Return of the Ape Man (1944)

The “Monogram 9”, that is, the nine Monogram movies starring Bela Lugosi produced by Sam Katz­man for his Banner Productions from 1941 to 1944, run the gamut from comedy via crime thriller to horror, with critical praise usually limited to the first of them, The Invisible Ghost (1941, directed by Joseph H. Lewis). Suffice to say that most of the joy to be found in the Monogram 9 comes from watching Lugosi refusing to play down to the material and investing his performances with all the passion he could muster. Whether the material was worth the effort, is, of course, a different question.

While at first glance one might assume Return of the Ape Man to be a sequel to another one of the Monogram 9, namely The Ape Man (1943), it actually is not a sequel at all, even though the pressbook claimed it was. It does justify its title, however, by actually giving us a prehistoric “ape man” returning from suspended animation.

A comparison between Return of the Ape Man and yet another one of the Monogram 9, Voodoo Man (1944), might prove of interest. Not only were they were shot in the same year by the same company, with many of the same people behind and in front of the camera — they also shared the same screenwriter, Robert Charles (not a real person, but a pseudonym, as Tom Weaver kindly confirmed for me). Even more curiously, I have watched two prints of Return of the Ape Man, and neither offers any writing credit.

And yet, the two movies seem remarkably dissimilar. In short, Voodoo Man is typical Monogram fare — simple-minded, claustrophobic, happily meandering in its own vacuum. Return of the Ape Man, on the other hand, wants to be a “real movie”: There is scope in the concept, there are attempts at characterization, various (if studio-bound and, as in the often-cited case of the “arctic” set, somewhat less than convincing) locations. The film even tries to give us a prolonged action finale. Most promises are left unfulfilled, ’tis true, but at least, there are promises.

Voodoo Man has no memorable dialogue, apart from the mo­ments when Lugosi works his magic, or when gas station atten­dant/voodoo priest George Zucco - playing a role which might have been in­tended for a black actor - has to assert the alleged infallibility of the voodoo god Ramboona. Return of the Ape Man, on the other hand, has the greatest line in all of the Monogram 9, and several other good ones as well. Voodoo Man’s script could have been scribbled on a napkin by somebody’s teenage nephew. But would he have come up with Return’s “Some people’s brains would never be missed” - a line not only genuinely (and intentionally) funny, but also totally in character for Lugosi’s character?

It is true that most of the Monogram 9 have their funny mo­ments (the comedies excluded), even though the “winking at the audience” endings of The Ape Man and Voodoo Man might either be read as a good-natured gesture of “we are all in this together” or as blatant cynicism. Even the relatively straightforward Bow­ery at Mid­night feels the need to insert a completely gratuitous shot of a cat (dubbed by an off-screen human being going “meaow”), just so that Lugosi can chastise his assistant: “How often have I told you to keep that cat from desecrating my graves!” But rare is the case when we’re not laughing at one of these films, but with it.

Voodoo Man would not gain anything even by an MGM treatment: It could only lose its charm. But give Return of the Ape Man the production expertise of a Uni­versal “B” and a rewrite or two, and it might turn out to be not merely a quaint curiosity, but a genuinely intriguing minor classic.

This is the mystery at the heart of Return of the Ape Man: Its aims are high, and its fall is all the deeper. But who was it who was aiming? Perhaps the “Robert Charles” of Voodoo Man is not the same person who wrote Return of the Ape Man. Perhaps Return of the Ape Man was an abandoned project originally written for an­other studio. (For instance, with minor adjustments, it might have made a neat sequel to Universal’s Captive Wild Woman (1943).) But it is unlikely that we will ever learn the truth.

The embryonic ideas of the script and the threadbare production (not to mention the score) come together in what Erich Kuers­ten aptly describes as “a world with all the drab flatness of a bad dream.” It is a world where scientific breakthroughs are accomplished in a shoddy cellar lab which is, however, equipped with its own steel-barred ape man cell. It is a world where a policeman, finding a city girl struggling against a fur-clothed prehistoric man, cannot be sure which one of them is the culprit. It is a world, in short, which makes the least possible concession to what is commonly referred to as “reality”, and only part of this quality is due to incompetence.

Most of the Monogram 9 seem to have been written during a hangover-befogged morning — working mainly by association and dim memories of whatever films the writer may have seen. But, unusually for a Poverty Row horror quickie, Return of the Ape Man actually does have some ideas, even though it cannot be denied that preciously little of them survive in the film — both thanks to the hurried production and to a lack of rewrites.

The plot? Ah yes, there is a plot: Scientist Prof. Dexter (Bela Lugosi) and his assistant Gilmore (John Car­radine) revive a prehistoric man (“ape man” is actually a bit of a mis­nomer; he is civilized enough to wear clothes). To harness the creature’s primitive instincts, Lugosi inserts parts of Carradine’s brain into the ape man’s head, which leads the resulting half-creature to kill Carra­dine’s wife and abduct his niece.

George Zucco, originally cast as the ape man, dropped out of the production: It is him we can see lying immobile on the slab in the Ape Man’s first scene, and he is prominently mentioned in the film’s main titles and the press book. The official reason given for Zucco’s departure was illness, though fans enjoy telling each other that Zucco, finding the role to be demeaning, stormed off the set — a reaction in accord with what is known about Zucco’s temper.

In the early stage of the resurrection scene, a camera set-up places the slab with the ape man (Zucco) is placed between the camera and ac­tors Lugosi and Carradine. When the ape man (now played by Frank Moran) revives, the same setup is revisited - only it is not the same setup: The lighting and the placement of props are somewhat dif­ferent (as is, obviously, the ape man).

Zucco’s sudden departure must have forced the production crew to im­provise and shoot other scenes while the front office scrambled to find a replace­ment without losing too much time in this six day production. The casting of ex-boxer and frequent Preston Stur­ges actor Frank Moran certainly reeks of desperation, and Moran rarely looks convincing when portraying fero­city or, indeed, any other emotion than confusion. (Whether Zucco, cast entirely against type, would have fared any better is another matter.)

This may be one reason why some scenes in Return of the Ape Man look shoddy even by Monogram standards. In one shot, we can see Lugosi listening to somebody off-screen, nodding in agreement and then continuing his work — but there is no voice on the soundtrack, and there is no one around who could have spoken. In other shots in the lab, Lugosi actually does something which he is too often accused of: He overacts. Either director Rosen shot without a run-through… or what we see is the actual run-through, deemed to be good enough: Let’s hurry, folks!

Weirdest of all is a shot where the ape man, attacked by Car­radine, angrily pushes him back. Carradine somehow manages not to stumble backwards, as the impact would have forced him to do, but 90 degrees to the left — obviously in order not to damage the shelf of beakers behind him.

Bela Lugosi, as Prof. Dexter, is not merely a mad scientist, but a sociopath mad scientist, angrily dismissing the weak complaints murmured by his assistant Gilmore, who is not merely the assistant who becomes the victim, but an especially nilly-willy, weak-willed one. Erich Kuersten’s comment is spot on:

“Bela’s character of Dr. Dexter is, of course, the very definition of a bad-influence friend. He certainly has no sense of empathy. However his lack of respect for human life in the context of the film is understandable. All the other characters are mono-dimen­sional automatons. (…) It is as if he realizes he is in a dream and so is no longer obliged to feel compassion for those around him.”

Actually, even the film itself seems to realize it, as it provides Dex­ter with the lamest possible reason for his sociopathic behavior: He is doing it for science. “A true scientist is married to his pro­fession!” is one of the many utterances to that effect. Another one: “Murder is an ugly word! As a scientist I don’t recognize it.” And even at the end, his spine broken, with his last breath he insists that he did it all “in the interest of science”.

But the most intriguing aspect of the script is how clearly the mad scientist plot is used as merely a convenient way to turn the quite realistic antagonism between so­ciopath Dexter and namby-pamby douchebag Gilmore into tragedy. The script makes a point of contrasting the two characters’ attitude, with Gilmore continuously trying to talk sense into Dexter, until he finds himself tied up in the lab while Dexter gloats:

“You trusting, stupid fool. (…) The ape-man, after I finish with him, he’ll no longer have the primitive instinct to kill. He’ll be a righteous citizen. You know why? Because part of your brain, the righteous part, will be in him.”

The concept of merging Gilmore’s brain with that of the arche­typal primitive is ripe with horror and pathos, a more visceral version of the “brain” horror plots of Curt Siodmak (Black Friday, Donovan’s Brain), but topping them in that we might be able to sympathize with both the ape man and Gilmore. Had the film tried to show the creature’s confusion — had the primitive part of his brain tried to argue against the liberal Gilmore part, perhaps — the film might have ended up with some true horror. After all, the tragic ape man with half of Gilmore’s brain keeps breaking out of the cell, first to play the piano and kill his wife, later to abduct his niece: “Very pretty… you will come with me.”

But sadly, by then, the film has basically given up and is just going through the motions (some films’ plots would never be missed). It ends up with what is, in a Monogram context, a rather expansive action scene, but which is shot indifferently enough that one wonders why they bothered at all.

Kuersten makes an interesting case for reading the Return of the Ape Man characters of Prof. Dexter, Gilmore and the ape man within the framework of a Freudian allegory, where the ape man represents Id, Dexter the Ego and Gilmore the Super Ego. However, while Kuersten’s take is certainly valid, I prefer to read this superbly weird threesome constellation in quasi-romantic terms.

At the beginning, Gilmore, who has a domineering wife at home, acts very much like the submissive wife to Dexter‘s “husband”, obeying Dexter’s orders and even accompanying him for a months-long wild goose hunt in the Arctic. When he finally gathers the courage to voice his complaints (“I am a married man”), Dexter merely replies “I am married also. A true scientist is married to his profession.” When, later in the film, Gilmore refuses to play along, Dexter deadpans “I see you and I do not think alike” and, soon afterwards, literally ties him up, forcing his will upon him as if they were enjoying an S/M session. (Note the absurdly haphazard way Dexter “ties” Gilmore — Gilmore clearly has to “play along” voluntarily to make this scheme work. The film tries to rationalize this by having Dexter improvise, out of left field, an electric paralyzing device.) Again, there is real potential here, but, sadly, little pay-off.

In his ca. 122nd mad scientist role, Lugosi seems a bit lost at time; as indicated above, this is more than likely due to circumstances beyond his control. In other scenes, however, his delivery is spot on. Whether calmly strolling the nightly city streets with a lit blowtorch in his hand or benevolently comforting his creature with a pat on the back while reassuring it that “it takes some time” for the two brains in his head to cooperate — “perhaps another operation”, Lugosi is at the center of Return of the Ape Man’s skewed little universe, and his willingness to accept it is one of the film’s major assets.

His interactions with the ape man provide many of the film’s highlights. Best of all may be the moment when Dexter, the exasperated father suspecting that his unruly son has kicked his ball into yet another window, questions the ape man: “Did you kill somebody again?” The ape man cannot help but confess that he killed Mrs. Gilmore, and Dexter, at his wit’s end, asks: “Why did you kill her?” To which the ape man, apparently retreating into the Gilmore part of his brain, can only mumble apologetically: “Didn’t mean to…”

John Carradine, so enthusiastic as a drum-beating imbecile in Voodoo Man, has been accused of walking through his role; when under threat, he looks almost stunned, murmuring his lines in a low monotone. But he seems to try and give a sincere performance as the “politically correct” nice guy who is no match even for his wife, much less so for the ruthless Lugosi. It is not Carradine, but low-key Gilmore, who seems unable to produce a potent emotion.

Few of the other actors make any impression, apart from Judith Gibson (aka Teala Loring), who is pretty but lost, and Mary Currier (as Gilmore’s wife, a role which might have been intended for Frieda Ines­cort), who does well enough as the voice of sanity and thus has no chance of surviving the film.

Veteran director Phil Rosen (one of the founders of the A.S.C. and responsible for many of the Monogram Charlie Chans) in all likelihood had no chance to do more than to keep the crew on their toes.

Director of photography Marcel Le Picard had managed to create some atmosphere in The Invisible Ghost (most likely encouraged, if not pushed, by director Joseph H. Lewis) and Voodoo Man (perhaps encouraged a little less by William Beaudine: His way of lighting everything in Lugosi’s house from below is all too simple, though there are a few impressive close-ups), but goes the way of least resistance here. While the film is visually bland, some tracking shots at least serve to make Return of the Ape Man look a little less static, and Le Picard does keep the camera pointed at the characters — something Art Reed had not always managed in Black Dragons (1942).

Which leaves us with “musical director” Edward J. Kay, though whether he did any actual work on the film remains open to conjecture. Poverty Row productions could rarely afford original scores: Again and again, we hear the same old library tracks, rarely serving to enhance the scenes they were forced upon. One learns not to expect any help from these scores, merely to accept them as the film makers’ shorthand way of saying: “Imagine some emotion here.”

But whoever assembled the score for Return of the Ape Man went beneath the call of “do it quickly and cheaply” to pick tracks so constantly at odds with what the film is trying to achieve that an act of willful sabotage seems likely. Early in the movie, Dexter and Gilmore go on what a newspaper headline calls a “strange expedition” to the Arctic. The music accompanying the mini-montage depicting their travel, however, soon segues into a pleasant 1930ies ballroom tune. The supposedly big action scene of the ape man reviving and attacking the scientists is not at all helped by a slow, whimsical misterioso. The recurring “suspense” motif plods away monotonously, as if in a loop, never caring for whatever might be happening on screen. And the finale is rendered patently absurd by a circus-style score. The mismatched cues constantly challenge us to question what the narrative seems to be saying, further deepening the gap between the film’s ambitious concepts and its dilapidated production. (The writer of these lines has to confess that he once watched Return of the Ape Man after a joint or two. All of a sudden, the film’s score made perfect sense. Say no to drugs!)

It might appear that few of the people involved cared much about this cheapie. But, as Tom Weaver (Poverty Row Horrors) reminds us: “During this early- to mid-’40ies period, the average Monogram movie made the company a profit of $1.932,12, a minuscule dividend that left little room for tinkering and fine tun­ing.”

We can only hope that Return of the Ape Man made Monogram a profit; the Motion Picture Herald (1944–04–11) mentions the films as one of three “already dubbed and delivered for release in Latin America”. It did end up in, at least, Ar­gentina, Mexico and Cuba, though it seems to have taken it another year to do so. (In April 1944, the film had yet to see a U.S. re­lease. Shot in October, 1943, it was origi­nally scheduled for a 1944–14–02 release, but was released only in July, 1944. Voodoo Man, shot right after Return of the Ape Man, was released on 1944–21–02.)

While the critics were divided on the question of whether the film was too scary, too stupid or just right for the kids, they seemed quite in agreement that kids were the film’s natural target audience:

Motion Picture Daily: One thing to do with this chiller-diller is to play it for laughs instead of straight and capitalize thus on the availability of Bela Lugosi, John Carradine and George Zucco — exponents of frightfulness thrown for individual and collective losses by script, dialogue and direc­tion that are triumphs of absurdity — for billing purposes. It was previewed straight at a Hollywood theatre where the audience enjoy­ed it immensely as an unintentional comedy. It can be marketed that way elsewhere, but not even the kiddies can be asked to take it seriously.

Harrison’s Report: Fairly intelligent audiences (…) may find the pro­ceedings too ludi­crous to hold their interest (…) Too horri­fy­ing for chil­dren.

Independent Film Journal: A rather sad example of a B-programmer. A weak original story that became a weaker screenplay was blessed by neither the proper production values or direction. The result is palpably conglomerate with an unsavory ama­teurish touch. (…) far-fetched horror for the kids.

Showmen’s Trade Review: A not very believable presentation of a believable idea, though horror addicts may like it. (…) There are several murders, but none of them are anyway near as striking as the murder of an excellent story idea.

Hollywood Reporter: It is one of the wildest, wooliest combination pseudo-scientific and horror films yet, but in its feverish reaching for new sensations and effects, it crosses into the utterly absurd and unacceptable, even for this type of picture.

New York Daily News: Though it’s cut-and-dried horror stuff, this Monogram picture is benefited by Phil Rosen’s careful direction and by adequate performances by a generally undistinguished cast.

Vari­ety: Hits average in the scale of dual horror-thrillers (…) Pro­duction is satisfactory and direction okay.

William K. Everson used to single out Return of the Ape Man for special scorn; in a 1974 interview, he called the film “a real piece of junk”. His attitude had somewhat softened by the time he wrote More Classics of the Horror Film (1986), though.

Arthur Lennig (in The Immortal Count) opined: “The well-per­formed confrontations between a devoted scientist and his wishy-washy associate have a verve beyond the usual character conflicts in such quickie films. The scriptwriters either let out their own resentments or caught the real essence of the Lugosi persona’s dangerous charm.”