La donna della giungla

Sequel to CAPTIVE WILD WOMAN is often said to be one of Universal's worst horror films, and with some good reason. For one thing the first 15 or 20 minutes agonizingly drone on and on with flashback sequences from the first movie, and has to be seen to be believed (it actually feels like you're watching 3 different films at times). Acquanetta returns as Paula the Ape Woman and it's hilarious to watch her terrible acting performance, especially the robotic way in which she delivers her lines! At least the original had her mute throughout; this one gives her a lot of dialogue she can't handle. Along with the unintended laughs to make things survivable, at least this one features the competent J. Carrol Naish as the latest scientist trying to experiment with Paula, and to its very slight credit director Reginald LeBorg directs a couple of scenes in a Val Lewtonesque manner (such as Paula's creepy attack on a row boat and her eerily stalking her victim through the woods). I've never understood why these films didn't take more advantage of using more of their Ape Woman woman in full makeup to keep things more lively. ** out of ****

This is the second in a series of three ape woman movies Universal made; at the moment I've only seen the first two. This film does follow the events of the first, but it could probably be seen by people who hadn't seen the first, since it does recap things.

It starts with a man walking towards a house, and he is attacked. We see him in silhouette struggle with his attacker, a woman. He sticks her with something, and she collapses. After a newspaper headline explaining a Doctor is faced with a Coroner's inquest, we meet Dr. Fletcher, the man on trial for the death of a woman named Paula. The inquest is a somewhat awkward framing device for the movie. Dr. Fletcher, Fred Mason and Beth Colman (these latter two character returning from the first movie) recall certain events surrounding Paula. Their recollections are, at least to start with, mostly clips from Captive Wild Woman (1943), although Dr. Fletcher's character has been edited into that footage. It grows somewhat awkward when Fred Mason testifies about a conversation he had with Dr. Fletcher about past events: we're watching a recollection of a recollection.

It turns out Dr. Fletcher discovered that the ape Cheela, who had seemingly died from a gunshot wound near the end of the first film, still had some vital signs. Dr. Fletcher nursed Cheela back to health, and upon hearing something about Dr. Walter's experiments, also buys Dr. Walter's estate, including the sanitarium from the first film. The recollections about Cheela and Paula are complicated by something Fred Mason tells Dr. Fletcher, information that was not in the first film that I recall. Mason says that before he brought Cheela to the US from Africa, he'd heard stories of a Doctor in Africa who turned humans into animals. It was rumored that Cheela was one of those animals. If that was true, then it would mean that Paula was a woman who'd been turned into an ape, and then turned into a woman who sometimes reverted to being an ape.

Cheela escapes, and Dr. Fletcher and his incredibly annoying (and poorly acted) helpmate Willie go searching. They find Paula instead. In the first film, once Paula had reverted to being an ape, she could only turn back after Dr. Walters gave her a series of treatments. In this film, she can turn back and forth; whether she can do so at will is not clear. Also unclear is whether she turns completely into an ape, or into an ape-woman: a halfway stage we'd seen her in in the first film. There is something much later in the film that definitely suggests the latter possibility is the correct one.

Paula is uncommunicative until she meets Bob, the sweetheart of Dr. Fletcher's daughter. She is instantly smitten. While this copies an element from the first film (Paula is obsessed with a man, and her jealousy makes her dangerous and animalistic), in the first film her obsession was at least somewhat justified. Mason had been kind to her while she was an ape in Africa, and on the ship all the way to America. Her obsession with Bob seems to be only that he is the first reasonably attractive young man she's met since becoming human again.

There's a scene in which Dr. Fletcher has someone compare Paula's fingerprints to those found on a lock which had been violently broken. He discovers that the patterns of the fingerprints are identical, except in size - one is at least twice the size of the other - and a somewhat "anthropoid" character of the larger one (or both?). Do apes have fingerprints? I don't know; I do think that scene could have been fleshed out a little more, and could have been interesting.

There were a couple strange things about the inquest. Dr. Fletcher had accidentally killed Paula by giving her an overdose of a sedative; the overdose was because he injected her while they were struggling. It would seem that would have been a defense in itself. Thus, Dr. Fletcher, Fred and Beth would not have had to bring up the story of Paula being an ape- woman. However, the court is willing to believe the story of Paula being an ape-woman if it can be proved, which seems a bit incredible. What is strange in connection with that, is that the coroner says if Paula was not human, then the court would have no jurisdiction for murder charges. Certainly she was human enough! Again, the defense would logically be that the death was accidental (and arguably self-defense as well).

Now I do have a funny story about this film. I was searching for a way to watch this, not realizing that I own the Universal Blu-ray box set that held this. I almost bought a DVD until seeing this was part of that set and saved myself money. It did take longer than it should have. I've been curious about this film as it is a sequel to Captive Wild Woman and it brings back the character taking on that role, Acquanetta.

Synopsis: Paula (Acquanetta), the ape woman, is alive and well. She is running around a creepy old sanitarium run by the kindly Dr. Fletcher (J. Carrol Naish). Deaths continue to follow her as she might be reverting back to her original state.

We start this with seeing a woman walking outside. She is attacked by someone, but we see this from shadows, hiding identities. What we do see is that the attacker used a hypodermic needle. That's when it shifts to an inquest. A woman was killed and the prime suspect is Dr. Fletcher. He won't talk, which makes the district attorney assume his guilt. Dr. Fletcher breaks to tell his tale.

What is interesting here is that a good part of this is recapping the events of the original film. They even bring back Beth (Evelyn Ankers), who is now married to Fred Mason (Milburn Stone). This shows what happened and introduces us to Paula. We then saw Dr. Fletcher takes the dying ape home and nurse it back to health. Willie (Edward M. Hyans Jr.) is a simple minded helper who makes a discovery. The animal is gone. They go looking and find Paula hiding in the bushes.

Things take a turn when Paula falls in love with Bob (Richard Davis) who is seeing Dr. Fletcher's daughter, Joan (Lois Collier). Bob is nice to Paula and this grows to make Joan jealous. The problem is that Paula is protective, becoming upset with Joan. Willie tries his hardest to do nice things for Paula, which upsets her. Violent deaths occur around this sanitarium, but Dr. Fletcher has a difficult time believing it is done by a human, let alone a woman. This puts everyone at risk.

That is where I'll leave my recap and introduction to the characters. Where I want to start with this is that it uses a couple narrative choices that I'm not always a fan of. The first is that we're seeing the end of events first. They then go into the past to explain them. What we know is that there was a murder of a woman, which Dr. Fletcher is saying it was accidentally. This alleviates tension for me since we know all these characters are safe. There is a way this could be managed where we don't know what woman was murdered.

Then the other is also going to bring up a filmmaking issue. This is a clip show for about 15 to 20 minutes. There are layers here as well. Captive Wild Woman used footage from The Big Cage for scenes where Fred is really Clyde Beatty who trained the animals. The footage is incorporated here to explain the back-story of Paula. This was edited well. I do like showing, rather than telling. This just feels like a cash grab where we are only filming 40 to 45 minutes of new footage to tell this story. It is just reworking the same idea though and using a framing idea we've seen before. That does knock this film down for me. I will credit that they at least had new shots as opposed to others that try this same trick.

To end my thoughts on the story, it doesn't add much there. This is more than just adding on to what they did earlier. It is hard to call this a character study since we aren't developing more. I'll shift over to acting here. Naish is good at taking over as the scientist. I wouldn't even call him mad or insane. He is more benevolent than John Carradine's character as Dr. Fletcher saw the compassion in the apes and wanted to save them. Collier was fine as his daughter who is pitted against Paula. Acquanetta doesn't have much to work with, but that is in its favor. She's supposed to be an ape that was changed into a woman so she lacks that social aspect that we learn. Davis works as the new male that Paula is obsessed with. Hyans works as the worker who just wants to be friends with Paula. I did like bringing back Ankers and Stone. Samuel S. Hinds, Douglass Dumbrille and the rest of the cast worked as needed.

I'll then just finish out with discussing the rest of the filmmaking. The cinematography is fine. It doesn't do anything to stand out. I did like using the same sanitorium. The outside shots work. It does open things. I even like the inquest aspects of the story. This has limited effects. I did like the look of the gorilla. That fits this movie as being an 'ape film'. Other than that, the soundtrack fit what was needed without standing out.

I've also now given this a second watch with the commentary track by William Mank. He gave interesting insights into this film as well as the actors. What I didn't remember was that one of our stars, Acquanetta, was black. She hid it well, pretending to be Native American. There was backlash here having a Black woman playing an ape woman and the racial connotations there. It sounds like Universal mostly just ignored this and the censors didn't necessarily agree. This also was heavily inspired by Cat People from RKO/Val Lewton's team. Director Reginald Le Borg tried to do what he could, but it fell short of capturing that feeling. Just interesting things, I heard that I wanted to include here.

In conclusion, this feels like an unnecessary sequel and more of a cash grab. The story they used to bring back Paula was fine. I can buy it as it doesn't feel like a cheat. My issue is that this feels like a clip show and then just mostly retelling the same story. I did like getting back Ankers, Stone and Acquanetta. The people brought in here were fine. This is also made well enough. No glaring issues, but none of what they did stood out either. I'd recommend it if you're just interested in the classic Universal run as this is an oddity.

My Rating: 5 out of 10.

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.

Jungle Woman is one of several ape woman movies made by Universal in the 1940's.

In this one, the ape woman, Paula is living in a sanatorium but the people there don't realise she is going out at night to kill people in her ape form. Her victims include a resident of the sanatorium, who first gets the blame for her previous victim.

This movie is creepy in parts and despite this, it is not the best of Universal's horrors made at this time.

The cast includes J Carrol Naish (The Monster Maker), Evelyn Ankers (The Ghost of Frankenstein), Acquanetta (The Lost Continant) and Milburn Stone (Invaders From Mars).

Though not brilliant, Jungle Woman is worth a look at.

Rating: 3 stars out of 5.