The Ape

Plot synopsis:
Boris Karloff stars in The Ape as Doctor Bernard Adrian, a medical researcher who has retreated from the scientific world to live in the small town of Red Creek. Dr Adrian is haunted by the deaths of his wife and daughter to paralysis (polio) and since their deaths has been working towards a cure for the condition. For the last ten years he has been conducting experiments testing his serum on animals. The doctor is disliked and mistrusted by the local population who, although unaware of what he is trying to do still suspect him of unconventional medical practices and (rightly) suspect he is connected to the disappearance of local dogs. We see the townspeople gossiping about the Doctor when he goes to Quinn, the town's druggist (Harry C. Bradley) to collect medical supplies and although Adrian is kind to the local children their parents warnings about him prompt them to pelt his house with stones. In fact Dr Adrian has only one patient the beautiful, wheelchair bound Frances Clifford (Maris Wrixon) who reminds Adrian of his own daughter as Frances is afflicted by the same condition she had. Dr Adrian is determined to cure Frances and both the girl and her mother (Dorothy Vaughan) have faith in his ability - though Frances' auto-mechanic boyfriend Danny Foster (Gene O' Donnell) is frightened by Adrian's ideas. The Doctor needs one thing to complete his experimental serum so that he can test it on Frances and that is human spinal fluid, but in order to get it he would need a recently deceased subject as the removal of the spinal fluid would kill the donor.An opportunity for Dr Adrian to complete his serum soon presents itself when a travelling circus comes to Red Creek. One of the star attractions of the circus is Nabu (Ray Corrigan) a huge ape. Nabu is being horribly mistreated by his cruel trainer (Isaac Stanford Jolley) and when the creature fights back and mauls the trainer it accidentally starts a fire and in the resulting confusion the ape escapes into the surrounding countryside. The sheriff of Red Creek Jeff Halliday (Henry Hall) advises that the mortally wounded trainer be taken to Dr Adrian, but as he is tending to the man the doctor realises here is a chance to obtain the spinal fluid he needs. Adrian extracts the spinal fluid, killing the trainer in the process, and completes his serum and tests it on Frances. The experiment seems to have some effect as the girl has some feeling restored to her paralysed legs, but in his excitement at the effect Adrian drops the test-tube of serum. When Adrian returns to his home to use the remainder of the spinal fluid to make some more serum Nabu the ape breaks into the house. Adrian and the ape fight, smashing the flask containing the spinal fluid in the process, and the doctor throws acid into the face of the ape before killing the beast with a knife. Adrian instructs Jane (Gertrude Hoffman), his near silent housekeeper not to tell anyone that the creature is dead as Dr Adrian has a macabre plan.Dr Adrian skins Nabu and dresses himself up as the ape, this will allow Adrian to go out and kill the more unworthy members of society in order to save Frances - and it is Nabu who will be suspected of committing the crimes not the good doctor. Meanwhile, we see the local bank manager Henry Mason (Philo McCullough) portrayed as a real scoundrel. Quinn the druggist accuses him of usury and when his long suffering wife (Mary Field) confronts him about his philandering he tells her that if she doesn't like it then "there is always the river" - i.e. she can go and drown herself. Little surprise then that Mason is the first victim of the disguised Dr Adrian who kills him and extracts his spinal fluid. Again the doctor tries his serum on Frances and again she feels some benefit but as the feeling returns to her legs she is unwilling to heed Adrian's urging to get up from her chair - in part due the discouragement of her boyfriend, who seems to fear losing her if she regains the ability to walk.However, the Sheriff is becoming suspicious of Dr Adrian and orders some of the posse of men he is leading in the search for the ape to watch the doctor's house. When the doctor dons the ape suit once again and goes out into the countryside in search of another victim he is spotted by one of the Sheriff's men and mortally wounded. As Dr Adrian lies dying from his wound Frances finally gets up out of her wheelchair to go to him and she does so Dr Adrian's ape suit seems to fade from her view. Thus, the doctor feels his murders have been justified.

Tags: murder

Review:
Like other such pictures The Ape gives a leading role to a horror icon , Boris Karloff ,while featuring unknowns, and untalented ones into the bargain, for the supporting parts .
He plays Doctor Adrian who is regarded with suspicion by the small town locals but is revered by a young woman ,the wheelchair bound Frances Clifford whose paralysis he is striving to cure .His favoured method is by injection of spinal fluid but he is running out of the stuff till fate takes a hand .A giant ape escapes from the visiting circus ;unknown to the townsfolk he is shot .Adrian skins the dead beast and goes out at night dressed in the skin ,killing to obtain victims so he can continue the treatment .
Karloff is his usual excellent self ,this time playing the scientist rather than a creation of a scientist ,and the script is quite sharp in its depiction of small town narrow mindedness .The ape suit is better than usual in this type of picture with this type of budget and this is a decent little horror number.
William Nigh directs this low-budget Monogram picture about a circus ape escaping simultaneously with an eccentric doctor trying to cure a young girl's paralysis.
But what it does have is a fine performance from Boris Karloff as the doctor working endlessly to free a girl from the confines of her wheelchair all the while blurring the line of good and bad.
In this very short and extremely cheap horror film, horror legend Boris Karloff once again stars as a devoted doctor/scientist on the verge of a big medical breakthrough.
When a mad-raving ape escapes from a nearby circus, it brings Dr. Adrian to an idea 'The Ape' is quite an imaginative and well-intended horror film with a slick plot but unfortunately too little action.
A local doctor and scientist (Boris Karloff) is working on a treatment for paralysis.
Karloff made this entire film possible with his great acting as Dr. Adrian, dedicating his career to finding a cure for the dread disease Polio.
Karloff soon learns that he needs spinal fluid from a human being, he tries to blame the Ape for his horrors.
A measure of the film's ambivalence in this respect is that both views will be accounted for at the very end – as Karloff's miracle cure does work, but he has had to resort to the despicable act of murder in order to procure specimens!; incidentally, this latter business and the fact that one of the protagonists is wheelchair-bound would both resurface – to infinitely infinitely greater effect – in a later Karloff picture, the Val Lewton classic THE BODY SNATCHER (1945).
The titular creature, then, is seen prowling about a number of times – even after having watched Karloff stab it: where we supposed to know that he was behind subsequent killings?; my brother actually arrived at this conclusion about three-quarters of the way inbut I just could not believe Karloff would go to such extremes for Science (after all, he failed to save the immediate members of his family and had kept up the fight for a good 10 years afterwards – why should he bother so much with the rest of the world, especially since they hated him for it?!) and, in any case, being a doctor does not automatically give one a propensity for taxidermy, does it?!
In between episodes of the Mr. Wong detective series, Monogram Pictures found some time to cast Boris Karloff in his traditional role as a scientist experimenting in things unknown.
The Ape has him in a more traditional Karloff type role.Boris is a doctor who has settled in a small community and is not well liked by the inhabitants of this place.
What he's doing in fact is exploring a cure for infantile paralysis.It's hard to understand these days, but that was a dreaded thing back in the day, the President of the United States had that disease, but Karloff isn't worried about curing FDR, it's pretty Maris Wrixon, that's got his attention who's confined to a wheelchair like the president.At the same time a circus ape that's been abused by his trainer gets loose and sets fire to the big top.
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?
If you like Boris Karloff and older horror films like the Universal Monsters then I strongly recommended that you see The Ape!.
This short film from 1940 features Boris Karloff as Bernard Adrian a doctor who is determined to find a cure to help a young woman, who has been paralysed by polio, to walk again.
Meanwhile the people of the town are hunting for the ape which has killed again and shows no sign of leaving the area.This film was quite a bit better than I expected; Dr Adrian may be using methods that can't be considered ethical by any stretch of the imagination but he isn't an unsympathetic character; he clearly really wants to help his patient rather than wanting the glory of finding a cure.
This is Spinal Ape. Somewhat silly but played with a straight-face nonetheless, 1940's "The Ape" was a contract fulfillment for Boris Karloff, toiling away at the time under employment by Monogram Pictures.
He grows close enough to his human guinea pig, the wheelchair-bound and charming (if a bit aloof) Frances Clifford (Maris Wrixon), that when a circus ape makes its way onto his property, he kills it and then uses its skin (?!) to roam the night for more victims to tap.
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.
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.
During the brief 1937-1938 lull in horror film product, Boris Karloff worked for the cheap Monogram Studios, making a series of rather lackluster Mr. Wong detective pictures.
When scary movies became in vogue again after the smash hit of SON OF FRANKENSTEIN in 1939, Monogram decided to make Karloff's last contracted movie a horror one.In THE APE, Boris falls into his comfortable niche of portraying a well-meaning and kindly old doctor.
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.
first off I enjoyed The Ape, not one of Karloff's great movies but it didn't stink either,, the premise of the movie is that he is trying to find a spinal cure for a woman, and the only way he can do this is to go around killing people,, he decides to use an Ape suit this way I guess he can scare the living daylights out of his victims..
he is great to watch his every move ,, what he is gonna do next, and how he will go about doing it,, he's really creepy in the Ape suit, I would not wanna be in his way when he is gonna get to his next victim,, granted there's not a lot of suspense here because you already know what he is doing, so there is really no great mystery about what's going on, just sit back and enjoy Boris Karloff that's what I did..
Or maybe he skinned it and then made a suit?) in an effort to motivate Frances to finally stand on her own two feet—*cough, cough*—and prove that his research had scientific credence all along.Uh-huh.In short, this is a movie that uses the presence of a lumbering ape to try and add an element of horror to an otherwise straightforward—and boring—story about a renegade scientist who's misunderstood.
It's the classic "he's-got-good-intentions-and-we-should-all-feel-like-jackasses- for-doubting-him" tale.There are plenty of chances for the film to be inventive, but it suffers from a particularly bad case of "convenient circumstances"; you know, the sort of thing that happens at just the right time to allow the narrative to move forward in an absolutely unbelievable way.Case in point: an official from the institute that trained the doctor shows up to investigate strange occurrences in the town.
Boris Karloff stars as a doctor attempting to cure paralysis.
Basically, Boris Karloff is the only good thing about this movie, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if the makers of this film were aware of that.
But imagine if it had been played by anyone else: a doctor is trying to cure polio, when he is attacked by an escaped circus ape.
The Ape (1940) ** (out of 4)Boris Karloff plays a kind-hearted doctor trying to cure a woman who is paralyzed from her waist down.
When a giant ape escapes from a local circus the doctor sees a woman to continue his experiments but this leads to murder.
That's because both starred Boris Karloff as a well-intentioned doctor who is trying to help mankind but ultimately becomes a "mad" scientist.
Here Karloff is trying to find a cure for spinal paralysis and he uses the spinal fluid of a man injured by an escaped ape to help cure a lady who is bound to a wheelchair.
He kills a sick man, then uses ape serum from an escaped circus monkey (looks like old "Crash" Corrigan in his suit again) when the serum is knocked off a table by his serving-woman.
The movie is about a misunderstood doctor, played by horror great Boris Karloff, who is trying to cure the local town of a crippling disease but is using animals in his experiments and the townfolk don't like his methods.
Spinal Tap. Red Creek doctor Boris Karloff (as Bernard Adrian) goes Ape (as Ray Corrigan) for pretty paraplegic Maris Wrixon (as Frances Clifford).
We all watch movies of this genre either for a bewildered laugh (wondering how anyone could ever take a movie like this seriously) or because we have a sincere love of classic horror cinema; I was influenced by both inclinations when I first sat down to watch "The Ape." This movie, starring Boris Karloff provides at least one good performance, with the classic actor in the lead role, as a mad scientist willing to go to any lengths (especially murder) to help cure a young girl suffering from polio.
Only watch this flick if you love crapcinema, Karloff, or movies about men in gorilla outfits killing to collect a supply of human spinal fluid..
The Ape starring Boris Karloff is a morally ambiguous tale centering on a kindhearted but misunderstood doctor (Karloff) and his attempts to cure the polio (never mentioned but assumed) that inflicts a town, and a particularly his attempts to help one girl walk again, a girl that becomes his sort of foster-child, as his own daughter and wife have died from the affliction.
When a giant ape escapes from a circus and the doctor manages to kill it, he sees a way of getting the injections he needs to continue helping the girl...
The Ape of science is always near, primitive in its actions, shielded from the world.Boris Karloff is excellent in the "title" role, commanding our pathos, and the rest of the cast is believable townsfolk (I especially liked the corrupt-but-honest sheriff, who reminded me of Tom Skerritt) The Sheriff and the Doctor have an interesting relationship to one another, as do all the characters to one another in the film.
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.
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.
The film makes the point quite strongly that the townspeople hate him, but doesn't really explain why.The central premise of extracting (possibly an ape's) spinal fluid to cure human paralysis is delightfully daft.
The theme overall touches on the fear of science (in the "some things man was not meant to know" vein) that many of these films had, but repudiates by curing polio despite the murders of the scientist.All in all, a nice little science fiction mystery of the era that manages to be a entertaining and even a bit thoughtful despite its flaws, low budget, and rushed, brief nature..
The twisted plot involves Dr. Bernard Adrian (Boris Karloff), who is conducting crazy experiments involving spinal fluid.
It's about a scientist(Karloff) who tries to cure polio by running around the countryside in an ape pelt in search of victims that he can drain of spinal fluid.
Don't go into this film expecting it to be a "pleasant surprise" or "better than most cheap old horror movies", because it's just like all the rest.
**SPOILERS** One of the great Boris Karloff's most sympathetic and touching roles as a mad scientist who's obsessed in his mission to conquer paralysis but at the same time goes a bit too far and over the line, in murdering a number of people, in doing it.
After a polio epidemic hit the quite little town of Red Creek dozens of townspeople ended up dying from it including the towns doctor Bernard Adrian's, Boris Karloff, wife and young daughter.
Blinded by his attempt to cure those who are suffering from crippling diseases like polio the kindly but at the same time foolish old man just overlooked the fact that he had no right to play God with peoples lives like he did in the film.
Tracked down by a posse of townspeople Dr. Adrian, dressed in a gorilla suit, is shot and stabbed a number of times as he tries to find, and kill, new victims for his experiments and the big reward that he gets at the end of the film, as he's about to expire, is that Frances whom he was so determined to cure got up off her wheelchair and walked towards the dying doctor showing him, and the people of Red Creek, that he wasn't all that bad.
The Ape. Macabre tale with quite an interesting moral conflict at it's center regarding a small town doctor, Bernard Adrian(Boris Karloff), who is also a brilliant scientist determined to create a serum which can cure paralysis.
At the very least, Adrian could've killed this loathsome bastard, since the only good use he is to mankind is the spinal fluid which could help a far better human being walk again.
Karloff's sincere performance and a story-line that's anything but conventional, makes THE APE an interesting curiosity item.I'm pretty sure many viewers might find the whole thing appalling with a rather tasteless central theme of murdering innocent people for their spinal fluid in order to help one person walk again, with a finale concerning the person actually standing from her wheel chair walking to a fallen scientist beckoning/inspiring her to come towards him..
THE APE is one of the movies in the set.I thought that THE APE was a fairly original adaptation of the "King Kong" story, with Boris Karloff playing the part of am eccentric doctor, who's only aim is to cure a young woman of paralysis.
Worse, a jealous boyfriend fears his girl won't need him any more if she's cured, so he resents the doctor's attention.It really is a silly, melodramatic mess of a plot; but, it works; and, Karloff is really in top form.The special effects surrounding the ape are very poor by today's standards; but, fairly impressive for 1940!.
Kindly, but slightly bent Dr. Bernard Adrian (a typically fine performance by the ever-dignified Boris Karloff) is trying to find a cure for polio so he can make sweet young cripple Francis Clifford (a charming turn by the fetching Maris Wrixon) walk again.
Adrian kills the beast, dresses up in the ape's pelt, and bumps off a few folks for their spinal fluid which he needs for his polio cure serum.
As I sit here and think about the movie I've just seen, I ask myself why the film makers even bothered to feature a gorilla as a central character in this story, but there's the title "The Ape", so I guess they had to fit one in somewhere.
The story is actually rather standard fare for the era, a mad scientist/doctor Bernard Adrian (Boris Karloff) is obsessed with finding a cure for a young woman's paralysis, and will go to any lengths to succeed.
Those lengths include killing a circus ape that invades his home, gutting out the creature (off screen of course), and then using the carcass to disguise himself as he seeks victims from which to extract spinal fluid for the serum he needs to complete his experiments and cure the stricken Frances Clifford (Maris Wrixon).
It's more dull than anything else, although Karloff is better than he has to be and Crash Corrigan looks pretty scary in the ape suit.