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Greetings, and welcome to VIEWING THE CLASSICS. Here you'll find capsule reviews of vintage movies from the early days of cinema through the 1970s, with a special emphasis on sci-fi, horror, and mystery movies. Be sure to check out the Pages links, where you can find a Film Index of all my reviews, links to the reviews organized by cast members, directors, and other contributors, and links to my reviews of the films of talented young director Joshua Kennedy.

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Thursday, February 18, 2016

The Jungle Captive (1945)

Starring Otto Kruger, Vicky Lane, Amelita Ward, Phil Brown, Jerome Cowan
Directed by Harold Young
(actor & director credits courtesy IMDB.com)

A biochemist kidnaps the body of the Ape Woman in order to prove that the system he's developed can restore the dead to life. 

A followup to both Captive Wild Woman and Jungle Woman, the picture features a completely new cast, notably replacing Acquanetta with Vicky Lane as Paula Dupree, the Ape Woman.  Unfortunately, there's little more to learn about her character as afforded in the screenplay, which makes her effectively brain-dead, and although Lane spends much more of the film in her monster makeup than Acquanetta ever did, she doesn't do much besides grimace and clench her teeth.  The film's most interesting addition is the henchman played by Rondo Hatton, the real-life victim of acromegaly who capitalized on his distorted features in a handful of films like this one.  He's not as well used here as in his other pictures, but still makes a menacing impact.

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