The Jungle Captive (1945)

"It was dead. Now it lives.", 25 April 2017

The Jungle Captive is the third (and thankfully final) installment in Universal's Ape Woman trilogy. In most trilogies, the third movie is usually the worst. I actually found The Jungle Captive to be the most entertaining of the bunch (although that's not saying much). In this one, a scientist named Stendahl (Otto Kruger) uses his hired muscle, Moloch (Rondo Hatton), to steal the Ape Woman's body from the morgue (she was killed at the end of part 2). He has been working with reanimating the dead bodies of small animals and wants to take his experiments to the next level with a larger subject. Unfortunately, during the heist of the body, Moloch killed a morgue worker – meaning the police are investigating. The police seem to suspect Stendahl's lab assistants, but they're completely innocent and unaware of Stendahl's new experiments. That all changes, though, once Stendahl kidnaps his female assistant, Ann. He needs her blood to help resurrect the Ape Woman.

If you've seen the other two films in the series, you won't be surprised by much of what happens in The Jungle Captive. But there is more action in this one and the flow (for lack of a better word) of the movie is better. Kruger makes a great mad scientist – the best in series. The look on his face when he reveals his plan is fantastic. It's also nice to see Rondo Hatton in a speaking role. In the end, Rondo gets to play the hero. Finally, the movie focuses less on Paula the Ape Woman which turns out to be a positive. In the previous movies, she too often just stood and stared at nothing. Here, she's almost an afterthought to Stendahl and his crazy plans for Ann.

Those are the positives. How about the negatives? Well, it's easy to see that Universal slashed the budget big time on The Jungle Captive. This one barely looks better than a Poverty Row programmer. In fact, most of the cast seems straight off the PRC lot – not the usual standard for Universal. Also, as I indicated, it's all horribly predictable. You know what's going to happen to the Ape Woman and that somehow Ann will be saved. In the end, I sort of felt sorry for Paula. As with the other two movies, this one ends with her being killed.

4/10