The Ape Man is best remembered as another of the multitude of poverty row pictures which have been given historical interest as vehicles for horror acting legend Bela Lugosi. This one was directed by William Beaudine who was nicknamed 'One Shot' on account of his habit of shooting everything once and not presumably being too concerned about the quality of what he put in the can. Like many cheap potboilers that Lugosi and Beaudine worked on, this one was released by the notorious low budget studio Monogram. With all this in mind, it's hardly surprising that this is no classic or under-appreciated gem.Like countless horror films from the period it focuses on a mad scientist. In this case his experiments involve spinal fluid extracted from a gorilla, which he naturally uses on himself which turns him into the title character. In all honesty he looks more like a member of the indie band Oasis than an actual ape man. He is a pretty low budget monster to say the least. Unsurprisingly his sidekick is a gorilla played by that ever present staple of 40's movies, namely a man in an ape suit. This pair of villains goes around murdering poor unfortunates for reasons that I can actually recall but simply cannot be bothered typing out. Needless to say, they find themselves up against that other staple of 40's potboilers – a wisecracking duo of male and female sleuths. They don't provide much successful comedy and Lugosi isn't very scary, so the result is a film that can only be appreciated if you take it with a pinch of salt and can get on-board with its campy nonsense value. It's pretty poor overall, but not exactly painfully so and will offer something to those who like to seek horror movies in the old style.

While Bela may have appeared in worse movies, he was never more embarrassed than in his work here. While a bit of the hijinks is good for unintentional laughs, this has less the fun tone of "The Devil Bat", and more the bone crushing boredom of "The Corpse Vanishes." While it mostly served the purpose of cheap laughs, can we just note now that George Barrow's much employed suit did not look much like a real Gorilla?Your heart also has to go to the excellent Wallace Ford, whose crack comic timing was often put to use in moviessuch as this. The writers even seem to be halfway spoofing the tired, tired, "screwball" button of a dame trying to make it in a man's world. In fact, I sort of like the self referential gag of the films writer, a stammering dimwit, occasionally appearing to move the plot along. Obviously, however, the joke at the closing credits is whoever sat through this thing.

This is a 1 point or a 10 point movie. 1 if you want to be sensible, but 10 if you love the Ed Wood or pre-Poe Roger Corman school of film. Terrible script, dreadful acting, poor lighting, and worse sound than a Caruso or Nellie Melba recording 40 years earlier.Bela Lugosi does a poor ape imitation, and wears a very rough prototype of the mask Roddy McDowall wore in 'Planet of the Apes.' He monkeys about (sorry!) with one Emil Van Horn wearing a full gorilla suit - he looks exactly like the one (called Ethel) that Oliver Hardy ended up with when the circus went broke. (Stanley got the flea circus.) Lugosi & another scientist have been fiddling about with 'glands,' so when Lugosi decides to test it on himself... The only way to keep himself away from the furry side of life is to keep filling himself with human 'glands' from the recently deceased. He steps out into the night and orders 'Ethel' to murder people - it's 'The Murders In The Rue Morgue' all over again.Hard to tell whether this was supposed to be funny or not - wisecracking journalists who annoy the editor by calling him 'chiefy,' brain-dead Irish policemen, bubbling retorts in the cellars of an old dark house etc. Clearly this was made when Lugosi's life was turning into a tragic horror story all of his own, and accepted any old rubbish to pay for the drugs and the booze.One kind of wishes for Abbott & Costello or The Three Stooges to turn up, but no such luck. The star turn is the wonderfully named Miranda Urecal (almost born to appear in cheap horror films) who plays Lugosi's sister, screaming energetically or fainting at the drop of a coffin lid.This isn't quite as funny as Ed Wood's stuff, but better than nothing now the hockey season's finished. The ending's quite amusing, and make sure you spot Charlie Hall (like Ethel, a left-over from the glory days of Laurel & Hardy) at the very start.

"The Ape Man" (1943), directed by legendary hack William Beaudine (the man who gave us "Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter" [1966] and "Billy the Kid versus Dracula" [1966]), this b-movie gives us a deliciously hammy, over-the-top performance from Bela Lugosi, who had gone down a long way since his myth-making role in Tod Browning's "Dracula" (1931). The plot is the usual hokum: a crazed scientist, Dr. James Brewster (Bela Lugosi), with help from his more sane counterpart, Dr. George Randall (Henry hall), injects himself with spinal fluid that turns him into an ape man. But at sixty-nine minutes, the film moves so fast that plot logic is never anything you spare a great deal of thought on. Wallace Ford (who apart from having minor roles in a few Hitchcock movies and featuring in lots of TV shows, is most famous for starring in the brilliant "Freaks" [1932]), Ralph Littlefield and Louise Currie are decent and the whole movie on the technical side, is quite competent. A fun film for people who enjoy the works of Edward D. Wood Jr.