This film offers few surprises (including the expected guy in a silly gorilla costume) but it's still a dandy horror flick that should appeal to die-hard Bela Lugosi fans. Much of the film seems rehashed--the who half man-half ape is reminiscent of the 1940 Karloff film, THE APE and the need to extract the spinal fluid from living humans has been done many times as well. But most people who would even watch such a film are usually the sort of people that can look past this and enjoy the film and all its cheesy goodness! I was a tad surprised when the film began and you learned that Bela already was the Ape-Human hybrid. Instead of creating this monstrosity, the film was devoted to Bela's evil plan to cure himself even if it means killing to do so. While his good friend the doctor cannot allow himself to do this, Bela's sister is a fine piece of work and helps him on his evil task.

Throughout all this, the film is interspersed with clips of Wallace Ford and his assistants looking for a story--which you know they will eventually get. However, in an odd bit or writing, another fellow just keeps popping up rather randomly in the film--usually just to say hello to Ford and then disappear! Keep watching this guy--at the end his exact purpose is revealed! A pretty run of the mill 1940s low-budget horror flick. Bela Lugosi seemed to make a ton of them and this one is about average.

Police detectives and news reporters gradually begin to piece together a puzzle when a man is murdered by what appears to be an ape. The answer lies in the basement of a house inhabited by a ghost hunter, Agatha Brewster (Minerva Urecal),where mad scientist Brewster (Bela Lugosi) has turned into THE APE MAN of the title.. with his back problems and facial hair, Brewster totters on the brink of madness as he whips a murderous gorilla he keeps in a cage. His only salvation lies in the spinal fluid of human beings whom he must kill to get. However, as his friends turn against him, the reporters find the truth and the police close in, Brewster must find a final victim to save himself...

This is a real camp classic. Lugosi is the star of the show, putting in an incredibly funny performance as the bearded doctor. In an early scene he walks across his laboratory in a laboriously lurching fashion which makes you reach for the rewind button. There's another scene where he is also being 'cured' by his fluid, and gradually becomes upright, which is also hilarious to watch. By this time, Lugosi's famed accent had been considerably reduced, but he never totally got rid of it. The film is also surprisingly fast paced for the time, and wisely spends most of its short running length in the basement laboratory.

There are lots of murders (which are, I guess, the horror part) and even a man in a remarkably fake gorilla suit jumping up and down and going "oop oop". With films of this sort, I usually find myself not paying attention during lengthy scenes where minor characters talk about trivia (to increase the running time, no doubt) but this film has none of that. It's full of action and campness and it is, as to be expected, atrocious, but it's so charming that you can't help but love it.

The Ape Man produced by Monogram Pictures stars Bela Lugosi as a scientist who has been experimenting on himself with ape spinal fluids. Why anyone would do that God only knows, but the result is Lugosi as regressed back to a Cro-Magnon state and is kept in a cage with a gorilla who apparently he relates to.

As he's a well known scientist he's keeping undercover, but his disappearance has aroused all kinds of curiosity including that of law enforcement with J. Farrell MacDonald and the press in the persons of Wallace Ford and Louise Currie. The press are police are kept somewhat at bay, by Bela's sister Minerva Urecal.

But when Bela and his gorilla start killing people for their human spinal fluid so Lugosi can get back to being human again, that of course arouses the populace. I think you can figure out where this is going.

It's from Monogram so naturally one's expectations is low and you're not disappointed. In a recent biography of Bela Lugosi, the author Arthur Lennig uses The Ape Man as a prototype Monogram product and contrasts it with the Universal Pictures Gothic horror films. He and I and you'll agree when you see The Ape Man, Universal has it over Monogram by an early round knockout.