Night of the Bloody Apes
(aka: Horripilante bestia humana, La)
(Something Wierd Video DVD)
(1968)
review by Monkeyman

Quote from Dr Krauman-"I was prepared for everything,but not for this!!"-well after watching Rene Cardona's Night of the Bloody Apes I I know exactly how you feel Doc!

I first saw Night of the Bloody Apes nearly twenty years ago and was singularly unimpressed. So you can imagine my delight upon viewing it again on the marvellous DVD release by Something Weird and realising that the film is a very strong contender to win the "so bad its absolutely hilarious" category in the Horrorview awards that I previously thought would never be taken from Hell of the Living Dead and Nightmare City.

Arthur, a police detective, pays a visit to his girlfriend Lucy, a slim and petite blonde who is working as a wrestler. She tells Arthur to help her put her mask on; a day-glo red number which matches her slinky outfit. He wishes her luck, and she duly enters the ring and partakes in a wrestling match with a green clad woman who is soon chucked out of the ring and into a coma.

These wrestling sequences are rather bizarre, in the fact that Lucy appears to have gained 50 pounds in weight in no time at all due to her stunt double looking more like a crew-cutted butch lesbian than the petite blonde that is Lucy. Continuity is obviously not high on the agenda of Mexican filmmaker Rene Cardona, but funky ape suits obviously are as we then cut to a local zoo, where a Doctor Krauman and his limping sidekick, Goyo, have broken into the monkey cage and shoot the unfortunate resident primate with a tranquiliser dart.

We cut back to the hospital where Lucy is distraught-"I feel like its my fault" she wails (well you did throw her 20 feet out of the ring straight onto her head, love, who elses fault could it be?)
Back in the Krauman household the doctor is summoned to the hospital to operate on the ailing wrestler, but first he pays a visit to his son Julio, who is lying in bed, obviously not a well man if the doctors expression is anything to go by. He operates on the wrestler and tells Arthur and Lucy that all they can now do is pray.
Meanwhile, Doctor Krauman meets with the keenest brains in the hospital (at least two who look like alcoholics and the other a possible paedophile), who tell him that there is nothing down for his son, and his death is imminent. Shielding his son from the news, he tells him that he will perform a heart transplant and all will be well.
Krauman tells Goyo that they are performing the operation that night, and that the obvious candidate for a transplant is indeed the gorilla, as his heart and blood are stronger than a normal human's, He then, rather bizarrely, tells Goyo that he has "been in a similar position before"

We then cut to five minutes of rather nauseating real life heart surgery (indeed the practicing surgeon is mentioned in the films opening credits), and suprise suprise the operation appears to have been a success.

Lucy is back in the ring, but its not going well and she loses a fight she should have easily won. A quick note is required here about the audience at the wrestling matches. There appear to be about twenty people watching the bouts, but the crowd noise on the soundtrack would indicate that the fight is being held at Madison Square Garden in front of a full house of high-on-crack Mexicans.

Back at the son's bedside, the Doctor tells him to "get a little rest, no excitement", a feeling that is becoming pretty familiar to the viewer of the film. The Doc taps a nearly somnambulant Goyo on the shoulder, and Goyo asks him "whats wrong?".

"Nothing ,calm down!", retorts the Doc, "Come and help me carry the cadaver of the gorilla over to the incinerator"

We are soon back in the ring (again), where Lucy is back on form and celebrates her impending retirement from the wrestling game by beating the shit out of another ugly fat bird, but she is soon depressed that her boyfriend is called back to the station to investigate the theft of the unfortunate simian organ donor.
Suddenly, back in the lab, Julio is resting, but he takes a turn for the worse and transforms into a huge ape-like creature and jumps out of the window. This terrifying sight is somewhat lessened by the fact that Julio is still wearing his pyjama bottoms, and even though hes doubled in size they still fit him!

He quickly attacks a showering woman in a nearby apartment block and drags her out to the bedroom and tries to have sex with the unfortunate girl (all the time keeping his pants on). She whacks him over the head. This annoys Julio to no-end and he proceeds to tear her to pieces.

Julio climbs a wall and starts hanging about in the park, but he is quickly tracked down by Dr Krauman and shot with the tranquilizer gun. The Doctor consoles Goyo by saying that Julio could be possibly cured by "inverting the process" and performing another transplant, this time with a human heart. I suspect you can see where this is going, and, sure enough, Krauman has the comatose wrestling amazon in mind as she "has no family" to speak of.

Unfortunately, before the Doctor can procure the body, Julio is up and about again, straight out the window and looking for some down and dirty monkey style loving down at the park. He attacks a courting couple, ripping the boyfriends throat out (and managing to shred the girfriends green top to pieces at the same time while trying to remove her underwear). The girl escapes and runs into a butchers shop (which appears to be open at midnight). Her green dress has mysteriously managed to repair itself during the previous melee, and the outraged shop keeper gives chase, only to be stabbed to death with his own knife.

An unfortunate passer-by then has his eye poked out by the enraged Julio. An old woman finds his body, and runs away screaming, "Oh,a dead man, a dead man, a dead man, a dead man", rather overstating the obvious in my book.
For the third time, Goyo and the Doctor corner Julio and shoot him with the tranquilizer gun, and yet again escort him back to the lab-by this time I was beginning to feel as if I was watching Groundhog Day, and not Night of the Bloody Apes.

The intrepid team of monkey snatchers waste no time in kidnapping the wrestler from the hospital and transplanting her heart into Julios body (he must have the constitution of a horse to be able to cope with two bouts of open heart surgery in four days). A radio announcer reports on the four murders, concluding that "police have confirmed that the escaped gorilla is the assassin."

Goyo is left alone with Julio while the Doctor is summoned to the hospital, where his colleagues are perturbed by the kidnapping of the coma victim. The medical staff decide to cover the matter upwhile they try and locate the missing woman (who has long since taken a trip to Kraumans incinerator.) The crafty physician manages to persuade the staff that the girl could have been a sleepwalker (not an affliction that I'm aware affects that many coma victims).
Arthur the policeman tries to persuade his superiors that the killings are being performed by "a horrible half beast-half human". His superior thinks that this theory is a load of old bollocks, and comes back with the finest line of the film so far;

"Thats absurd-ridicolous-Its more probable of late that more and more you are watching on your television many of those pictures of terror"

Arthur, the densest copper in the station, rings his girlfriend and asks her to meet him near the park,"down that little sidestreet you know". Now unless hes got a million dollar insurance policy on the poor girl maybe thats not the wisest of meeting places with a "half human half beast" monster still on the loose!

Anyway, back to the "plot", and its not looking good for the occasionally limping Goyo who makes the mistake of thinking that Julio (who has just transformed back to human form) is now cured. Julio creeps up on him (not easy for a 250 pound ape creature admittedly) and proceeds to rip his head off with his bare hands.
When the Doc arrives home he is horrified, and when he approaches Julio he trips and bangs his head on a table. Julio is out on the loose again, this time sporting a matching full pyjama set in a very nice shade of blue and buttoned right up to the neck.

Julio is somewhat a creature of habit, and, after attacking a police man and ripping his scalp away from his head with his bare hands, proceeds to chase yet another woman through the park. The scalping effect is achieved by placing a wig coated in what appears to be strawberry jam on a bald actors head, and simply having Julio rip the outrageous hairpiece off the unfortunate thespian's head.
The Doc wakes up and chases after his son, who ends up atop a large building with a young child in his arms (any resemblance to King Kong is purely deliberate).

It all ends exactly as youd expect, and as you sit in your seat truly stunned by what you have just seen you realise that it will be a long, long time before you see a film this entertaining again.

The Something Weird DVD is the bargain of the century-it's chock full of deleted scenes, andcontains a number of brilliant shorts (my favourite being The Gorilla and the Maiden). The film itself looks as good as youve ever seen it. There's even another film on the disc; the pretty entertaining in its own right Feast of Flesh.

In conclusion, all I can say is that any fans of wildly entertaining, horrendously dubbed foreign bloodbaths absolutely MUST track this disc down post haste.