Scanialara You won't be disappointed!

UnowPriceless hyped garbage

Cleveronix A different way of telling a story

Kimball Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

a_chinn Corny but fun low budget horror film about small town mad scientist Boris Karloff trying to cure a girl of polio, while at the same time a circus ape has escaped and is terrorizing the locals. When the ape breaks into Karloff's laboratory and destroys the spinal fluids he needs to cure the girl, he concocts a scheme to skin the ape and then wear it's flesh as a disguise to kill the townsfolk in order to harvest their spinal fluid and let the ape take the blame. The film was written by Curt Siodmak, who wrote "The Wolf Man," but who also wrote a lot of nonsense along the lines of "Bride of the Gorilla" and "Tarzan's Magic Fountain," but I did find the overall story of Karloff disgusting himself as an ape to steal spinal fluid a campy good time. Fun, but nothing brilliant.

Rainey Dawn This is one of those lesser known Boris Karloff films that is an underrated horror classic! Worth watching if you enjoy the films concerning "a mad scientist", older horror classics and/or Boris Karloff.Yes Karloff is finding a cure for polio in this underrated classic - but is he really a "mad scientist" or a man desperate to help humanity? What does a circus, an ape, a mad scientist, a woman with polio and murder have to do with each other? If you are curious then I would recommend you watching the Karloff film "The Ape". The copy of this film I have is clear and I can hear the movie quite well but it does jump around a little bit. I would guess the film was not preserved all that well but that has NOTHING to do with the original film before the wear and tear of time. If you want a fairly decent copy of this film like I have then I would recommend getting the horror film pack called "Horror Classics 50 Movie Pack Collection" (with Phantom of the Opera on the cover). It's a fairly clean/decent copy although their might be a better copy of this film floating around out there that I am unaware of. "The Ape" is a good old fashioned horror film that I do recommend to others. 8.5/10

mark.waltz The pretty Maris Wrixon has spent the past ten years in a wheelchair because of paralysis and research doctor Boris Karloff, the pariah in his community, is doing his best to cure her. Practically all of the townspeople hate him (although he's the first one they go to in a sudden medical emergency!) and the children all fear him even though they go out of their way to throw rotten tomatoes at his house. A rash of dog disappearances have caused suspicion to be thrown at him, but when a circus fire breaks out and the caged ape escapes, Karloff sees an opportunity to find the serum he so desperately needs in a way that nobody could suspect him.This is a truly horrible movie, fortunately short, but it is almost laughable that somebody could think up such tripe. Karloff gets to try and humanize his character in a scene with one of the doctors (played by Selmer Jackson) who years ago fought his methods, and when they are standing facing each other, actually look almost identical. Jackson looked here exactly like Jack Betts who would play Karloff in the recent James Whale bio "Gods and Monsters", so that aspect absolutely distracts from the scene. Gertrude Hoffman, the old lady playing Karloff's housekeeper, only gets to whisper one line to him. She would go on to be better used as Barbara Stanwyck's murdered aunt in "The File on Thelma Jordan" and most memorably as the "lifer" who stands up to Hope Emerson in the cult classic "Caged".

Bezenby Boris Karloff has promised his niece he will cure her paralysis at all costs, despite his research making him a bit of a pariah in his home town (doesn't help that he experiments on dogs that he kidnaps). When an Ape escapes from a local circus and mauls its keeper, who had it coming, Boris extracts spinal fluid from the guy and creates a formula that seems to work. Problem is – he needs more spinal fluid. Solution is – the Ape is going around killing people and Boris has just murdered the Ape in his kitchen (in a hilarious scene), so now Boris can disguise himself as the Ape and get more spinal fluid. It's simple as well as completely daft.Dressing up as an Ape and wandering about while there's an armed posse looking for a gorilla is as crazy as dressing up as Hitler and walking down a street in Stalingrad during World War 2, but that's what Boris does. He's determined to help his niece walk and nothing's going to stop him, dammit! Mad scientists are ten a penny, but Karloff's mad scientist has a heart, and even though his method is slightly off, he's trying to help folks, so you end up rooting for him to finish his research before the posse riddle him with bullets. Besides, his victims are all sort of hick bad guys, so you can't feel too sorry for them when Boris leaps on them with his Ape suit. The film itself isn't too eventful, but the bittersweet edge to it was more than welcome.