Directed by Harold Young,
written by Dwight V. Babcock and M. Coates Webster
Starring Otto Kruger,
Amelita Ward, Phil Brown, Jerome Cowan, Rondo Hatton and Vicky Lane
1945
In this second sequel to
CAPTIVE WILD WOMAN, the Ape Woman returns again, this time body-napped by a mad
scientist and his hulking henchman, who hope to both revive her and turn her
back into a woman again. To do this, he needs the blood of his female
assistant. Unfortunately, his male assistant has the hots for
her and won’t give up looking for her once she turns up missing, and his
henchman, meanwhile, gets the feels for the Ape Woman herself.
Like most Universal
horror sequels several numbers down the line, JUNGLE CAPTIVE lacks the star
that brought the character to life – in this case, Acquanetta. However, the Ape
Woman isn’t in her human form for much of the movie at all, so that’s okay.
Even lacking Acquanetta, this third chapter in the wild woman saga is better
than the 2nd, if only for the presence of the unforgettable Rondo Hatton
as the mad scientist’s henchman. Hatton gained B-movie stardom when Universal
decided to exploit his natural appearance (he suffered from acromegaly
syndrome). I wrote about him last year for one of his movies and really enjoyed
his presence, so it was nice to see him here, and then realize he’s going to
pop up in a bunch of movies this year. He had his own string of monster movie
sequels as The Creeper, so that makes this movie sort of a monster mash-up of
the 2 forgotten Universal monsters.
No comments:
Post a Comment