Jungle Captive
Director: Harold Young
Year:
1945
Rating: 5.0
This is the third and final film in the Ape Woman
series from Universal - Captive Wild Woman, Jungle Woman and this one. But
sadly the Ape Woman is not played by the splendiferous Acquanetta as was
the case in the first two. Perhaps, she was too busy appearing in Tarzan
and the Leopard Woman. But she is missed. In Captive Wild Woman, a mad scientist
takes the sexual glands of Martha Vickers and injects them into an ape and
presto, you get Acquanetta. In Jungle Woman, a doctor finds a dying ape and
brings it back to health and her human form. There is no keeping a good woman
down. Or ape.
She is dead and in a morgue in this one,
but another mad scientist played by Otto Kruger sends the Creeper to get
the body. Not really the Creeper, but named Moloch and played by Rondo Hatton.
Kruger appears to be a nice, courteous man who lives two lives; one at his
office where he employs Phil (Don Young) and Ann (Amelita Ward) to help him
with his experiments to bring the dead to life. Then he has a country house
where he has Moloch and the dead ape woman. But he needs blood. And a brain.
Ann, could you help me at my country home? Like the other two, done on a
small budget and there isn't as much of the ape woman in human form (Vicky
Lane) as one might want, but Hatton is terrific as a psychotic with a soft
spot for Ann.
