Director: Edward Dmytryk
Year:  1943
Rating: 6.5

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In this one a surprisingly dapper John Carradine plays a mad scientist who has been experimenting with glandular secretion – using glandular extracts from one animal into another and the wonderful effects it has – even changing the nature of the beast. But of course he really wants to try it on humans. That is how mad scientists are. So when Evelyn Ankers brings her sister (Martha Vickers) to the doctor for help, a light goes on. And fortunately, the circus is in town so he steals an ape and the work begins.


Carradine discovers that the sister has excessive sex glands – which if you have seen Vickers play the little thumb sucking nymphet sister in The Big Sleep would not surprise you at all – and so he takes out literally buckets of these sex gland secretions and injects them into the ape and what do you know the ape turns into Acquanetta, a sultry non-verbal brunette who has power over animals and likes pretty much anything in pants. This leads to trouble as you can imagine. The male lead role goes to Milburn Stone (a fairly young looking Doc from Gunsmoke) who is a circus trainer of tigers and lions. They show a bunch of scenes of how these animals are trained and you just thank God that travelling circuses are gone – it is pretty brutal to watch. The film was directed by Edward Dmytryk who would go on to bigger things with Murder, My Sweet, Back to Bataan, The Caine Mutiny and the Carpetbaggers among many others.