The Ape (1940)

Lack of good storyline.

It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

first off I enjoyed The Ape, not one of Karloff's great movies but it didn't stink either,, the premise of the movie is that he is trying to find a spinal cure for a woman, and the only way he can do this is to go around killing people,, he decides to use an Ape suit this way I guess he can scare the living daylights out of his victims.. he is great to watch his every move ,, what he is gonna do next, and how he will go about doing it,, he's really creepy in the Ape suit, I would not wanna be in his way when he is gonna get to his next victim,, granted there's not a lot of suspense here because you already know what he is doing, so there is really no great mystery about what's going on, just sit back and enjoy Boris Karloff that's what I did.

With a title this blunt, one would expect that the actual narrative of The Ape follows suit. It actually does try to switch things up with some last second bet-you-didn't-see-that-comin' idiocy, but this is a movie about an escaped circus gorilla terrorizing a rural community. Oh, and then there's the outcast scientist who's illegally experimenting on a paralyzed young woman named Frances.Yeah—it's every bit as random as it sounds. How the escape of the ape in question correlates with this doctor's ethical quandary is hazy to say the least, and the behavior of the townspeople is just as weird. Apparently, they're all scared of this doctor because he practices medicine in an "unorthodox manner" (that's about as much details as we're given). In fact, even the kids around town hate him; so much so that he catches them pelting his house with rocks. In any case, the good doctor is forced to treat a circus trainer who was attacked by the beast in question. The doctor draws some spinal fluid from the dying man, injects it in his paralyzed patient, and marvels at her ability to begin twitching her hitherto unresponsive feet. Meanwhile, the escaped animal breaks into the doctor's house; during the chaos, the aging practitioner throws some sort of liquid in the ape's face and then stabs it with a knife (and, we assume, kills it). What's really weird is that he informs his mute assistant that no one in town should know the gorilla is dead. This seems to have a sinister motivation at first, but we later discover that the doctor begins dressing as the ape (I think? Or maybe he skinned it and then made a suit?) in an effort to motivate Frances to finally stand on her own two feet—*cough, cough*—and prove that his research had scientific credence all along.Uh-huh.In short, this is a movie that uses the presence of a lumbering ape to try and add an element of horror to an otherwise straightforward—and boring—story about a renegade scientist who's misunderstood. It's the classic "he's-got-good-intentions-and-we-should-all-feel-like-jackasses- for-doubting-him" tale.There are plenty of chances for the film to be inventive, but it suffers from a particularly bad case of "convenient circumstances"; you know, the sort of thing that happens at just the right time to allow the narrative to move forward in an absolutely unbelievable way.Case in point: an official from the institute that trained the doctor shows up to investigate strange occurrences in the town. The man accuses the doctor of breaking all sorts of ethical codes. How does the scientist respond? He suggests that the official see the result of his research, and takes the man to visit Frances. The official requests that Frances prove she's recovering from her Polio by wiggling a foot. She can't do it. Based on all of this you would assume the mad scientist is in deep doo doo, right?Wrong. Instead, right when it seems that our anti-hero is about to be taken into custody, the official says, "Well, she didn't move her foot. But I definitely noticed a muscular reflex. Congratulations, doctor!" Umm… what?These sorts of occurrences plague The Ape, making it one of the most eye-rolling attempts at scary film making to have ever come down the pike. But, like a lot of the "B" offerings from this era, it does have its moments of unintentional humor. Because of that, I'll award it half a star.

Another decent movie by the famous Boris Karloff. It starts off with a bit of semi-action. The story starts out with a father, who turns out to be a scientist seeks a way to cure his daughter who his dead from the waist down. The circus also happens to be in town, and an ape who is unusually large turns out to be one of the inhabitants. It then takes a turn for the worse when a fire breaks out and the ape escapes. The story is interesting and deals with a scientist seeking a miracle cure through incredible means. The plot is a little hard to follow towards the end, but as always Karloff plays an incredible role and pulls off his title as a great actor. If you like Old-School thriller movies such as this, then I recommend this for you. If your not a fan of Karloff or even a fan of decent Old-School thrillers such as this one, then its best to just avoid this film.

This is a bad movie made worse by horrendous DVD "restoration". Like many old public domain films, the quality is so bad it looks and sounds like someone tore little bits and pieces of the film away. The best way to describe the quality of this film is "moth eaten". I don't know why, it just sounds right to me. It's about a scientist(Karloff) who tries to cure polio by running around the countryside in an ape pelt in search of victims that he can drain of spinal fluid. It has a ridiculous plot that takes itself too seriously. Don't go into this film expecting it to be a "pleasant surprise" or "better than most cheap old horror movies", because it's just like all the rest. At least it was in my opinion.