A sequel can sometimes be either a virtual remake of the original film, it can devote some of the running-time to re-telling the first film's plot in compressed form (via scenes lifted directly from that one) and, other times, the second entry could cheat by borrowing action scenes from the preceding effort and pass them off as its own. However, this is the only case I know of where a film is all three at once (though, technically, the animal footage here is part of the flashback framework, they were still ripped off from an earlier non-related picture)! Universal's three-movie "Ape Woman" franchise is surely among the most maligned to emerge during the vintage horror era (even by hardened buffs) but, maybe because I was in a receptive frame-of-mind, I recall enjoying CAPTIVE WILD WOMAN (1943; directed by, of all people, Edward Dmytryk!) back when I had watched it and certainly did not mind catching up with the two sequels now i.e. the film under review and THE JUNGLE CAPTIVE (1945), which followed on the very next day!
To get to the matter at hand: this, then, follows the pattern of THE MUMMY'S TOMB (1942), Universal's third movie in the Egyptology stakes but actually the second 'episode' in their "Kharis" saga. Anyway, the film has a complex structure in that we begin with the titular figure's demise, of whose murder the 'mad doctor' (who is not really) of this one, J. Carroll Naish, is accused, then we go into a flashback to learn how we got there but, corroborating his evidence, as it were, are the hero and heroine of the first film who relate their own experiences by recounting the events of CAPTIVE WILD WOMAN! Amusingly, Universal 'scream queen' Evelyn Ankers receives top billing here but she only appears during these basically expository scenes and, of course, the 'stock footage' though not in JUNGLE WOMAN's narrative proper (that is to say, Naish's recollections)! Incidentally, I wonder what John Carradine, star of CAPTIVE WILD WOMAN (1943), made of the fact that, unofficially, he also had this on his resume'!
When I said that this was more a remake than a sequel was due to its having the 'monster' (once again played by Acquanetta but, unwisely taking a leaf from BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN {1935}, she is made to speak – except that we are never told in this instance just who taught her – and, boy, is she wooden!) once more instantly fall for the doctor's daughter's fiancé and grows insanely jealous of the girl. By the way, in a reversal of "Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde", here the monster turns human without the use of drugs, so that the girl is found prowling the grounds of Naish's sanatorium by a simple-minded patient (who, subsequently doting excessively on Acquanetta, unsurprisingly becomes one of her victims). At one point, the Ape Woman swims underwater and capsizes the lovers' canoe, an act which is actually blamed on the oafish orderly who is currently missing – even if the former makes no secret of her impulsive affections for the impossibly bland leading man (unfortunately, a constant thorn in the side of the Golden Age of Horror!).
Curiously, the film naively (since the original film had already established the transformation as a fact!) attempts to follow the psychological Val Lewton route by never showing the monster (except once amidst the flashback footage and again in the very last shot – even her death is played out in the shadows, though the images of a female figure leaping on the doctor only to be injected with an overdose belies the animal noises on the soundtrack!) but, for all that, the film remains mildly enjoyable – certainly eminently watchable – along its trim 60-minute duration, largely owing to Naish's grey-haired presence (though he is not quite running on full cylinders here, as in the same year's THE MONSTER MAKER) and the unmistakable Universal Studios atmosphere.
