. We're taken to a courtroom, where a stoic man is being tried for murder. The woman from the introduction enters the court as a spectator, and a couple of the other spectators call attention to her.

The man on trial doesn't say much in his defense, speaking in a monotone. The woman jumps up to insist on speaking. She seems like a tough dame, and it turns out she's the man's sister. What she says doesn't help much, and she isn't a credible witness; it's implied she's a prostitute.

Through a flashback to better days, we see the siblings when they were much more animated and happy. She wanted to leave their small town, but when she goes to the city she finds it hard to get work. She meets a man she falls in love with, and gets married, but when she wakes up after a party on her wedding night, he's disappeared. A strange man is in her bedroom informing her how much she owes for the room and party, and offers her work in a cabaret entertaining men...

The brother goes to the city to find the missing husband, and gets framed for murder by a criminal conspiracy by the men his sister now works for. Back in the courtroom, he's convicted, vows revenge, and is executed, but not before he agrees to donate his brain to science.

Post-mortem, his brain is implanted into an ape. It's not clear what the scientist hopes to accomplish by that. Something about evolution, perhaps seeing what the ape's potential is if its brain is upgraded. For some reason, the scientist seems to expect an intelligent ape, rather than a man's mind in an ape's body. It isn't clear to what extent the executed man's brain retains its personality or memories, but the ape does carry out his vow of revenge, and his own dog seems to recognize him.

There were several other primate horror movies Universal made, among them the three titles in the Paula the Ape Woman series: Captive Wild Woman (1943), Jungle Woman (1944/I), Jungle Captive, The (1945), and then the Bela Lugosi film Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932). It's a funny thing about primates and horror, they go back pretty far. The Doctor's Experiment, The Professor's Secret, and The Monkey Man (all 1908) are three of the earliest ones, the latter one even involving a brain transplant!

1940's THE MONSTER AND THE GIRL, not to be confused with Republic's 1944 THE LADY AND THE MONSTER, was a rare Paramount excursion into Universal horror territory. This was the studio that brought genre fans the 1931 DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE, 1932's ISLAND OF LOST SOULS, 1933's MURDERS IN THE ZOO, 1939's DR. CYCLOPS, and 1940's THE MAD DOCTOR, all quite distinctive and respectable. Leonard Maltin's review praises the originality of the white slavery angle, depicting how poor Ellen Drew is lured into a life of prostitution, while her brother (Phillip Terry) is executed for a murder he didn't commit, donating his brain to Dr. Parry (the great George Zucco) to use in a surgical procedure that puts his mind in the body of a gorilla. Maltin dismisses the mad doctor stuff as clichéd, but the truth is, all the characters are strictly by the numbers; it's quite possible that if it consisted of one storyline over the other, the results would never be remembered today. Like Boris Karloff in Warners' 1936 THE WALKING DEAD, the vicious racketeers are marked for death from beyond the grave, and the second half of the film shows how the gorilla (Charles Gemora) manages to escape detection as it travels around town, executing all the gangsters with virtually no interference, aided by his faithful dog (!). This is not A BOY AND HIS DOG, and it really is better than it sounds, it's only disappointing in that little is made of Zucco's experiment, and his role is very small. Best of all is Charles Gemora's sensitive portrayal of a gorilla with a human mind, and it is excellent; it couldn't have been easy to act in such a costume, but it looks as good as any from old Hollywood, and is light years superior to Emil Van Horn's embarrassment in Bela Lugosi's THE APE MAN. A remarkable cast of familiar faces make this an easy watch, apart from the condescending Paul Lukas, whose accent was no match for Lugosi's (surely Bela would have been available). Look fast for unbilled Edward Van Sloan, veteran of FRANKENSTEIN and THE MUMMY, playing the prison warden who helps Zucco get the plot moving toward its inevitable climax (Zucco proved to be even busier than Lionel Atwill in that department).