Great visuals, story delivers no surprises

Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

No matter how noble his scientist characters may seem, poor Lugosi always ends up on the wrong side of the Bunsen burner. He's studying the similarity between man and their Neanderthal ancestors, and along with partner John Carradine, ends up in the North Pole where they actually find one. This is the supposed "ape man" of the title, and back home, once the ancient being defrosts, he becomes the proud owner of a new brain thanks to Mr. Lugosi. Carradine is a noble family man who tries to stop Lugosi, only to receive his revenge in return. The absolutely dreadful Teala Loring plays Carradine's niece, whose fiancée (Tod Andrews) becomes the desired brain donor by Lugosi for his thousand year old man who looks absolutely hysterically funny playing the piano. While the Neanderthal does commit a few murders, one of them makes no sense considering the brain it ends up in. This is not a very scary movie, or very scientific with the laboratory even dumber looking than the one Lugosi had in "Bride of the Monster". Inappropriate marching music decorates the dramatic sequences. As a result, it is very boring and features some of the dumbest police officers on film. Even worse is the fact that George Zucco, billed as the ape man, doesn't appear at all, that honor going to Frank Moran. Cheap sets and horrid direction by Phil Rosen (best known for the Monogram Charlie Chan films) make one long for the skills of Monogram's busiest director, William Beaudine.

Return of the Ape Man (1944) *** (out of 4) Extremely entertaining B-movie has Bela Lugosi playing Professor Dexter, a man who discovers a way to freeze a person for months and then bring them back to life. He wants further proof of his genius so he and his partner (John Carradine) travel to the Arctic where they discover a Missing Link (George Zucco/Frank Moran). They bring him back and defrost him and before long he is running wild. Dexter, wanting to make it more human, decides to put the brain of his assistant into the creature.RETURN OF THE APE MAN is without question one of the most entertaining B movies of the decade thanks in large part to some nice direction by Phil Rosen and a great cast of characters. Obviously if you're wanting high art then you might as well keep on walking but if you're a fan of low-budget horror movies then this one here really delivers on the entertainment factor. At just 60 minutes the movie is extremely fast-paced and a lot of fun.A lot of credit has to go to the cast who are really amped up throughout the film. This includes Lugosi who delivers another strong performance as the mad scientist who slowly loses his mind more and more. Lugosi is a lot of fun in his typical over-the-top way. Carradine is also a lot of fun here and it's great getting to see the two men act together. Zucco can be seen in only a brief shot but his contract required his name to remain on the title card but it's Frank Moran who plays the ape man the majority of the time. He too is great fun as the wild creature.As you can tell, there's nothing ground-breaking about RETURN OF THE APE MAN but it's not trying to be. It's meant for some fast, cheap entertainment and there's no doubt that it delivers that and much more.

Bela Lugosi and John Carradine, both men played Dracula at Universal Studios and both men said "Yes" when Monogram Studios came calling with offers of work. In VOODOO MAN John was Bela's half-wit servant (Long John called that "The worst film I ever made!" of course he said that before he did BILLY THE KID MEETS Dracula.) At least in this film they are fellow scientists.Prof. Dexter (Bela) and Prof. Gilmore (John) have perfected a way to freeze human beings and then thaw them out unharmed. They have kept Willy The Weasel (Ernie Adams) a "notorious tramp" (as a newspaper article labels him) on ice for 4 months. When he wakes up he thinks he has just spent the night in their basement! Bela suggests they could revive a person who has been frozen longer and suggests they head up to the North Pole to find a specimen of prehistoric man. With hardly any hesitation Carradine agrees and off they go. (Just keep repeating "It's only a movie . . . only a movie . . .")Do they find what they are looking for? Well this would be an even duller film if they did not! As Bela says "One chance in a million and we've won!" They waste no time in thawing the Neandertal Man (Frank Moran) out but he is far from happy at being awakened from his 50,000 year nap. Bela grabs a handy blowtorch and forces the man into an even handier cage (You see? Fire is his Master! He probably never understood it.") Now just bringing a prehistoric man back to life would have any other scientist ringing up the Nobel Prize committee but NOT Bela! He wants to transplant half the brain of a modern man into the ape man's skull so the world can hear first hand what it was like to live back then. Carradine is reluctant to do this ("That would be murder.") but Bela retorts "Murder is an ugly word. As a scientist I don't recognise it." Of course while determining just whose brain should be hijacked the Ape Man escapes and brutally kills a policeman. There is a splendid shot of Bela walking down a city street wearing a tuxedo with a lit blowtorch in his hand! This movie just has to be taking place in a parallel universe! Anyway moral and righteous Carradine reads about the killing in the papers and decides to spill the well known beans to the cops. Bela persuades him to drop by the lab first. Can you guess why? Yes! He has found his brain donor! This movie is fabulous because of the sheer eccentricity of its plot. Bela, who is not even a surgeon, successfully performs brain surgery without even bothering the shave the Neandertal's head; whats more the patient recovers from this complex surgery and it up and walking in just a few hours! Where did Dr. Lugosi study medicine? Also, why is the caveman not hurt by bullets? Was he petrified after having been frozen so long or is that just one really tough animal skin he is wearing? Watch closely for the scene where the ape man climbs through the window of Carradine's home. You will see this prehistoric man is wearing a pair of 20th century underwear!Originally the Ape Man was to be played by 2 people. Former prizefighter Frank Moran, who appeared in many movies for Poverty Row studios and even a few for the majors, was to be the title character before the brain surgery and George Zucco was to be the post surgery ape man. A still does exist showing the ape man sitting on a table with Carradine and Lugosi on either side. The profile is definitely not Frank Moran! That nose and those eyes do remind me of George Zucco; but that is not him in the movie at any time. A story goes that he got so fed up during the makeup tests that he "got sick" before his scenes could be filmed and Frank Moran played the role all the way through. Maybe George was still mad at Monogram because of his role in VOODOO MAN.Bela is great. John seems to be just walking through his role, something he seldom did not matter how bad the script was. Then again the script does not give him much to do. With lines like "I believe you're quite mad!" and "As a public minded citizen it's my duty to report how the poor man happened to have been killed." Maybe that is why Bela's character thinks his colleague could only donate half a brain!Supporting cast includes Judith Gibson, who was sometimes billed as "Teala Loring" and Michael Ames are the young-couple-in-love. Mr. Ames would later change his name to "Tod Andrews" and would star in such things as FROM HELL IT CAME (1957). Watch closely for Horace Carpenter (Dr. Mierschultz from Dwain Esper's 1934 sleaze classic MANIAC) in a non speaking role as a security guard who is killed by the ape man.They don't make movies like this anymore. You know what? I am kind of sorry they don't.

Having now watched some 12 of Lugosi's "cheapies", I'm surprised by how much I enjoyed some of them - but others are just so silly that, for me, it hampers rather than enhances their entertainment value! Unfortunately, RETURN OF THE APE MAN happens to be one of them.Let's begin with the good stuff: Lugosi and Carradine interact well together and I'd say that their roles here are equally important, despite the latter's below-title billing (though he's not interesting as a straight man, and I obviously prefer him when he goes over-the-top). Well, that's basically it - somehow, I felt that this one fell below the standard of the other films I've watched. Apart from the usual plot contrivances (not the least of which is Lugosi mounting an Arctic expedition, with a million-to-one chance of discovering the 'Missing Link', just so he can prove his theory about 'suspended animation'!) and the fact that, once unearthed, the 'creature' is given very little to do, the film suffers from listless pacing - where everybody apparently takes his sweet time about everything (witness Lugosi's calm and composed reaction at the Ape Man's escape from his laboratory, or the sheer amount of time it takes two cops to break down the door to the lab at the climax) - which really drowns any effort to get involved in the story!I truly wanted to enjoy this one for what it was and not examine it unduly but the script was so lazy and the handling so uninspired that it was awfully hard for me to excuse its deficiencies simply because it was Poverty Row stuff. Do you want examples? O.K...although I agree that the best line in the film was the one uttered by Lugosi - "Some people's brains would never be missed" - that very sequence is actually where my heart sank and I knew that it was going to get worse from that point on. Why on earth would Lugosi choose, of all people, his own assistant's future son-in-law as his 'guinea pig'?! As I said, the creature itself did nothing but commute from one house (Lugosi's) to another (Carradine's). Oh, yes...he did give us an unprecedented glimpse of his bare buttocks during his climb out of Lugosi's laboratory window! I have to say, though, that the image of Lugosi chasing the Ape Man into the streets with a blowtorch did put an effortless smile on my face! Worst of all, perhaps, is the hurried way in which the sequence where Lugosi traps Carradine is shot: rather than milk the scene for all the suspense it obviously contains by judicious cross-cutting, the director chooses to shoot it in one bland, medium-shot which, if one blinks long enough, would probably miss it!! Similarly tossed away is the sequence where the Creature (now with Carradine in control) goes back to his house and starts wandering about and even sits down to play the piano; one only has to recall how moving Freddie Jones was (in similar circumstances) under Terence Fisher's direction in FRANKENSTEIN MUST BE DESTROYED (1969). Sure, these programmers were made fast and cheap (as were Hammer's, after all) but how costly would it have been for the film-makers to pour some real effort into their work?