Acquanetta pretty much just stands around, looking like a zombie, recites a few lines then stares back into space again. This follow-up to "Captive Wild Woman" has her as a transformed ape who falls in love with hero Milburne Stone, hating his fiancée Evelyn Ankers, aka "the scream queen" and obviously out to kill her. Shadowy photography is more interesting than Acquanetta's lack of a performance, added onto with a mentally retarded man who appears to be imitating Lon Chaney Jr's brilliant performance in "Of Mice and Men". There really aren't any chills because it all seems so phony, told in flashback and poorly written. Even attempts to give it a psychological background comes up empty. This is one that ranks among the worst of the dogs of cinema and nothing other than two robots and an unseen man making wisecracks while it is playing could make this any more watchable.

No need to waste time on this sequel mess. Apparently, Universal needed to meet product demand for wartime audiences. So they took a hunk of 1943's Captive Wild Woman and cobbled together some surrounding footage to make something of a story. The result comes across like Val Lewton on a really bad day. The supposedly scary scenes are done in Lewtonesque shadow, but come across as more clumsily cost-cutting than artful. Too bad so many distinguished players (Hinds, Dumbrille, Naish) are wasted in what must have been an embarrassment. I just hope Ankers & Carradine got compensated for the reuse of their earlier footage. But I doubt it given studio dominance of the period. No need to go on. Suffice that this is about the nadir of human-into-animals that were so popular at the time. As Lewton knew, horror needs more than shadow; it needs concept, dread, and mood, elements in short supply here.

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.

Note this may contain a *SPOILER*Paula Dupree the ape woman was introduced in the film CAPTIVE WILD WOMAN. While CAPTIVE WILD WOMAN was an okay B horror film from Universal, its central character wasn't interesting enough to warrant two sequels. JUNGLE WOMAN confirms this. It's hard to believe that the top brass at Universal thought they had a potential new monster to ad to their ranks along with The Mummy, Dracula, Frankenstein Monster, etc. When this film was first released, it was part of the top half of a double bill with THE MUMMY'S GHOST, with JUNGLE WOMAN receiving the emphasis in the ads. Now, I don't think anyone would consider THE MUMMY'S GHOST an outstanding picture, but it provided the kind of escapist thrills war time matinee audiences expected from Universal. So those who sat through THE MUMMY'S GHOST, and then sat through JUNGLE WOMAN, must of felt a bit let down by this rather uneventful film.Also, many were probably mislead by the films ads that promised something more along the lines a female Tarzan type picture than a horror film.The film opens well, with a spooky nighttime sequence. Dr. Fletcher is searching the grounds of his sanatorium carry in a syringe. He is stalked and attacked (we see this as shadows on a wall) by a lithe female figure. Dr. Fletcher then plunges a syringe into the attacker. The film then cuts to a coroners hearing where we learn Dr. Fletcher is being questioned in the death of Paula Dupree. We learn Dr. Fletcher accidently injected too much of the sedative he hoped would only subdue her and she died as result of an overdose. Dr. Fletcher then recounts for the prosecutor the strange story of Paula Dupree.Universal pinched a lot of corners when making this film. A good ten mins. of footage from this film is repeated footage from the first film. During his testimony, Dr. Fletcher tells how he was able to revive the dying Cheela the ape and nurse it back to health. We see none of this. Then he tells us how Cheela the ape escaped one night. Once again we see none of this. Why? Because filming these scenes would mean calling back Ray Corrigan and his ape suit and they would have to pay him. The film really starts when searching for Cheela, Dr. Fletchers dumb witted house boy Willie discovers Paula wandering around the grounds. Willie regards finding Paula as like finding a lost puppy; he mutters things like "Doc! Look what I found!", "Isn't she beautiful" "Can I keep her?" "I found her first". Through out the rest of the film, the story meanders from one non-event to another. The director appears to be trying to ape (no pun intended) THE CAT PEOPLE by only showing Paula in her ape woman form either unseen or in shadows. Of course this makes no sense because the effect is ruined because early on we see flashbacks from CAPTIVE WILD WOMAN of in all her ape woman glory. He even blows a scene ripped from the CAT PEOPLE where Paula stalks Dr. Fletcher's daughter through the woods. Its atmospheric, but it is ruined by Paula walking with her head hunched in her shoulders, bug eyed, and walking stiffly like a wind up doll. The film even repeats the effective opening scene. I could go on and on but I have taken up to much space already. On the plus side; Acquanetta projects just the right animal sensuality for the role. J. Carrol Naish gives his customary professional performance. But as Willie says to Dr. Fletcher in a line often sighted by the films detractors: "Aw! Its a gyp!"