Captive Wild Woman 1943 Screenplay by Griffin Jay and Henry Sucher, directed by Edward Dmytryk. A Universal picture it was followed by 2 sequels Jungle Woman and The Jungle Captive. All three films are collected in the 5th volume of the Universal Horror Collection along with The Monster And The Girl. Each film gets it's own disc and a commentary, a couple of the films get a trailer, and all have new 2K transfers. I wouldn't recommend the series for everyone but the Universal Monsters are favorites of mine and I was happy to pick the sets up. This post is an update of a post I did last year when we watched the movie at a Friday Night Movie Night.
John Carradine is a doctor scientist who's working with glands as a method of curing deformities. He takes an opportunity to steal a gorilla and turn it onto Acquanetta. John has to kill someone to get the glands to transplant in the gorilla and he's the sort of doctor who doesn't see a problem with that.
Mildred Davenport is Acquanetta's real name, she appeared in 10 movies between 1942 and 1953. She didn't appear in another production until she guested on The Adventures Of Grizzly Adams in 1990.
Milburn Stone is a big game hunter and lion tamer, he's supplies the lions and tigers for Lloyd Corrigan's circus. He's the one who captured the gorilla. Evelyn Ankers is Lloyd's secretary and Milburn's gal. Martha Vickers is Evelyn's sister, she's getting some curing at John's clinic. Clyde Beatty does Milburn's lion taming scenes via footage from The Big Cage and Ray "Crash" Corrigan plays the gorilla.
I thought it was entertaining but I found the circus lion taming scenes to drag a bit. I guess I'm just not that interested in lion taming. Seems unnecessarily dangerous and nothing good for the cats. The movie looks nice.
The commentary by Tom Weaver has some comments from a man who's knowledgeable about lion taming. Clyde used to dominate the cats with a chair, a whip and a gun. Now they use treats. Still dangerous. Weaver's commentary features words from the gal that plays the gorilla as a human, Acquanetta, they were recorded by an actress from a printed interview in a horror magazine. She had some interesting stuff to say and some stuff I would take with a grain of salt. She sounds very new agey to me. Weaver had enough other stuff to say to keep it interesting.